Today, we're going to cover probably our most eminent painter, Lorenzo, it goes by the name Lorenzo Monaco, Lord's the monk. His last name is not Monaco. Before we begin, I want to mention these two sources. This is the best thing on Lorenzo Monaco. It is a doctoral dissertation by Marvin Eisenberg, I think I have the date right, 1987, on Princeton University Press. It's about the size of our sacramentary, but only half as thick, and the color is the color of yellow on, sort of the colors are the colors that Lorenzo's writing, his t-shirt, those two mixed together, it's missing. So you want to keep your eye peeled for this. It was evidently in the room I'm staying in, in one of the drawers, and it's gone now.

[01:03]

And hopefully it's still in print at Princeton, if not, so we can get another copy. But it's a $200 volume, so you want to keep an eye peeled for that. This is an excellent source, all the way around. Luciano Belosi is probably the foremost, well the ones I know, I have maybe photocopied articles, maybe 10 Italians, and Belosi is probably the most, the one who treats Lorenzo with authority in Italy. And he is the author of the text which goes to this particular number 73 of this Italian series out of Milan, I Maestri del Colore, Aster's Color. And this is a wonderful little, that's another copy of it right there, it was, and it's missing too.

[02:05]

Did you see that, come out of it, they have the whole set, and it's like this, stacked on the floor. Anyway, so Robert has this, if you want to see this at some point. I was mentioning, Joshua, while you were out, that this main book from the library, it's not there, so it's still missing, so you want to keep your eye peeled for that book on Lorenzo Monaco. It's a $200 volume, it's kind of important that we find it again. Maybe you'll find it in a drawer sometime. Okay, Lorenzo was a close contemporary and at one point worked collaborator with the artist Fra Angelico, now Saint Angelico, and we do not know the exact year of birth for Lorenzo,

[03:08]

but they generally say about 1370. There is an important German scholar of earlier times of Lorenzo Monaco named Hans Gronau, who says, no it's much earlier, but all the other ones, all the other critics laughed at him because he was only doing that so he could prove his theory about a certain painting. And so they think it's about this, it isn't an earlier date. It can possibly be as late as 1375, Eisenberg says, but if you say 1370, it's close enough, because they don't have the exact date, so who's going to argue? And we think he was born in Siena. They don't even know where he was born, but they're pretty sure from certain indications that it was Siena. And he was brought as a baby to Florence by his father Giovanni. And I mentioned, I put the district of Florence that he was, what he grew up in, San Michele

[04:15]

Bisdomini, or sometimes you'll see it Disdomini, because for Comangoli's history, this is an important district. We had a number of eminent Comangolis come out of his parish, San Michele Bisdomini. In fact, I think we're going to run into another one yet in this series of lectures, another artist who's from that same parish in Florence. His name, Lorenzo Monaco, and I put that on there also, he's Peter of John, his father's John, Peter of John, and his religious name was Lorenzo. And the reason I put that up there is because many of his paintings were painted by Peter of John, not before he was a monk, but while he was a monk, and we'll get to that afterwards. But Lorenzo Monaco and Piero di Giovanni, the same artist, the same person. We do know that Pietro, or Piero, became a monk of Santa Maria degli Angi.

[05:18]

Usually you will see this in our history books, and now with these beautiful books on the manuscript, illuminations, and whatnot, of this most, probably the most famous of our monasteries outside of Comangoli, mentioned as, they'll just say, gli Angi, the angels. And when you see that, they're referring to this famous monastery, Santa Maria degli Angi, in Florence. He entered there in 1390. At least they have that date in the annals of the house. This particular monastery had been founded in the year 1295 as a hermitage, modeled upon the Sacro Eremo itself, Comangoli. It was founded by a rich poet named Guido d'Arezzo.

