Morning Walkabout

The Piazza di San Marco, showing both the church and its former monastery now a museum. The museum is the cream coloured building in the middle (right of church). It's life as a monastery was boosted when Cosimo de Medici the Elder financed its renovation in 1437, and commissioned Fra Angelico (1395 - 1455) to redecorate it. The major part of this was to decorate the monk's cells on the upper floor; each has a fresco painted by Fra Angelico or one of his assistants. There are 39 cells altogether, with two (numbers 38 and 39) for Cosimo's personal use. These feature a fresco of the Adoration of the Magi because Cosimo liked this as a meditation theme on how he should manage his subjects.

For Cosimo, however, there was an unintended consequence of this restoration. The monastery became the home of Savonarola, the fiery monk who preached against the excesses of the Medici, eventually forcing the family out of Florence in 1494. Savonarola was burned at the stake (in Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzio Vecchio) in 1498 when the citizens had had enough of his puritan ideas; then the Medici returned to the city.