ugh Via di Sapienza into
Piazza di S. Marco, we pass the desecrated convent of the Dominicans,
where Savonarola, Fra Antonino, and Fra Angelico lived, now a museum on
the right; and passing to the right into Via Cavour, come at No. 69 to
the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a cloister belonging to the
Brotherhood of St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century.
The Brotherhood of St. John seems to have come about in this way. When
Frate Elias, who succeeded S. Francesco as Minister of the Franciscan
Order, began to rule after his own fashion, the Order was divided into
two parts, consisting of those who followed the Rule and those who did
not. The first were called Observants, the second Conventuals. The
Osservanti, or Observants, remained poor, and observed all the fasts;
perhaps their greatest, certainly their most widely known Vicar-General
was S. Bernardino of Siena. In France the Osservanti were known as the
Recollects, and the reform there having been introduced by John de la
Puebla, a Spaniard, about 1484, these brethren were known as the
Brotherhood of John, or Discalced Friars. In Italy they were called
Riformati. All this confusion is now at an end, for Leo XIII, in the
Constitution "Felicitate quadam," in 1897 joined all the Observants into
one family, giving them again the most ancient and beautiful of their
names, the Friars Minor.

Here, where these little poor men begged or prayed, Andrea del Sarto was
appointed to paint in grisaille scenes from the life of John the
Baptist. They have been much injured by damp, and in fact are not
altogether Andrea's work.

Returning down Via Cavour, if we turn into Via Ventisette Aprile we come
to two more desecrated convents,--that of S. Caterina, now the Commando
Militare, and facing it, S. Appolonia, now a magazine for military
stores.

Here, in the refectory of the latter convent, where Michelangelo is said
to have had a niece, and for this cause to have built the nuns a door,
is the fresco of the Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno; while on the
walls are some portraits, brought here from the Bargello, of Farinata
degli Uberti, Niccolo Acciaiuoli, and others.

In another suppressed convent, S. Onofrio in Via Faenza, not far away
(turn to the left down Via di S. Reparata, and then to the right into
Via Guelfa), is another Last Supper, supposed to be the work of a pupil
of Perugino,--Morelli says Giannicolo Manni, who painted the miracle
picture of Madon