[06:20]

So this is a different Guido d'Arezzo, either that or the other one's 250 years old. Also known as Guitone d'Arezzo. And he was a member of the Order of the Gaudenti, which was a militant order of the Blessed Virgin Mary at that time. It was sort of like a super fraternity club. Locally in Florence, they called them the Caponi, which means the Capons, because the Florentines thought they were fat, lazy, and pacifists. All three things you shouldn't be in Florence in the 14th century and 15th century. So they made fun of them. Also, they were called Capons because they liked to dress in bright, flowing robes. And I guess most people were laughing at them, basically. But the house was set up, and its lifestyle was also set up, modeled upon life at the

[07:26]

Sacro Eremo di Comangoli itself. This lasted, this is all said parenthetically, until the year 1470, at which time this hermitage became a tsunami. So, the reason I'm pointing this out is because you see that when Lorenzo's there, it's still hermitage, and it has a lot stricter cloister and rules and whatnot than it would have had two generations down. And because of that, his life was affected by that fact, as we'll see. Don Lorenzo was professed on December 10th, 1391. Remember now, whenever we're talking about novitiates and professions and all of that in these early centuries, it can all happen in a year's time. We're not talking about three years of juniorhood and this and that and apostasy and whatnot. It can all happen very quickly.

[08:28]

Usually, the novitiate is a year or longer, but that's it. Then you make profession, and profession is for life, and you are a monk for life. So, he professed in 1391, and he received all four of the minor orders during that same month after his profession. But he was never ordained a priest. He did receive the diaconate nine months later on September 21st, 1392. I'm throwing out these dates because these are the only dates we have on him, are these things. We don't know the birth and the death. We'll get to that. We don't even know the death. He was ordained a deacon, but he was never ordained a priest. In other words, he was not to become, as they said at that time, un monaco da mesa. So, in other words, he wasn't going to be a mass monk, a mass priest. At that time, most monasteries, most monk-priests were precisely that.

[09:34]

I mean, their priesthood was just celebrating the Eucharist. Other than that, they weren't into any outside pastoral work or anything like that. So, it's said sort of tongue-in-cheek, un monaco da mesa. He had some artistic training, we know, before he came into the monastery, because he entered there already with some notoriety, and his fame, once he got in there and started producing from the monastery, spread rapidly. A number of students and co-workers, even in those early years, so the mid-1390s, started coming to him and working with him. So, he was forced to move outside the cloister. So, already in the late 1390s, we have Lorenzo Monaco. Now, Louis, remember, he's still Kamaldolese, even though he leaves the cloister.

[10:36]

Louis Lausanne was kidding me. He says, what are we going to hear? Five days of people who really aren't Kamaldolese after all? He had to leave the hermitage because it's still strict cloister. So, the cloister itself, or the monastery itself, bought him a house across the street where he set up his workshop, because he already had a number of students and young artists working under him, and they set up a mass production workshop. Well, they all did at that time. All the great artists had their mass production setups. And this one was a very prolific workshop, as we'll see. So, he had basically a house and a garden across the street from Liancili. He lived outside the monastery then, probably from the late 1390s. We don't have the exact date when he moved out, and that's probably because he did it gradually anyway, so it's not in the annals of the monastery. Luciano Pelosi, however, dates it to this fellow, 1402.

[11:46]

But most people think that's probably a little bit too late. He had the proper dispensation to do this. We have evidence of that, but we don't have the exact date. He remained a monk, and this is very odd for that time. He remained a monk of Liancili, but did not live in the cloister. He remained a member, and when he died, he was buried in the chapter room, back in the monastery. The chapter room had a number of famous monks in it. Well, Paolo and Fra Silvestre, the lay brother whom they elected abbot of the house, are both buried together in the chapter room also. Chapter room of which? Well, Liancili's. Oh, oh, oh. Firenze. And so, once he moved out of the monastery, now he did a lot of things in the monastery,

[12:48]

and during that time, they're signed or attributed to Lorenzo Monaco. Once he left the cloister itself, his art starts coming out, attributed to Piero Giovanni and Lorenzo Monaco, so it's both. He just went by both names up there. And I'm sure there was some reason for certain pieces going under Piero Giovanni, but I can't prove that. But it makes sense to me. Those artists, you know. Tradition holds that he died fairly young. He died at the age of 55, and that he ruined his stomach. He died of stomach problems. And the monks evidently had been telling him for years, stop spending hours bent over your panels of gesso. And the monks themselves attributed his death to all those long hours

[13:50]

over the drying gesso that he inhaled and over which he was bent during those years, whether he died for that reason or not, we're not sure. We know that he died at the age of 55, but they forgot to put the year down. And that's why we can't give a certainty either, either date. However, we do know that he died on, this date is becoming famous, he died on the same day as Guido D'Arezzo did, May 17th. I always remember that because it's my ordination day. I'll probably die on it. There is one reference to this date actually being the 24th, but most people say no, it's the 17th, and just by sheer number they went out.

