Florence, Savonarola returns home: an unpublished Della Robbia bust presented at the Museo di San Marco

On May 16, 1491, Friar Girolamo Savonarola was elected prior of the convent of San Marco in Florence. And it was also here, on the evening of April 8, 1498, that he was captured and eventually executed in Piazza della Signoria on May 23 of that year. More than 500 years later, the celebrated Dominican preacher is coming home: the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany and the Museum of San Marco are presenting for the first time to the public a hitherto unpublished work, a new polychrome terracotta bust of Savonarola, attributed to Marco della Robbia, later Fra’ Mattia (1468-1534), and dating from the late 15th-early 16th century.

A work declared of important interest by the Ministry of Culture, it is added to the collections of the famous Florentine museum, to be placed in the room that constituted Savonarola’s chapel. The terracotta, granted on loan for use to the Museo di San Marco by lawyer Alessandro Kiniger, the current owner, comes from the collection of Giovanni Malfer (1882 - 1973), founder of the Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra in Rovereto, who had stayed for a long time in the Tuscan capital at the beginning of the last century. As Stefano Casciu, Regional Museums Director of Tuscany, says, “thanks to the generosity of the lawyer Kiniger, whom I thank with particular pleasure, the Museum of San Marco is enriched with a new and surprising work, which makes even more present the charismatic figure of Girolamo Savonarola, who, after Beato Angelico, is certainly the historical figure who is most closely linked to this place so beloved by Florentines and the international public. The work, which will not fail to strike visitors with its strong incisiveness and the realism with which the Friar’s features are rendered, is included in a new layout that has affected all the rooms traditionally dedicated in the museum to the Dominican preacher, and which helps to make more linear, legible and clearer the role that this famous historical figure played in the convent of San Marco, and in the city of Florence, until his capture and tragic epilogue in Piazza della Signoria, evoked by the painting that has crystallized in everyone’s iconography and imagination the moment of his execution and the stake that followed.”

The classical iconography of Girolamo Savonarola is carved in everyone’s imagination in a profile portrait on a dark background: black hood lowered on his head, hooked nose, prominent lips, sunken cheeks, haughty gaze. A perfect synthesis of moral rigor, this is the most iconic of the images depicting the Friar. The portrait was made by the great Dominican painter Friar Bartholomew (1473-1517), who knew Savonarola well having entered the convent through his sermons soon after his murder. The bust that is now being presented, however, “constitutes,” declares Giancarlo Gentilini, “an undisputed authority in the field of sculpture, particularly terracotta sculpture-the only full-relief effigy from the Renaissance period known to date of the Dominican preacher...and therefore it is a specimen of absolute rarity and relevance. The humble character of conventual intimacy falls perfectly within the dictates of the artistic production directly inspired by the Ferrarese Dominican, marked by strong and simple formal austerity, which was primarily meant to arouse the emotion of the devout.”

The unusual frontal portrait, characterized by an anti-heroic character and absolute intimacy, seems intended for an absolutely trusted audience of confreres and followers. The sculpture is modeled with vigorous and essential features, with the head hooded and almost imprisoned in the black monastic robe, and the gaze absorbed in severe but serene contemplation. Visitors who henceforth walk down the southern corridor of the dormitory will be irresistibly drawn to Savonarola’s cerulean, shining eyes, which seem to contemplate the dramatic spectacle of purification, that bonfire of vanities on February 7, 1497, in Piazza della Signoria, when thousands of objects, luxurious furnishings and precious works of art went up in smoke, branded as a source of vice and perdition, in an atmosphere of heated exaltation by the Ferrara friar’s followers.

Centered on the work now revealed is the rearrangement of the three rooms known as the "Cells of Savonarola," located at the end of the south corridor of the dormitory. Here, according to tradition, Savonarola lived during his priory. Next to the bust, the famous painting with a profile portrait of the preacher by Fra’ Bartolomeo has been transferred from the ground floor of the museum. Also back on view again after a very long time is the manuscript of sermonssigned by the Ferrarese Dominican. Instead, Fra’ Bartolomeo’s other painting depicting St. Peter Martyr in the likeness of Savonarola replaces his portrait in the ground-floor room entirely dedicated to the artist.

“After the renovation of the Beato Angelico room,” explains the director of the San Marco museum, Angelo Tartuferi, "we focused on the other great protagonist of the history of the convent. This rearrangement reproposes many aspects of the one made for the museum’s opening to the public on October 1, 1869, and will rekindle the attention of today’s visitors to this fascinating and highly controversial figure. In addition, we took the opportunity to renew the entire graphic design of the second floor, which now conforms to the museum’s official graphic design developed by ’Print in Print’ for the new Beato Angelico room display.

A new light for Beato Angelico’s Annunciation.

Adding to the novelty of the bust of the Dominican friar is the new lighting of Fra Angelico’s famous Annunciation, a symbol of the museum and the Florentine Renaissance: “thanks to Erco’s technical sponsorship, we have been able to give new light to Angelico’s Annunciation that greets the public at the top of the stairs on the second floor, whose better legibility is now also aided by the replacement of the old crystal that disfigured the view of its lower edge, with a discreet but effective spacer,” said director Angelo Tartuferi. “I thank my colleague architect Andrea Gori who directed the work, with whom I share a commitment to constant and supervised updates of this unique museum complex,” he added.

On the sidelines of the presentation of the new layout, a selection of 10 engravings from a private collection, dating from the mid-sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century, are temporarily on display in a display case in Michelozzo’s Library, representing just a few examples of the wide dissemination of Savonarola’s image in publications of various kinds: biographies, heretical writings, denigrating or celebratory pamphlets.

A new publication in the series I quaderni di San Marco published by Sillabe is also being prepared, to be released by spring next year, made possible by the contribution of attorney Kiniger. The volume will present the new display on a scholarly level, with critical essays by Giancarlo Gentilini and Catia Ceccacci on the bust of Savonarola and its author, by Laura Pellegrini on Savonarola’s iconography and by Anna Soffici on past displays dedicated to him, and will finally be enriched by a contribution by Father Gian Matteo Serra, Rector of the Basilica of San Marco, on the current significance of the figure of Savonarola for the Dominican Order.

Pictured: the unpublished bust of Girolamo Savonarola.

Florence, Savonarola returns home: an unpublished Della Robbia bust presented at the Museo di San Marco

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