San Marco Altarpiece
Fra Angelico, 1500
The San Marco Altarpiece, also known as the Madonna and Saints, is a tempera panel by Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar working at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. It shows the Virgin and Child enthroned, surrounded by saints and angels, within a space that reads as coherent and deep. It was commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici the Elder, and was completed sometime between 1438 and 1443, as part of the renewal of the San Marco convent in Florence, where the painting still hangs. Its importance lies in several novelties: a single rectangular panel instead of the usual compartments, a symmetrical arrangement that draws the eye toward the centre, and one of the earliest examples of the sacra conversazione, in which sacred figures and worshippers share one unified space. Saints Cosmas and Damian, patrons of the Medici, act as intercessors, and the face of Saint Cosmas is usually identified as a likeness of the patron himself. The scale of the sacred figures, barely larger than the others, is one of the criticisms the work has received.
- Painter
- Fra Angelico
- Date
- 1500
- Medium
- tempera, panel
- Dimensions
- 220 × 227 cm
- Museum
- Museum of San Marco, Florence
- Movement
- Italian Renaissance
- Genre
- religious art
- Depicts
- Mark the Evangelist, Mary, Christ Child
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