[14:55]

His art in general then. The Belle Arti began to be cultivated at the Hermitage in Florence as early as the year 1322. That's the first evidence we have of them starting to develop in the monastery itself a center of the arts for Florence. We know that various academies were begun and that later free instruction was given to the youth of Florence during the 15th century at their college, which they had developed, in conjunction with all of this Belle Arti that's going on in the monastery. The future Pope Leo X, by the way, very important to come out of his history. He's the one who, a friend of Giustiniani, who allowed the Coronese to begin. He is the Pope to whom Paolo Giustiniani wrote his famous Libellus for church reform,

[16:05]

which we just got an Italian translation on. Anyway, this Pope Leo X, as a young boy, studied at the college in Collegio in Florence, at our place. And during that time, letters and sciences flourished. Not just the arts, the sciences as well, in this great school, in this great monastery. As far as the arts are concerned, specifically, those that we have mention of, of having little workshops of these particular arts, all in the same monastery, in the cloister, were painting, miniaturist paintings, the weaving of tapestries, so they had to have a tapestry room, drawing, metalwork, an embroidery room, the transcription of manuscripts, and a room for the illumination of manuscripts.

[17:06]

All of this going on in the cloister. Much artistic output is alluded to over the years, and we have certain financial records which prove that there was a lot going on. For instance, we have the bill of sale for huge amounts of cobalt here at Florence, which is going out of existence, practically. He was telling me that last summer. We're running out of cobalt in the world. Cobalt gives us this beautiful, dark, deep blue in paintings. Does everybody know what cobalt is? I don't have to try and find it? Okay. They had huge amounts of cobalt. I mean, it had to come by donkey train or something, and we have the bill of sale from the Venetian merchants who got it from abroad and then transported it to this monastery so they'd have enough blue paint for their illuminations and whatnot. It's staggering sums they're paying, too,

[18:08]

so there had to have been a lot of paint that they were bringing in, the pigments and whatnot. The artistic schools of Siena and Giotto, who was earlier, had already flourished in Italy and deeply influenced the work of Don Lorenzo. Well, he's from Siena anyway. Even if he left as a baby, there's probably some kinship there to be disposed to be influenced by the Gothic, by the Giotto Gothic, as it's sometimes called. But he was especially influenced by Taddeo, also known as Agnolo. This is another name for him, but sometimes you'll just see it, Agnolo Gaddi. It's the same man, Taddeo Agnolo Gaddi. It's his prime influence. And how the scholar Zerdi refers to Lorenzo Monaco

[19:11]

is the bridge between Giotto and Gaddi, Lorenzo being that, or a sort of grafting of the two together. If you put Gaddi and Giotto together, you get Lorenzo. I suppose what that's really saying is what you have in Lorenzo is Giotto with some influence of Gaddi, probably more in the other way around, since Giotto was earlier and so profoundly, along with Simone Martini, so profoundly influenced, well, at least two centuries of painting in Italy, especially with the triptychs and the panel, religious panel themes. Let alone the techniques and the style. Anyway, Lorenzo Monaco, in the beginning, carries on this traditional form that you find in Giotto and Martini.

[20:16]

If you can think of museums where you've seen these triptychs, these standing triptychs, they even have a Gothic feel to them of a sort. His early work is a lot like that. It's a lot like Giotto. But, again, wedded to the Florentine new style, which is coming across with Gaddi, and then others as he gets older. In fact, Lorenzo Monaco is going to influence others in Florence himself to move away from Giotto in a sort of bridge work into Florence from Siena. So, although he's credited with the direct rediscovery of what they call the Giottoesque art, as rediscovering it, or like rebirthing Giotto for the world in his art, he really was a bridge person between Florence and Siena. If you think of it that way, in that general, that's what he's doing.

