Completely refurbished the new Beato Angelico Hall. Here's what it looks like

Presented this morning was the refurbishment of the room in the San Marco Museum in Florence that brings together from the 1920s a remarkable corpus of Beato Angelico’s masterpieces on panel paintings. The presentation was held via live streaming on the museum’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, with speeches by Stefano Casciu (Regional Director of Museums of Tuscany), Massimo Osanna (General Director of Museums), Cristina Giachi (President of the Commission for Education, Training, Heritage and Cultural Activities of the Region of Tuscany), Tommaso Sacchi (Councillor for Culture of the City of Florence), Angelo Tartuferi (Director of the Museum of San Marco), Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda (President of Friends of Florence), Maurizio De Vita - Studio De Vita & Schulze Architetti (designers of the installation).

The new name of the vast room built in 1918-1921 and improperly called “Ospizio dei Pellegrini,” then more simply “Ospizio,” confirms a basic component of the origins of the famous Florentine museum, founded in 1869, that is, that of a museum consecrated to the art of Beato Angelico.

The new Beato Angelico Room has been completely refurbished thanks to the support of Friends of Florence: a layout that changes radically from the one created in 1980 by the museum’s director at the time, Giorgio Bonsanti. Beato Angelico’s sixteen masterpieces, including the Deposition of Christ for the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Trinita in Florence, theAnnalena Alt arpiece and the marvelous San Marco Altarpiece, as well as smaller paintings, predellas and reliquaries, now appear according to a coherent chronological sequence and stand out thanks to new-technology lighting. Still missing from the room, however, are the Bosco ai Frati Altarpiece and the Franciscan Polyptych, both under restoration. Renewed structures and refined color schemes now enhance the works inside the room more. The Lamentation over the Dead Christ was also the subject on this occasion of an aesthetic rearrangement of the lower part, formerly concealed by a silhouette now removed.

Stefano Casciu, regional director of the Museums of Tuscany, said, "The inauguration of the Beato Angelico Room is a fundamental moment in the life and history of the Museum of San Marco. Thanks to the ever-enthusiastic willingness of the Friends of Florence and all the donors who have contributed through them with great generosity from the United States, it has been possible to radically renew the display of Beato Angelico’s works on panel. This room brings together the world’s most important collection of the artist’s movable works, in the context of the ancient Dominican convent closely linked to the Medici, who were his absolute patrons. San Marco is the beating heart of the early Florentine Renaissance, not only artistically, but also historically and religiously. The proposal for the new exhibit was born, and was initiated, even now in the health emergency, under the direction of Marilena Tamassia, whom I thank for all her work on behalf of the museum and its collections, and was completed under the direction of Angelo Tartuferi, who has spent himself to bring to completion in the best possible way, with the decisive support of the architect Andrea Gori, this installation, a milestone for San Marco, for the whole museum system united under the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany, but also for the city of Florence. Deep thanks, therefore, to Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, president of Friends of Florence, for her sensitivity and great friendship shown now for some time to this museum, but also to other museums of the Regional Directorate of Tuscany; to the designers Maurizio De Vita and Ulrike Schultze, for the beautiful project carried out with great attention and willingness toward the various needs and adaptations that have gradually become necessary; and of course to all those who in various capacities have lent their work to achieve this splendid result."

“The new arrangement brings the incomparable nucleus of Angelic paintings back to international prominence, at last with adequate lighting, which will arouse wonderment even from scholars,” added Angelo Tartuferi, director of the San Marco Museum. “The visit is enriched in content by captions and panels in Italian and English, which also present reconstructions of the original pictorial complexes, illustrating their parts now preserved in other museums in Italy and abroad. These apparatuses thus also offer the most attentive visitor a measure of the considerable dispersion that unfortunately affected the great master’s vast production.”

