From The New York Times:
The year is 1450, or thereabouts. Outside this dormitory, in Florence’s palaces and counting-houses, an economic and intellectual revolution is underway. The city has been getting rich, now that merchant bankers have devised new systems of credits and debits. It’s getting grand, too, with architects rediscovering classic modes of proportion. But in here, night after night in these otherwise undecorated cells, the Dominican friars of the Convent of San Marco each look upon one single picture: a stilled Sermon on the Mount, or a pared-back Agony in the Garden, or the sparest and sweetest of Annunciations. Each has been painted by one of the friars’ fellows—an artist at home in a new age, but with an eye on the one to come.