[21:20]

He's just at that time in history when we're going to pass into something new, and he really facilitates that happening in the art world. They say that even vis-a-vis his colours he uses. So, as a colourist, our own Lorenzo Monaco is a major bridge person for this century. Not just in techniques, just moving away from the traditional form gradually, but even in the use of colour and pigmentation. He probably surprised and scandalized many people of his day just because he was using such bright colours, and they weren't used to that. His most famous student is someone I had never heard of, Francesco Fiorentino. I have Frances from Florence. Has anyone heard of him? Have you?

[22:23]

Anyway, he did a lot of fine work after the death of Florence and had at least a short-lived reputation. In general, the art of Lorenzo Monaco shows a very strong church or ecclesiastical basis in which he portrays a religious ideal, but then with his richness of detail and his colouration and the way he ornaments the paintings, it's very much his own workmanship, it's his own style. Lorenzo Monaco becomes, obviously to everyone, a Lorenzo Monaco. He was a very, very accomplished miniaturist also. We're going to talk about the various miniaturist schools. These monks were painting little, teeny illuminations and miniature paintings around a letter in choir books

[23:29]

and various manuscripts. We'll be talking about that tomorrow. But Lorenzo also had a whole flock of miniaturists working under him, only because he was accomplished himself at that. In fact, before he moved out of the cloister, he was probably doing as much, if not more, miniaturist paintings than he was doing panel work at that time. His art also has a very serious devotional quality. There's a strong piety in it, but it's a very simple piety. It doesn't make you... because it's so saccharine or whatever. It's just a very refined, quiet devotional approach or a feeling you get from the art. And so there's a certain elegance of religious sentimentality that you get with Lorenzo Monaco that is a little more acceptable to people from various persuasions.

[24:29]

So they can find in Lorenzo Monaco a type of religious sentimentality that almost anybody can accept and be fine with. That's not always the case, of course, in the history of art. Again, a number of the scholars, also in his illumination, vis-a-vis his work as a miniaturist, point to his coloration, how he paints with such vibrant colors and hues that just hadn't been used before. That's where he stands out, also in his illuminations, as a colorist. Eisenberg writes of him, That was a nice sentence. Light and color persist as vehicles of a very private and rapturous spirituality. And I think that's a good word to use,

[25:31]

rapturous, not in the sense of... Who's the fellow who did the famous sculpture of Teresa? Bernini. It's a B, definitely. Bernini? Bernini. Did you see it in that church? With all the lights, and it's like a little theater you sit in and somebody puts in the coin and the lights go on. And Teresa's going... And it's a wonderful piece of art, too, but it's not that kind of rapture that Lorenzo has. Lorenzo's rapture is a very refined and deep but quiet rapture, I think. And I think that's why I think he holds such a marvelous attraction to people when they see his art. Much like Frangelico, the same things could be said about Frangelico, although Frangelico doesn't seem to be quite as a vivid colorist. He tends to use what we would call today

[26:36]

sort of past light pastels, much quieter that way in color. Milanese is another Italian critic I used in my notes, said that Lorenzo's figures had a little more austerity about them than Angelico. There's something more austere about... Now, when I think of Angelico, I think of austere, and that's one word I would use. So here we have an art critic saying that Lorenzo's even more austere in his art. Eisenberg agrees. He calls the austerity of Lorenzo an elegant austerity, quote-unquote. His design in general, that is, Lorenzo's design, would be more direct and resolute than Angelico, than Frangelico. And he used much more variety in his paintings, which sets him off.

[27:40]

If you look closely at a painting, if you look immediately, and this has happened to me, and I say, oh, I bet that's a Lorenzo, and then I look and it's a Frangelico. If I would take time before saying, ooh, that's got to be a Lorenzo, and look more at the ornamentation, the little secondary stuff going on in there, that's how one can tell easily a Lorenzo apart from a Frangelico. They're very similar in many ways. And it's the small detail work in the marginal areas of his paintings that has grasped a lot of critics over the centuries. If you've read Lino's book, I think Lino Vigilucci mentions when he does his little paragraph or two on Lorenzo, he's talking about the shadows in the towers and the little expressions on the teeny little figures looking out windows and stuff in Lorenzo's paintings. This is what he's talking about,

