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An innovative artist of tremendous technical skill, Lorenzo Monaco earned his name by entering the prestigious monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli in 1390, probably after completing his formative education as an apprentice/assistant in a painter’s workshop. After a quick rise through the ranks, during which time he was ordained a deacon, the monk left his cloister five years later to re-enter the secular world as a painter, producing miniatures in choral books for his former monastic home between about 1396 and 1399. He then turned his attention to large altarpieces and liturgical panels for religious institutions, like the now-lost altarpiece for a confraternity in S. Maria del Carmine and the Agony in the Garden that may have adorned a pier in Orsanmichele. He went on to paint some of the city’s most influential pictures, including the frescoes and altarpiece in S. Trinita’s Bartolini-Salimbeni chapel in the late 1410s.
A leader in his field, Lorenzo Monaco’s decorative and mystical sensibilities led him to develop stylistic trademarks that have come to be known as the Florentine Gothic. He was named the chaplain of Orsanmichele in 1412, evaluated the work of his peers, and in 1422 was the beneficiary of Medici largesse when Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo contributed significant funds for the production of a now-lost altarpiece in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova. By the time of his death in 1424 he was the undisputed standard-bearer of painting in Florence.
Mostly though, Lorenzo Monaco was known for his extended relationship with his comrades in the Camaldolese monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli, located on the Via degli Alfani just around the corner from the Piazza SS. Annunziata and the Ospedale degli Innocenti. He kept his monastic name throughout his adult life and was referred to without exception as “frate Lorenzo;” he produced the Angeli’s high altarpiece of The Coronation of the Virgin, in 1413 and painted a core group of miniatures in the Graduals and antiphonaries that were commissioned alongside it; and he lived across the street from the entrance of the church in a house on the Via degli Alfani that he leased from his former cloister in 1415. When he died in 1424, the monks buried him in their cloister, bringing the famous artist home for good. There is much circumstantial evidence to suggest that, in fact, Lorenzo Monaco was asked to leave the cloister by his fellow monks in 1396 in order to provide him the opportunity to produce art works for the community that he could not otherwise produce in the cramped quarters of a monastic institution that was not set up to support the kind of painter’s workshop needed to produce them.
Eisenberg, Marvin. Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989).