Bearing in mind the details already given as to the dates of Fra
Giovanni's sojournings in various localities, the reader will be able
to trace approximately the sequence of the works which we now proceed
to name as among his most important productions. In Florence, in the
convent of S. Marco (now converted into a national museum), a series
of frescoes, beginning towards 1443; in the first cloister is the
Crucifixion with St. Dominic kneeling; and the same treatment recurs on
a wall near the dormitory; in the chapterhouse is a third Crucifixion,
with the Virgin swooning, a composition of twenty life-sized
figures--the red background, which has a strange and harsh effect, is
the misdoing of some restorer; an "Annunciation," the figures of about
three-fourths of life-size, in a dormitory; in the adjoining passage,
the "Virgin enthroned," with four saints; on the wall of a cell,
the "Coronation of the Virgin," with Saints Paul, Thomas Aquinas,
Benedict, Dominic, Francis and Peter Martyr; two Dominicans welcoming
Jesus, habited as a pilgrim; an "Adoration of the Magi"; the "Marys
at the Sepulchre." All these works are later than the altarpiece which
Angelico painted (as before mentioned) for the choir connected
with this convent, and which is now in the academy of Florence; it
represents the Virgin with Saints Cosmas and Damian (the patrons of
the Medici family), Dominic, Peter, Francis, Mark, John Evangelist and
Stephen; the pediment illustrated the lives of Cosmas and Damian, but
it has long been severed from the main subject. In the Uffizi gallery,
an altarpiece, the Virgin (life-sized) enthroned, with the Infant and
twelve angels. In S. Domenico, Fiesole, a few frescoes, less fine than
those in S. Marco; also an altarpiece in tempera of the Virgin and
Child between Saints Peter, Thomas Aquinas, Dominic and Peter Martyr,
now much destroyed. The subject which originally formed the predella
of this picture has, since 1860, been in the National Gallery, London,
and worthily represents there the hand of the saintly painter. The