Word: marco
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Vasari's principal sources were a pious Dominican eulogy and the memories of an ancient monk, Fra Eustachio. with whom Vasari often gossiped at Florence's convent of San Marco. From such accounts, Vasari drew the picture of Fra Angelico as a painter who "never took up his brush without first making a prayer. He never made a crucifix when the tears did not course down his cheeks . . ." Some later historians have doubted this picture of Fra Angelico in a state of religious ecstasy. The evidence in his painting points far more...
...embellish the city, its churches and palaces he drew on the talents of Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Lippo Lippi, Uccello, Luca della Robbia. The great monument to his ideal, a marriage between humanism and religion, was the San Marco convent, which Cosimo prevailed upon Pope Eugenius IV to transfer from the Sylvetrines to the Dominican Observants. Cosimo ordered his favorite architect Michelozzo to repair the building, richly endowed it with 400 rare manuscripts and classic statues of Venus and Apollo. To do the frescoes, Cosimo called on the great Dominican painter Fra Angelico...
Dove for Love. Heading for Peking, Nenni stopped off in Moscow for some full VIP treatment. At a dinner given for him by the Stalin Peace Prize Committee, onetime (1951) Prizewinner Nenni recalled that another Italian traveler, one Marco Polo, had also traveled to Peking, where the Great Khan had entrusted him with two beautiful maidens he wanted to save from the snares of court life. Said Nenni: "Well, there is no longer a Great Khan at Peking, but rather the head of the people's government. He will not hand us young girls to be saved...
Villas on the Hill. It is the precept of bachelor Mayor La Pira, who for years lived in a single cell in the famed Convent of San Marco, that every man in Florence is entitled to a roof over his head-no matter what the law says. When, in late 1952, yielding to landlords' pleas, the national government began to permit evic-ions from rent-controlled apartments, La Pira took action. "A Christian society is a fraternal society," he proclaimed, "and when even one man is excluded, when even one man lacks bread or a roof, society ceases...
...make it a place of splendor. The Mongol Emperor Kublai, grandson of Genghis Khan, ordered the building of Green Mount, a hill that was dotted with evergreens brought from far and wide by imperial elephants, paved with a layer of green copper ore and topped by a green pavilion. Marco Polo reported in wonderment: "The great Khan caused all this to be made for the comfort of his spirit...