[28:41]

that kind of detail that won't be as prominent in something like Frangelico, whereas the general feeling of the painting may very well be similar. It's these little details where they differ. Again, this is from Eisenberg. The art of Lorenzo Monaco could best flourish in these marginal zones, for within the scope of Predella and Pinnacle, so what he's talking about is when you have these triptychs down on the bottom panel, the horizontal, they usually have a whole little story going on, little figures, life story of the saint, and then you have, oh, the virgin sitting on a throne and two saints on the side, and then above you have a whole other little story with angels and God the Father and whatnot going on above. So the Pinnacle is up here, the Predella is that horizontal storyline underneath. Where am I now? For within the scope of Predella and Pinnacle, he could exploit a style

[29:42]

that was most expressive on an intimate scale, and if you look at these little things, they're wonderful, wonderful things going on, these little teeny, teeny little figurines here doing amazing things. By expanding his supple line and iridescent palette, so his colors again, to the grandiose size of the coronation of the virgin, he met the demands of the commission when he was commissioned to do these panels, but he defied the inclinations of his spirit and vision. So he had fun with these things that people would say, I commission you to, and will pay such and such to the monastery if you paint the coronation of the virgin Mary with Saint Lawrence on one side and the archangel Gabriel on the other, and if you could paint my mother's face. That type of thing. Well, he would have fun above and below.

[30:43]

He'd do what they'd want, and then he'd have great fun with the other parts of the paintings. So let's talk a little bit more in particular about his art, just how he developed that, what he was commissioned to do. His first major work, once he had become a monk, was a panel. When we're talking about panels, we're talking about slabs of wood covered with gesso and then painted over them. So those of you who remember Nicholas, his type of thing, not with the black background, but I mean he would take a slab of wood and gesso it and then paint on top of that, and that's what we're talking about with panels. He was commissioned for the chapel dell'Ardinghe of Carmine. Do you know where that is? Is that in Florence? It's probably near Florence or in Florence, especially at the beginning of his career. We know that this was commissioned and painted in 1399. We don't know what it was, and it's missing.

[31:47]

Now the majority of Lorenzo's work is gone. It's in private collections or it was destroyed or lost, but there's quite a bit of it, and we'll get to that too later on, but I mean there's just less output by his workshop. In 1404, I'm just going to talk about major works, because all during this, he's doing illuminations and miniatures, paintings in the monastery, and teaching inside and more outside once he moves out in the late 1390s. In 404, he did panels for the church of Santa Maria Nuova, and this is famous to our history, very famous to Carmine's history in Florence. In fact, we have one of the... We have two more works in Florence. I've been there too. It's great. If you've noticed, one of those new books on the miniatures that we have from Florence, so the choral book miniatures that we just got for the library,

[32:50]

one of them is for Miangeli and Santa Maria Nuova, their choral books. But this church was closely aligned with us throughout our history. In the years 1406 and 1410, he did a number of panels for the Olivet Benedictines of San Bartolomeo, so St. Bartholomew's Olivet group. He did a famous triptych of the Madonna with angels. There's certain themes, certain paintings that are going to become kind of his mark in the art of his day. And his workshop, we're just going to put them out like by the hundreds. And Madonna with angels is one of them. The Madonna of humility, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, is another one. And the cutout crosses that we normally think of,

[33:52]

as soon as you see a cutout cross, you think, Franciscan, because the famous ones are Franciscan, the painted cutout crosses and whatnot. His workshop, Lorenzo's workshop, took a number of those that were very, very famous. So it was another one of his signatures in the artistic output of that day. This triptych that he did for the Olivetans, that is Madonna with angels, the Annunciation and various saints all around it, and it's in a triptych form, is now at the Uffizi. It's one of his paintings at the Uffizi. And during the same time, he was doing a number of panels for other churches and other monasteries and other groups, notably a church in English, St. James over the Arno, above the river, St. James above the river Arno. He did a number of panels for that. He painted a number of panels for the Carthusian,

[34:52]

just outside Florence, a famous Carthusian charter house, he painted for them, and for the Arno di Camaldoli, not the famous Sacro Arno, but the one in Florence. At this time, there's a number of houses, Camaldi's houses in Florence, four, five, six. Most of them small, small houses, but that's for throughout our history, except for a very few big houses. For centuries, one of our signatures is small, small communities everywhere, from Romulus' time onward. Also, a famous crucifix, one of these famous cutout crucifixes that he did for the Arno di Camaldoli, the Camaldoli's Hermitage, as it was called, of Florence. It's missing, they don't know where it is, who has it.

