Palazzo Medici and San Marco

We visited Palazzo Medici and San Marco Basillica and Convent in Florence.

Fra Angelico was an early Renaissance Painter. He painted devotional frescos in each and every cell in San Marco Convent.

I believe you can say that while the figures in his paintings do not have the kind of anatomical detail that you might find in, for instance, an Michelangelo painting, nevertheless you can clearly see use of perspective and foreshortening which distinguishes Renaissance Art from Medieval Art. Consider, for instance, his Iconic Annunciation Fresco and notice the three-dimensionality.

Girolamo Savonarola was a reform preacher from San Marco Convent who preached against the Renaissance. Eventually, Florence turned against him and he was imprisoned in the tower in Palazzo Vecchio, and then tortured, hung and burned in the Piazza della Signoria.

Palazzo Medici Riccardi was the primary residence of the de’ Medici Family up until 1540 (after which they moved to Pitti Palace).

This is also where Michelangelo lived when he was growing up as an adopted member of the de’ Medici family, alongside Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici who would go on to become Pope Leo X, who as Pope issued Exsurge Domine, the Papal Bull of 1520 condemning Martin Luther.

The controversial bronze sculpture Donatello’s David likely once stood in the courtyard in Palazzo Medici.

Magi Chapel inside Palazzo Medici is a private Chapel filled with Renaissance Painting.

The particular painting that you can see behind us, is the fresco Journey of the Magi, by Benozzo Gozzoli, in which Piero the Gouty, Cosimo the Elder, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Pope Pius II, and Gozzoli himself are cast.