Cosimo de’Medici, Fra Angelico, and the Public Library of San Marco

FAIN: FT-254700-17

Allie Terry-Fritsch
Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH 43403-4401)

Preparation of a book-length study on the patronage of Cosimo de'Medici in the fifteenth century and the fresco paintings by Beato Angelico in the monastery of San Marco, Florence.

This research project reconstructs the original fifteenth-century audience for Beato Angelico’s frescoes at the monastery of San Marco in Florence to challenge traditional art-historical assumptions regarding both the reception of the artist’s work and the motivations for its patronage by the Renaissance statesman and merchant, Cosimo de’Medici. Based on art-historical and archival evidence of an elite group of humanist scholars who gathered at the site’s library under the auspices of Cosimo, the project takes into account the coexistence of religious and secular viewers during the fifteenth century and thus opens up the analysis of Fra Angelico’s imagery for the first time to a larger social body that had political motivations. The reception of the paintings by these secular viewers extends the political and social significance of Cosimo’s patronage to the larger Florentine public outside the monastery's walls.