The Scottish National Gallery’s collection of early Italian Renaissance painting is not extensive but it contains some striking works such as this panel from the workshop of Lorenzo Monaco. We know relatively little about the artist’s training and early career. He was born in either Siena or Florence and christened Piero di Giovanni, but he became ‘Lorenzo the Monk’ when he entered the Camaldolese Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence in 1391.
He probably began working within Santa Maria degli Angeli as an illuminator of manuscripts, but by the end of the century he was working independently as the master of a large workshop situated outside the monastery, producing paintings on wood panels. His masterpiece is the Coronation of the Virgin, signed and dated 1413, produced for the high altar of his monastery and now in the Uffzi in Florence. Characterised by meticulous craftsmanship and brilliant colour, Lorenzo’s work is a high point of late mediaeval art. Rooted in monastic traditions, his art is stylised and ornamental, although in his later works there are hints of the more sober naturalism that emerged in Florentine art in the early fifteenth century.
Originally, our panel would have been the central section of a larger altarpiece with one or more flanking saints on either side and an elaborate architectural frame, but the missing elements have never been identified. We can just make out a strip of some crimson drapery at the left edge of this panel which is a tantalising glimpse of what must have been one of the figures on the adjacent wing. Perhaps the most curious detail in the picture is the Virgin’s elaborate throne, capped by lion’s-head finials and with bizarre cloven- hoof feet. is represents the throne of King Solomon, a common association in mediaeval and Renaissance art which identifies Mary herself, with Christ on her lap, as the seat of all wisdom.
The figure of Christ, shown here as a standing child rather than as an infant, holds a scroll that displays the words EGO SUM V. This is a reference to a text in the Gospel of Saint John where Christ responds to Thomas’s doubts, saying, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father except through me’.
While our work was almost certainly designed by Lorenzo, the painting was probably executed by his workshop, possibly around 1418. The scale of the painting suggests that it was produced as an altarpiece for a small chapel, perhaps in a convent or monastery. It now requires considerable imagination to re-create the original impact of this fragment which would have been designed to radiate and impress by the so light of altar candles in an intimate, sacred setting. Nevertheless we can sense something of its effect in the resonant colour and graceful rhythms in the painting of the Virgin and especially in the elaborate folds of her elegant robe. The delicate patterns of the Virgin’s halo and the fine detailing of frills and folds on the draperies add to the precious effect.