[35:54]

They think, you know, with a lot of this in the art world, a lot of these famous things that are missing are just in private collections and are not spoken of, just treasured by someone who looks at them once in a while and knows that they have them. No one else does. Also, St. Michael of Pisa. This is the Camaldoli's house in Pisa. Pisa, we had a number of houses in Pisa also. That's a big Camaldoli city in our history, until the suppressions. In fact, just as a side note, at one point in our history, we had so many houses that a general chapter decided to set up nine different, like, provinces. And a bunch of houses would choose one house as its center for studies and formation. They'd send all their young monks there. In Pisa, they had two of those.

[36:57]

So it says something right there. They had two major houses in Pisa that functioned as formation houses and houses of study at one point. Nothing to do with Lorenzo. In the years 1412 and 1413, we know that he did a number of miniatures for the antiphonals of these Olivetans again. They're always hiring him. These people from San Bartolomeo, they loved his work. And they commissioned him again then to do these miniatures and a large panel for his own monastery was commissioned at the same time. So he's working on antiphonals part of the time and then going across and doing a huge panel. This panel is the famous Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's one of his most famous pieces, if not the most famous. And, you know, in here we only have little signals,

[38:01]

little details from it, which is too bad. I was precisely looking for... I was hoping that we'd find Eisenberg before class because then I could show the coronation itself in a large view. This work is considered by art critics to be one of his best, if not the best. It is a Gothic triptych, again, formed with ornamentation and gold work and saints all over the place. And a Benedictine Romuald in it and there's a whole Benedictine thing going on, too, which often happens, especially if you look down at the predellas of these paintings, you're going to see all kinds of little monastic stories going on, Placid going into the water, you know. It doesn't matter what the major theme is, he'll do his monastic thing, too, if he wants to have fun with that. The piece also has three tabernacles on it,

[39:01]

so up in the top of the triptychs, all the work that went into these things. In those tabernacles, he has the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation going on. And then below it, he has the Magi, so he has the Epiphany Mystery going on and various scenes from the life of Benedict all through the predella. And so you practically get the community of saints and the history of theology going on in this one painting. The history of this particular piece is interesting. Remember, it was painted for D'Angeli itself, his own monastery, and it was removed from D'Angeli toward the end of the 1500s, so toward the end of the 16th century, in order to make room for another painting by a person named Alori. Who's Alori? I've never heard of Alori. I was appalled when I read that they would do that to their own...

[40:02]

Of course, all kinds of things can go into that sort of thing. But they sent it to one of their little dependencies, an abbey called San Pietro a Ceretto, near Cerdaldo. And it's just this little small house that was joined to this house of Florence in the year 1414. And we have hundreds over our history of little houses going in and out of existence and joining up with Camaldoli and fading out, whatnot, or being suppressed. And they sent it to one of these little houses, and it was forgotten there and put in storage. They didn't even show it. And it was considered lost for centuries, and they finally found it in 1830. By one... It was an amazing find. It was found by one of the famous... I mentioned him already once, Milanese, the famous Lorenzo Monaco critics or students of Lorenzo Monaco.

[41:04]

In 1830, he found it, and from then on, it's been at the Uffizi Gallery and has not left, I'm sure. It's still there in the conservation. He also did at this time another famous panel for the Church of San Egidio. And this is ours. This is Camaldoli's. That's another dependency of Liangeli. He did a major... Excuse me. He did a major panel, which became very famous there, and that also is at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Isn't this the Epiphany? I think. I think it's this one. I think this was originally at this little dependency of San Egidio, and it became... To me, this is the most famous. The Epiphany, the major at the Uffizi. I guess because I've seen it so many times. And it's an amazing...

[42:08]

I would love to see a quality print made of this so we could have it framed at our house at Epiphany in New Hampshire. Yeah. But it's just so small. Yeah, that's why I had this one opened. But I don't think it says originally from San Egidio. It doesn't give the original place where it was done. Maybe like size-wise. Ooh. Something like that, maybe. You remember it, don't you? Or was it being restored at the time you were there? That's always the case with these. So many things are missing. When we went there, Robert and I, in 93, the coronation was missing. It was being worked on or something. But we got to see the other ones. We got to see this one. Remember when we went down and tried to find a slide for this and they didn't have one? You were still recovering from the bombing. Yes. Yeah, there were still places tarked off.

