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| Savonorola by Fra Bartolomeo (1498 |
Be sure to keep your eyes open if you visit the convent of San Marco in Florence where the fearsome Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) launched his fiery tirades against modern art.
Savonarola, one of the earliest art critics, lived in a small cell which has been preserved complete with his famous chair.
Savonarola preached contempt for the world (contemptu mundi) which was a sordid place of adultery, sodomy, murder, and envy. One of its worst culprits was modern art which focused on humanistic subjects, luring people away from proper religious subjects. Such art was a "vanity" which deserved to be burned in bonfires in the Florence public square, along with books, mirrors and other sinful, unauthorized objects.
Savonorola proclaimed that "crude scenes that make people laugh shall not be painted" (which would essentially put this blog out of business). He said that art should be viewed through "spectacles of death" to keep us focused on our mortality, and he railed against art with "indecent figures." No one, he wrote, should be permitted to paint "unless they... paint honest things."
The convent knew that the world had its distractions, such as blue skies, green grass and singing birds. To help protect the friars from temptation, the convent windows were boarded up, leaving only a small opening.
The beauty of nature could only be countenanced in limited doses.
As I stood in Savonorola's cell, thinking of the man whose eloquence caused the burning of Botticelli's paintings, I noted a tiny imperfection on the bars of his window. I walked over, took a closer look, and was startled to discover a small devil's head looking back at me.
I checked with an official at the convent and yes, Savonarola had instructed that a devil's head be affixed to his bars in case he was ever tempted to linger too long looking out at nature.
2 comments:
I was just there a few weeks ago, and the Fra Angelico frescoes (particularly the Annunciation) show the generative side of the religious impulse, contrasting dramatically with Savonarola's destructive fanaticism.
Even as an agnostic, I found them quite moving!
Yes yes yes, those frescoes are exquisite. My favorite angel ever is on that Annunciation fresco; I had a postcard of a close up of her face (pre-restoration, which I liked better) on my wall throughout school. We should all be grateful that the Annunciation was a religious subject, and so escaped the wrath of Savonorola.
Your comment makes an excellent point. There are two sides to all of these forces.
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