For most people “Romola” is the medium through which Savonarola is visualized; but there he is probably made too theatrical.  Yet he must have had something of the theatre in him even to consent to the ordeal by fire.  That he was an intense visionary is beyond doubt, but a very real man too we must believe when we read of the devotion of his monks to his person, and of his success for a while with the shrewd, worldly Great Council.

Savonarola had many staunch friends among the artists.  We have seen Lorenzo di Credi and Fra Bartolommeo under his influence.  After his death Fra Bartolommeo entered S. Marco (his cell was No. 34), and di Credi, who was noted for his clean living, entered S. Maria Nuova.  Two of Luca della Robbia’s nephews were also monks under Savonarola.  We have seen Fra Bartolommeo’s portrait of Savonarola in the Accademia, and there is another of him here.  Cronaca, who built the Great Council’s hall, survived Savonarola only ten years, and during that time all his stories were of him.  Michelangelo, who was a young man when he heard him preach, read his sermons to the end of his long life.  But upon Botticelli his influence was most powerful, for he turned that master’s hand from such pagan allegories as the “Primavera” and the “Birth of Venus” wholly to religious subjects.

Savonarola had three adjoining cells.  In the first is a monument to him, his portrait by Fra Bartolommeo and three frescoes by the same hand.  In the next room is the glass case containing his robe, his hair shirt, and rosary; and here also are his desk and some books.  In the bedroom is a crucifixion by Fra Angelico on linen.  No one knowing Savonarola’s story can remain here unmoved.

We find Fra Bartolommeo again with a pencil drawing of S. Antonio in that saint’s cell.  Here also is Antonino’s death-mask.  The terra-cotta bust of him in Cosimo’s cell is the most like life, but there is an excellent and vivacious bronze in the right transept of S. Maria Novella.

Before passing downstairs again the library should be visited, that delightful assemblage of grey pillars and arches.  Without its desks and cases it would be one of the most beautiful rooms in Florence.  All the books have gone, save the illuminated music.

In the first cloisters, which are more liveable-in than the ordinary Florentine cloisters, having a great shady tree in the midst with a seat round it, and flowers, are the Fra Angelicos I have mentioned.  The other painting is rather theatrical and poor.  In the refectory is a large scene of the miracle of the Providenza, when S. Dominic and his companions, during a famine, were fed by two angels with bread; while at the back S. Antonio watches the crucified Christ.  The artist is Sogliano.

In addition to Fra Angelico’s great crucifixion fresco in the chapter house, is a single Christ crucified, with a monk mourning, by Antonio Pollaiuolo, very like the Fra Angelico in the cloisters; but the colour has left it, and what must have been some noble cypresses are now ghosts dimly visible.  The frame is superb.