FIORENZO di LORENZO. - Fiorenzo, born ca. 1445 in Perugia, died before 1525. Trained in the traditionalist Umbrian milieu represented by Niccolò da Foligno and Bonfigli, he became acquainted with the art of Pietro Perugino when the latter returned to Perugia around 1470, enriched by his experiences in Florence and Arezzo with Piero della Francesca. Fiorenzo then adopted the style of this great master. Despite this, in his painting Fiorenzo always retained a somewhat provincial taste, at once harsh and sweet, and a meticulous artisanal care that constitute the essential characteristics of the painter and, in a certain sense, his greatest virtues.
Among Fiorenzo’s earliest works, some of which show an approach to the style of Benozzo Gozzoli and Pinturicchio, particular mention should be made of the triptych with the Madonna, Child, and four saints, from the Confraternity of Justice and now in the Pinacoteca of Perugia, where the painter is still bound to traditional methods. A development of his style in a Peruginesque direction is evident, however, in the other panel in the Perugian Pinacoteca depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the Madonna of Mercy in the church of S. Francesco at Montone, dated 1482, in the Madonna with the Child, St. Sebastian, and St. Christopher in the Städelsches Institut in Frankfurt am Main, in St. Jerome at Yale University, in the Tabernacle with SS. Peter and Paul, in the polyptych with the Madonna and four saints from the church of the Misericordia and now in the Pinacoteca of Perugia, and in numerous other panels attributed to him by the many scholars who have studied this modest yet engaging painter. - See pl. LXXXIX.
Fioretto di S. Francesco — End of ch. 7 and beginning of ch. 8, dealing with the Lent observed by St. Francis on an island in Lake Perugia and the discourse of St. Francis to Brother Leo on perfect joy — Vatican Library, cod. Vat. lat. 10101, f. 30r (15th cent.).
The Pauline verse “Mihi absit gloriari nisi in cruce Domini Nostri Jesu Christi” [“Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”] is here given such effective expression that readers of every mentality, even non-Catholics, would not be moved without an adequate aesthetic value. The Fioretti are a jewel of art. Modern translations merely restore the original vernacular essence of the Latin Acts and convey in simple, limpid prose—now realistic and intimate, now gentle and lyrical—the innocence and fervor of the early Franciscans and the enchantment of a holiness that loves God without renouncing life.