Lorenzo Monaco Active 1389 - 1423 or 1424 Florence(?)

Probably from the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence;
From the Convent of Saint Agatha, Via San Gallo, Florence (according to a 19th-century inscription on the reverse);
The Reverend Walter Davenport Bromley sale, London, Christie’s, 13 June 1863, lot 100 (as Pietro Lorenzetti);
Geheimrat Josef Cremer, Dortmund, by 1914, no. 939 (as close to Pietro Lorenzetti);
His sale, Berlin, Wertheim, 29 May 1929, lot 128 (as style of Lorenzo Monaco), where acquired by a member of the Cremer family;
Thence by descent until sold (anonymously), London, Sotheby’s, 6 July 1988, lot 8, for £340,000 to Colnaghi;
Bought by the present owner shortly after.

H. Voss ed., Collection Geh. Kommerzienrat Cremer, Dortmund, 1914, p. 5, no. 939 (as close to Pietro Lorenzetti);
H. Voss, Sammlung Geheimrat Josef Cremer, Dortmund, Berlin 1929, p. 176, no. 128, reproduced on facing page (as style of Lorenzo Monaco);
M.J. Eisenberg, The origins and development of the early style of Lorenzo Monaco, Ph.D. Princeton, 1954, pp. 83-5, and p. 102, reproduced plate 17 (as Lorenzo Monaco, dated to 1390-95);
F. Zeri, "Investigations into the early period of Lorenzo Monaco - II", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CVII, no. 742, January 1965, pp. 7-8 (as Lorenzo Monaco, dated to shortly after 1390);
M. Meiss, "Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of Saint Jerome", in Pantheon, no. 32, 1974, p. 135, reproduced fig. 2 (as Lorenzo Monaco?);
M. Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370-1400, Florence 1975, p. 339 (as Lorenzo Monaco, dated to 1395-1400);
F. Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 1976, vol. I, pp. 26-7 (as Lorenzo Monaco);
The Toledo Museum of Art. European paintings, Toledo 1976, p. 99;
M. Boskovits, Gemäldegalerie Berlin: Frühe Italienische Malerei, edited by E. Schleier, Berlin 1987, pp. 97-8, under cat. no. 37, reproduced plate 147 (as Lorenzo Monaco);
M.J. Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco, Princeton 1989, p. 183, under "II. Other works ascribed to Lorenzo Monaco", reproduced fig. 219, and pp. 186-8, under catalogue entry for panels in Accademia, Florence (as Lorenzo Monaco(?); an opinion he then revised on an unpaginated sheet at the end of his monograph in which he fully accepts all the Carmine panels as autograph works and dates them to the mid-1390s).

Lorenzo Monaco was born Piero di Giovanni and only assumed his monastic name after entering the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence in 1391. He was one of the most influential artists of the early Quattrocento in Florence and, having set up his own workshop outside of the monastery, he became a successful painter and manuscript illuminator. His paintings generally display a decorative yet refined sense of colour and his figures, though painted in the late Gothic style, are extremely naturalistic. The scene depicted here is particularly moving for the dramatic outline of the rock in which St. Jerome’s cave is set serves to emphasise the religious fervour with which the hermit beats his breast.

This panel depicting St. Jerome in the wilderness, lost for over half a century until its last appearance on the market in 1988, was formerly in the collection of Josef Cremer in Dortmund, from which it was sold in Berlin in 1929. It is almost certainly to be identified with the Saint Jerome in the Davenport Bromley sale at Christie’s in 1863, where it was sold as Pietro Lorenzetti; as attested to by an old inscription in English on the reverse of the panel ("Pietro Lore...tti/ from the Convent of St. Agatha/ ...San Gallo Florence). Another panel from the Davenport Bromley sale, likewise catalogued as Pietro Lorenzetti but now also given to Lorenzo Monaco, shows St. John the Baptist departing for the wilderness and is today in Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries, Leicester.

Federico Zeri (see Literature, 1965) was the first to associate these two predella panels with three others and to suggest a reconstruction of the altarpiece to which they once belonged; a scheme also supported by Miklos Boskovits (see Literature). The reconstruction clearly displays the paintings’ original arrangement (see Fig. 1): the present panel once stood at the left end of the predella, beneath the full-length figure of St. Jerome (Accademia, Florence, inv. 8705; for which see Eisenberg, under Literature, 1989, pp. 186-8, reproduced fig. 215); then came the aforementioned predella of St. John the Baptist departing for the wilderness (Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries, Leicester, inv. 33A 1959; Eisenberg, op. cit., p. 196, reproduced fig. 220), beneath the corresponding figure of St. John the Baptist (Accademia, Florence, inv. 8708; ibid., pp. 186-8, fig. 215); the central predella scene showing the Nativity (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem, inv. 1113; ibid., p. 181, reproduced fig. 221) suitably sat beneath a panel of The Madonna and Child enthroned (Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo (Ohio), inv. 76.22; ibid., p. 206, reproduced fig. 217); the fourth predella showing The Martyrdom of St. Peter (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, inv. 37.688; ibid., p. 180, reproduced fig. 222) was located under the corresponding full-length figure of St. Peter (Accademia, Florence, inv. 8709; ibid., pp. 186-8, reproduced fig. 218); and the final predella showing The Beheading of St. Paul (Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, inv. 36-23; ibid., pp. 201-2, reproduced fig. 223) was beneath the standing figure of St. Paul (Accademia, Florence, inv. 8704; ibid., pp. 186-8, reproduced fig. 218). The four standing saints now in the Accademia were found in 1810 in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, and the polyptych can therefore be presumed to have come from that church.

The five predella panels are clearly by the same hand: not only are the figures extremely similar in style but the same rocky landscape occurs in all but two of them. Each predella is enclosed in an octagonal border made with the same punchwork tooling, though this is only partially visible (in the upper corners) on the present work and no longer visible on the painting in Leicester. The tooling on the gold of the figures’ haloes in the predella panels seems to fall into two designs: the larger circles visible on St. Jerome’s halo in the present work are the same as those in the Holy Family’s haloes in the Berlin Nativity; the smaller circles on St. John the Baptist’s halo in the Leicester panel are the same as those used on St. Peter and St. Paul in the Baltimore and Princeton predellas respectively. Although these differences might only illustrate the use of two sets of tools within the same workshop, it is interesting to note that Eisenberg, although initially doubtful of a full attribution to Lorenzo Monaco for the various panels from the polyptych, states that the present predella and that of the Nativity (which, coincidentally, share the same punchwork tooling) "are the most accomplished of the series and most clearly invite an attribution to Lorenzo Monaco” (ibid., p. 188). Eisenberg revised his opinion of the Carmine panels and, in an unpaginated sheet at the end of his monograph, stated the autograph status of all of them, including the present work. Subsequent scholars, namely Federico Zeri and Miklos Boskovits, found no reason to doubt the authenticity of the panels and both published them as fully autograph works by Lorenzo Monaco; the first dating them to 1390, or shortly afterwards, and the second to 1395-1400. We are grateful to Laurence Kanter for confirming that he too believes this and other related panels from the Carmine altarpiece to be autograph works by Lorenzo Monaco, datable to just before 1396.

Please note that this panel has been requested for the exhibition Lorenzo Monaco (1370-1425), to be held in Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia, 8 May - 24 September 2006, at which the Carmine altarpiece panels will be re-united for the first time.