DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0238
218
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
of San Marco glows with pictures—not very fine, perhaps,
yet with an interest of their own. There the stranger who
has time, or cares to look at the illustrations of a past age,
may read the story of Sant’ Antonino, who was distin-
guished as a good archbishop of Florence, and canonized
accordingly, to the great glory of his order, and honor of
his convent. But Antonino himself was one of the breth-
ren who stood by and watched and admired Fra Giovanni’s
work on the new walls. Was the first of all, perhaps, that
crucifix which faces the spectator as he enters, at the end
of the cloister, double expression of devotion to Christ
crucified and Dominic His servant ? It is the most
important of Angelico’s works in this outer enclosure.
Our gentle painter could not paint agony or the passion
of suffering, which was alien to his heavenly nature. The
figure on the cross, here as elsewhere, is beautiful in
youthful resignation and patience, no suffering Son of God,
but a celestial symbol of depths into which the painter
could not penetrate; but the kneeling worshiper, in the
black and white robes of the order, who clasps the cross in
a rapt embrace, and raises a face of earnest and all-absorb-
ing faith to the Divine Sufferer, embodies the whole tra-
dition of monastic life in its best aspect. No son of St.
Dominic could look at that rapt figure without a clearer
sense of the utter self-devotion required of himself as
Dominic’s follower, the annihilation of every lesser motive
and lesser contemplation than that of the great sacrifice of
Christianity, example and consecration of all sacrifices
which his vow bound him to follow and muse upon, all his
life through. The picture fills something of the same place
as the blazon of a knightly house over its warlike gates is
meant to do. It is the tradition, the glory, the meaning
of the order all in one, as seen by Angelico’s beauty-loving
eyes, as well as by those, stern, glowing eyes of Savonarola,
who was to come; and perhaps even in their dull, ferocious,
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
of San Marco glows with pictures—not very fine, perhaps,
yet with an interest of their own. There the stranger who
has time, or cares to look at the illustrations of a past age,
may read the story of Sant’ Antonino, who was distin-
guished as a good archbishop of Florence, and canonized
accordingly, to the great glory of his order, and honor of
his convent. But Antonino himself was one of the breth-
ren who stood by and watched and admired Fra Giovanni’s
work on the new walls. Was the first of all, perhaps, that
crucifix which faces the spectator as he enters, at the end
of the cloister, double expression of devotion to Christ
crucified and Dominic His servant ? It is the most
important of Angelico’s works in this outer enclosure.
Our gentle painter could not paint agony or the passion
of suffering, which was alien to his heavenly nature. The
figure on the cross, here as elsewhere, is beautiful in
youthful resignation and patience, no suffering Son of God,
but a celestial symbol of depths into which the painter
could not penetrate; but the kneeling worshiper, in the
black and white robes of the order, who clasps the cross in
a rapt embrace, and raises a face of earnest and all-absorb-
ing faith to the Divine Sufferer, embodies the whole tra-
dition of monastic life in its best aspect. No son of St.
Dominic could look at that rapt figure without a clearer
sense of the utter self-devotion required of himself as
Dominic’s follower, the annihilation of every lesser motive
and lesser contemplation than that of the great sacrifice of
Christianity, example and consecration of all sacrifices
which his vow bound him to follow and muse upon, all his
life through. The picture fills something of the same place
as the blazon of a knightly house over its warlike gates is
meant to do. It is the tradition, the glory, the meaning
of the order all in one, as seen by Angelico’s beauty-loving
eyes, as well as by those, stern, glowing eyes of Savonarola,
who was to come; and perhaps even in their dull, ferocious,