The church of San Marco has been frequently altered and modernised,
and there is little now to remind us that it was here on August 1,
1489, that Savonarola began to expound the Apocalypse. Over the
entrance is a Crucifix ascribed by Vasari to Giotto. On the second
altar to the right is a much-damaged but authentic Madonna and Saints
by Fra Bartolommeo; that on the opposite altar, on the left, is a
copy of the original now in the Pitti Palace. There are some
picturesque bits of old fourteenth century frescoes on the left wall,
and beneath them, between the second and third altars, lie Pico della
Mirandola and his friend Girolamo Benivieni, and Angelo Poliziano. The
left transept contains the tomb and shrine of St Antoninus, the good
Dominican Archbishop of Florence, with statues by Giovanni da Bologna
and his followers, and later frescoes. In the sacristy, which was
designed by Brunelleschi, there is a fine bronze recumbent statue of
him. Antoninus was Prior of San Marco in the days of Angelico, and
Vasari tells us that when Angelico went to Rome, to paint for Pope
Eugenius, the Pope wished to make the painter Archbishop of Florence:
"When the said friar heard this, he besought his Holiness to find
somebody else, because he did not feel himself apt to govern people;
but that since his Order had a friar who loved the poor, who was most
learned and fit for rule, and who feared God, this dignity would be
much better conferred upon him than on himself. The Pope, hearing
this, and bethinking him that what he said was true, granted his
request freely; and so Fra Antonino was made Archbishop of Florence,
of the Order of Preachers, a man truly most illustrious for sanctity
and learning."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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