[43:09]

Those columns. Enough said on that. They're still around here. In the years 1420, 21, 22, he did a number of frescoes. He decided to get into fresco work. So he did frescoes. And also he does other panels and miniaturist paintings all along the way during this time also. But he did a panel and frescoes for this one chapel in the church of Santa Trinita in Firenze. Have you been there? Yeah. When I went there, I didn't see that chapel because I didn't know it was there next time. But these have recently been restored, by the way. This whole chapel has been recently restored. When I say recently, within the last decade or so, they've worked on the frescoes. Unless I'm mixing them up with something else. I'm pretty sure I'm right on that.

[44:11]

He also did the fresco paintings or portraits of Dante Alighieri and Petrarca. So Petrarca and Dante, which are in that chapel. And that's why it's famous, because of those two portraits, more than anything else. But he also did the other fresco work there and the panel painting, if you happen to go there at some point. Art critics like to look at this chapel as a major turning point for him, with greater expression in his technique and his movement and a variety of figures that he's using in this work, from previous work. A lot of his miniatures, which we still know of, can be found in a library, the Laurentian Library, in fact. Lorenzo. Laurentian Library in Florence. Have you been there?

[45:12]

These new books, to a great extent, the photos we have of works are from that Laurentian Library. Where can you find his holdings than in the United States? And this would be good to know, over the years, if you're in a city, like if you're stuck in Brooklyn, you can go to the Brooklyn Museum and see a Lorenzo Monaco. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has Lorenzo Monaco. The San Diego Art Museum has a major Madonna, the Sorrowful Madonna. Again, this one that we carry in the bookstore, that's a Madonna of Humility, probably. Madonna of Humility. There's one of these at San Diego. And when I was down there for the last, no, two times ago, for the Formation Directors Workshop, I went specifically on our free day, or free afternoon, to the museum,

[46:16]

and they had it roped off. They said, the upper gallery is closed off just for one day. We beg your pardon. We're doing some vacuuming or something. And I said, why did you make me pay the whole fee? One of our painters, can I just tiptoe up there, can you go with me, I won't touch anything? And it was like I was talking to a stone wall, you know? Anyway, no compassion. So I still haven't seen it. The next person who goes to San Diego should probably see it on behalf of the community and get a slide of it, if you can, if they have one, for robbery. Because at some point we might be able to have cards made with permissions on some of these art pieces. The National Gallery in Washington has Lorenzo. The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City does.

[47:18]

They have two there, and I've seen that. I've seen those pieces. That's where I got mixed up with you, Robert, when I had you running a goose chase in Boston. I was mixing the two museums up. Romeo told me you saw him there, Steve. I was very impressed. You had to get the director of the museum out and whatnot. And they kept insisting they had no Lorenzo Monaco, and they had to look it up on the computers and everything, and you kept saying, one of our monks has seen these pieces. The Toledo Museum of Art has Lorenzo. The Brooklyn, as I said. Yale University has a number of things, especially miniatures. So if you're ever at Yale or Princeton, either one of those Ivy League places, their libraries and their galleries have a number of miniatures done by either Lorenzo. There's three ways Lorenzo's art comes to us.

[48:22]

Lorenzo Monaco, Lorenzo and workshop, and then just the workshop of a Lorenzo. And they look like Lorenzo Monacos, but it's just his students and underlings. And that's just initially signed the workshop of Lorenzo Monaco. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, I've seen that. There's a lovely Madonna of Humility there. By the way, if you ever have the chance to be near Pasadena, it's a wonderful museum to go just for walking through. It's like underground. I mean, half of it is underground, and it's meant to be almost cavernous. And then the other side is very, very light sun. It's just like a night and day thing. It's a wonderful place to go to. Cleveland, Detroit, and Harvard also, although the stuff at Harvard seems to be permanently on loan, so I don't know if you've ever seen anything at Harvard. There are also things in private collections that we know of in New York City and Scarsdale, New York, probably much else that we don't know of.

