Biography
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Painter

Lorenzo Monaco (i.e. Lorenzo the Monk) was a Sienese who settled in Florence and took vows in the Camaldolensian monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli, which was famous as a school of manuscript illuminators: Don Lorenzo is also known to have painted illuminations. He was a follower of Agnolo Gaddi and the Sienese strain in late Trecento art, but he was also influenced by Ghiberti, and, like him, by International Gothic. His principal works are the Coronation of the Virgin (1413 Florentine Style, i.e. 1414: Florence, Uffizi), painted for his own monastery, and a similar Coronation (London, NG), probably also for a Camaldolensian house. Both these are traditional Trecento altarpieces, with gold backgrounds and flat figures, bright in colour and occupying no space in the picture. What is probably his last picture is the Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uflizi), and this shows a complete change to the International Gothic style — dark colour, realistic detail and landscape background, and an attempt at depth, though with very elongated figures. He is thus important as one of the introducers of the style into Florence before the arrival of Gentile da Fabriano in 1422.

There are other works in Florence (Accad., Uffizi, Bargello, Mus. di S. Marco, churches) and in Amsterdam, Assist (S. Francesco), Baltimore (Walters), Berlin, Cambridge (Fitzwm), Edinburgh (NG), Leicester, London (NG, Courtauld Inst.), New York (Met. Mus.), Paris (Louvre), Philadelphia (Johnson), Siena, Toledo Ohio, the Vatican, Washington (NG), Worcester Mass. and Yale (Univ.).

Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books)

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