On a winding road up the hill between Florence and Fiesole is the Convent of San Domenico, where an Observant Order of Dominican friars has lived since the early 15th century.
The portico to the church is huge but easily missed, obscured by the trees that line the pavements. There is the smell of warm pine and the dazzling screech of cicadas. Through the large wooden doors, the church interior comes together strangely. It is ornate and spare, peaceful and dreary, with simple pews in the nave, an overwhelming altarpiece and side chapels staged in a hodgepodge of precious items. The Baroque ceiling is elaborately painted with cherubs clustered in architectural trompe l’oeil, and the floor is paved with terracotta tiles. The whole place smells of the pesticides that have been used to protect the interior decorations.
Immediately to the left is a side chapel which usually houses the San Domenico high altarpiece, a huge Early Renaissance masterpiece by the famous artist and Dominican friar who once lived here, Fra Angelico, the “Angelic Friar”. It was his first major large-scale work.
On a cold spring day last year, a team of people came to San Domenico and removed the altarpiece. It was the first step in the long process of getting it ready for a major exhibition, which opened last week, dedicated to Fra Angelico and spread over the Palazzo Strozzi and Museum of San Marco in Florence. The altarpiece was painted first by Angelico, then reshaped and painted over by another hand, its wooden panels shifted tectonically, its surface cracked and paints fled. It was then broken into fragments and its parts strewn across continents. The exhibition was an opportunity to reunite and re-examine it, and to have it restored. It would be photographed under infrared reflectography to illuminate Angelico’s original design for the Virgin Mary’s throne and to peer backstage, beneath the cloth — a later addition — that now covers it.
