h of it, and the church even was without a roof, so that
the friars were obliged to build themselves wooden cells to live in, and
to roof the church with timber. When Cosimo heard this he prepared at
once to rebuild the convent, and sent Michelozzo to see what could be
done. Michelozzo first pulled down the old cloister, leaving only the
church and the refectory; and in 1437 began to build the beautiful
convent we see to-day, completing it in 1443, at a cost of 36,000
ducats. The church which was then restored has suffered many violations
since, and is very different to-day from what it was at the end of the
fifteenth century. It was consecrated in 1442, on the feast of the
Epiphany, by Pope Eugenius in the presence of his Cardinals. The
library, Vasari tells us, was built later. It was vaulted above and
below, and had sixty-four bookcases of cypress wood filled with most
valuable books, among them later the famous collection of Niccolo
Niccoli, whose debts Cosimo paid on condition that he might dispose
freely of his books, which were arranged here by Thomas of Sarzana,
afterwards Nicholas v. The convent thus completed is "believed to be,"
says Vasari, "the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most
convenient building of its kind that can be found in Italy, thanks to
the skill and industry of Michelozzo."

Fra Angelico was nearly fifty years old when his Order took possession
of S. Marco. Already he had painted three choir books, which Cosimo so
loved that he wished nothing else to be used in the convent, for, as
Vasari tells us, their beauty was such that no words can do justice to
it. Born in 1387, he had entered the Order of S. Dominic in 1408 at
Fiesole. The convent into which he had come had only been founded in
1406, and as with S. Marco later, so with S. Domenico, many disputes as
to the property had to be encountered, so that he had early been a
traveller, going with the brethren to Foligno and later to Cortona,
returning to Fiesole in 1418. Who amid these misfortunes could have been
his master? It might seem that in the silence of the sunny cloister in
the long summer days of Umbria some angel passing up the long valleys
stayed for a moment beside him, so that for ever after he could not
forget that vision. And then, who knows what awaits even us too, in that
valley where Blessed Angela heard Christ say, "I love thee more than any
other woman in the valley of Spoleto"? It is certainly some divinity
t