Explorations

This morning I got up and went to the Museum of the Opificio del Pietre Dure, or the museum for this workshop of precious and semi precious stones that was established in the time of the Medicis. It was incredible workmanship, and yes there were many shinies. However, since this is not an uber popular place the placards were all in Italian. I muddled through as best I could...I now know, for example, that "porfiro" is the Italian for porphryr, or however you spell it. I spent only a short time there, and then I went to the Museum of San Marco, where I get in free because I have this handy dandy membership card they gave us for state museums. I wasn't really even thinking when I went in there what exactly was IN san Marco...so I get inside, where once again, there are no English explanations of anything, and I start realizing there's a lot of stuff by Fra Angelico. Ah, very nice, lovely, lovely. Including one piece, Sacred Conversation, we just looked at in our Renaissance Art of the Courts. But I'm still somehow not putting two and two together from my Art History survey classes, not even after I see on the map "Fra Angelico's Cells Upstairs". I think ooh, those frescoed cells! Awesome! But I still don't even realize, until I reach the top of a flight of stairs, exactly what the important artwork it that resides in San Marco--Fra Angelico's Annunciation, one of the most famous of all the works by that name, adorns the wall directly opposite the stairwell. My jaw, quite literally, dropped, partly from seeing this iconic painting and partly from my own stupidity at not remembering the connection.

The frescoes themselves were great, and the cells weren't small and dank--they had pretty windows onto the courtyard and ample space. However, they were freezing even with the benefit of space heaters. There were no fireplaces in the rooms. These poor monks were probably too busy freezing their balls off half the time to care about sinning. Interestingly, not all the frescoes were unique...there were two images that he repeated, identically, over and over. They were both Crucifixion scenes, very gory ones, with blood spurting dramatically all over the place. One had a black background, one had a white background and was differently shaped. I counted 5 of the black ones and no less than 7 of the whites. It interested me to think how they divvied up the room selection--I mean, did you have to have a certain level of seniority to get a cell with a nice fresco like Noli Me Tangere? Did the newbies get stuck with the Crucifixions? Or was there some sort of merit system, like if they catch you eyeing the nuns you get a bloody Christ...maybe if they catch you eyeing the choir boys you got a Virgin Enthroned in Heaven, or something. All very interesting. I bought a print of the Annunciation, and then I went back to this shop I was in yesterday and bought a seal in the shape of a D, and some wax, so I can make seals on my letters. Heehee. I feel deliciously medieval.