[49:25]

There are two museums that have questionable, probably not Lorenzo Manco pieces. One of them is at the Baltimore at the Walters Art Gallery, and the other one is at Princeton University, and they think that those are not really Lorenzo at all. Favorite subjects for his paintings basically were the Madonna of Humility motif, so you have a sad Virgin Mary. I mean, she looks sad. That's what I would say. Not depressed, just sort of sad, and that can be humble. I mean, there's nothing wrong. The Annunciation is another famous subject for Lorenzo Manco pieces. Coronation, for his workshop, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they must have done, I don't know how many of those. They really liked that, and so that and the cutout process were, you know,

[50:26]

lots of them were done by the workshop. Epiphany also, a number of famous paintings of the Epiphany event were done by Lorenzo and by his workshop. The Communion of Saints, and anything to do with Benedictinism, anything to do with Benedict, Romuald, or their stories, will show up either specifically as the main theme of the painting, or they're going to be somewhere along the way in the routine parts. I want to read one last quote from, again, Eisenberg, the Lost Book, and then we can open up for discussion. Those earliest of Don Lorenzo's works were impersonal icons wrought from external symbols in the trappings of old age. The inner life now stirring,

[51:26]

now he's talking about the last paintings of Lorenzo, the inner life now stirring in the late image of Saint Anthony is an intimate summary of the artistic and spiritual growth of Lorenzo Manco, on the threshold of an era in which painters and sculptors would probe ever more deeply into the physical and psychological existence of the individual. The pensive Anthony, the founder of monasticism, may stand as a spiritual self-portrait of the artist at the end of his life. Saint Anthony was either the last or near the last painting by Lorenzo. So this should give you at least a basic little taste of this famous Camaldolese painter and his work. When you would say that pieces came out of his workshop,

[52:27]

they were probably done by other people, students? When it's just said workshop, it is his students and the artist underneath him. And how would that be signed? The workshop of Lorenzo Manco. And sometimes he's working with them. Whenever he himself takes brush to canvas or panel, he'll have his name on there with the workshop. So it'll be Lorenzo and workshop rather than the workshop for Lorenzo. And sometimes it's just his own work. What is LIA today? What's it involving? It's three things. There's a department of the university that is situated there. There's the hospital for World War veterans with disabilities. They have part of it. And there's other, some kind of civic. Oh, it's a police, the police department.

[53:30]

Some department of the police. And the police has a section of it too. And so I haven't been there yet. But I mean, you can go there and see busts of Ambrogio Traversari in the courtyard and frescoes along the walkway and it's the police department. It's not your main department. I was actually there. Oh, really? Yeah, so. Oh, the police department. I was concerned it won't be. After the suppression, obviously this is one we never got back. Outside of Comandoli, our two most famous monasteries, we tried to get back and we couldn't. And the one on the island of Murano, of San Michele, was given to the Franciscans. But we didn't get it. And we had Pope at the time pressuring Venice and two cardinals pressuring, no, one cardinal, pressuring Venice to give it back to us

[54:32]

because they wanted it to actually go back to a religious group. And the Comandolis were saying, we've been there, you know, 600 years. Why can't we have it back? All our heritage. Precisely because of the bad feelings, because of the times of the suppressions and the Comandolis hiding certain things and getting certain works out. And whatever else went into that, they wanted the famous San Michele di Murano and its notoriety and its great reputation to be slammed out. And their way of doing that was to give it to the Franciscans and to develop it into the city of Venice's, well, not the Franciscans, you know, to give it to another religious group and have it as the graveyard for then the city of Venice. It still is. It's the graveyard. And the Franciscans take care of what's left of the buildings. When Nicholas was here,

[55:36]

he was our young artist, he had these art magazines one had these colors about artworks being auctioned and there was a Lorenzo Moro so we could gather enough money. So they're still floating around. Yeah, they come up once in a while for all famous artists. The ones that make waves are like the Van Goghs that show up and sell for $148 million. Some of them are much more simple like that and austere, and then others that are... Elaborate, very elaborate. For me, they were powerful, very simple ones. Very pensive. Okay, so tomorrow, we'll talk about our various schools of Camogli's miniature paintings. Thank you.

[56:31]

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