“The San Marco museum has always been a very special place for Friends of Florence, an oasis of peace of serenity in the center of the city,” concludes Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, president of Friends of Florence. "In the past we have carried out several restoration projects inside the museum: most of the Cloister of Sant’Antonino, then the beautiful fresco of the Crucifixion and Saints by Beato Angelico in the Chapter House. Now everyone will be able to see the works in the Sala del Beato Angelico with a new layout that enhances the artist’s mastery in an extraordinary way. One work is still missing from the Hall: it is the Bosco ai Frati Altarpiece, now under restoration thanks to two benefactors of Friends of Florence, which will be relocated here next year."

This prestigious intervention ideally brings to a close the museum’s 150th anniversary celebrations, which began in October 2019.

Here is what the new Hall of Beato Angelico looks like. Upon entering the room, the wall on the right, from which visitors can begin their journey, is occupied by the grandiose Deposition from the Cross executed for the chapel of Palla Strozzi, and adjacent to the sacristy of the church of Santa Trinita in Florence, painted by 1432. The work was in fact begun by Lorenzo Monaco, the most important artist - with Gherardo Starnina - for the stylistic formation of Fra Angelico, who completed it after the death of the Camaldolese friar, completely varying its iconographic and stylistic setting. From a chronological point of view, the ideal tour starts along the wall in front of the entrance, with the altarpiece of Saint Peter Martyr and the more famous Last Judgment, painted for the church of the Camaldolese convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, up to the important triptych for the Compagnia di San Francesco in Santa Croce, completed around 1430 (currently being restored at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure). From here on, the visit can also proceed in parallel on the two walls. The one on the left offers at first a view of the St. Mark’s altarpiece (highly praised by Vasari) and the other parts remaining in situ. The grand complex was painted in the years 1438-1440 for the high altar of the church of San Marco, and was recently restored by the Opificio. On the right we continue with the seminal Annalena altarpiece, probably painted for the Medici chapel in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence around 1435, faced on the other wall by the surviving panels from the cover of the Armadio degli Argenti, once in the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence; another celebrated pictorial cycle from the artist’s mature phase (1450-1452) commissioned by Piero dei Medici. Continuing to the right, one encounters the three display cases containing the fine reliquaries executed at different times for the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and, immediately after, another display case that allows one to admire the two roundels with the Crucifixion and theCoronation of the Virgin, painted in the fifth decade of the 15th century, re-presented in their original situation as two sides of a single panel, later separated at an unspecified time. The left wall concludes with another milestone in the artist’s career, the Bosco ai Frati altarpiece, from the Franciscan Observant Convent of San Bonaventura in Mugello, painted in 1450-52, (now under restoration, curated by Lucia Biondi, thanks to additional funding from the Friends of Florence). The right wall, on the other hand, concludes with three more examples from different moments of Angelico’s activity. The first is the precious panel with The Imposition of the Name to the Baptist, an element of a predella that still cannot be traced to a specific altarpiece, dated within 1430. The second is the two Stories of the Virgin generally believed to be the predella of the heavenly Coronation of the Virgin painted around 1440 for the church of Sant’Egidio in Florence, now in the Uffizi Galleries. Concluding the right wall is the large panel depicting the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1436-1441) for Santa Maria della Croce al Tempio in Florence, paid to the artist at least in part in kind, with sixty bushels of grain, which must certainly have made the painter’s confreres at San Marco happy! The undulating masking that concealed the lower part of the painting, which came to us severely compromised by the ravages of time, has been removed from the painting, affixed during a restoration carried out seventy years ago by the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome. Today Rossella Cavigli, a restorer with the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany, has rearranged the hitherto concealed part with shrewd additions that are clearly perceptible and, above all, reversible. Dominating the back wall before the exit is the magnificent Tabernacle of the Linaioli, enclosed within the splendid marble frame designed by Ghiberti, painted by Angelico in 1433-34, then the city’s most important painter. Having decided to reserve the renovated room for the works of Beato Angelico alone, the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels by his pupil Zanobi Strozzi, already on display here, has been moved to Michelozzo’s Library, next to his other works.

Ph.Credit Antonio Quattrone

Completely refurbished the new Beato Angelico Hall. Here's what it looks like

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