and again retire for spiritual
refreshment and quiet.

It was at S. Marco that Cosimo kept the MSS. which he was constantly
collecting, and which now, after curious vicissitudes, are lodged
in Michelangelo's library at S. Lorenzo; and on his death he left
them to the monks. Cosimo's librarian was Tommaso Parenticelli, a
little busy man, who, to the general astonishment, on the death of
Eugenius IV became Pope and took the name of Nicholas V. His energies
as Pontiff went rather towards learning and art than anything else: he
laid the foundations of the Vatican library, on the model of Cosimo's,
and persuaded Fra Angelico to Rome to paint Vatican frescoes.

The magnets which draw every one who visits Florence to S. Marco are
first Fra Angelico, and secondly Savonarola, or first Savonarola, and
secondly Fra Angelico, according as one is constituted. Fra Angelico,
at Cosimo's desire and cost, came from Fiesole to paint here; while
Girolamo Savonarola, forced to leave Ferrara during the war, entered
these walls in 1482. Fra Angelico in his single crucifixion picture in
the first cloisters and in his great scene of the Mount of Olives in
the chapter house shows himself less incapable of depicting unhappiness
than we have yet seen him; but the most memorable of the ground-floor
frescoes is the symbol of hospitality over the door of the wayfarers'
room, where Christ is being welcomed by two Dominicans in the way
that Dominicans (as contrasted with scoundrelly Franciscans) would of
course welcome Him. In this Ospizio are three reliquaries which Fra
Angelico painted for S. Maria Novella, now preserved here in a glass
case. They represent the Madonna della Stella, the Coronation of the
Virgin, and the Adoration of the Magi. All are in Angelico's happiest
manner, with plenty of gold; and the predella of the Coronation is
the prettiest thing possible, with its blue saints gathered about a
blue Mary and Joseph, who bend over the Baby.

The Madonna della Stella is the picture which was stolen in 1911, but
quickly recovered. It is part of the strange complexity of this world
that it should equally contain artists such as Fra Angelico and thieves
such as those who planned and carried out this robbery: nominally
custodians of the museum. To repeat one of Vasari's sentences: "Some
say that he never took up his brush without first making a prayer"....

The "Peter" with his finger to his lips, over the sacristy, is
reminding the monks