LORENZO MONACO. – Italian painter, b. in Siena in 1370 or 1371, d. in 1425. He carried out most of his activity in Florence, where he went at about the age of twenty, entering the Camaldolese convent of
S. Maria degli Angeli; in 1402 he is also recorded as having gone to Rome.
Of explicitly Sienese education, in Florence he came into contact with the Orcagna, but toward the end he was more strongly influenced by the currents of the International Gothic. The miniatures with half-length figures of saints recently attributed to him (A. M. Ciaranfi, L. M. miniature, in L'arte, 1935, pp. 265–317) already display that fusion of Sienese and Florentine elements that is a characteristic of his art. Among his best-known works are: The Virgin with Saints in the Pinacoteca of Siena; the Madonna Enthroned with Saints and Angels in the Berlin Museum (ca. 1402–1403); The Pietà in the Accademia of Florence (1404); The Madonna with 4 Saints in the Cathedral of Empoli (dated 1404); the Virgin of Humility in the Berenson collection (dated 1405), which reveal a search for plastic solidity that diminishes over the years, as the painter increasingly indulges in a more pronounced Gothicism. Among the paintings of this second period are The Agony in the Garden in the Louvre (1408), the miniatures of choir book 3 in the Laurenziana, the altarpiece for Monte Uliveto, now in the Uffizi (1406–10), the Coronation in the Uffizi (1413), and the altarpiece and frescoes with Stories of Mary in the Bartolini Chapel in S. Trinita (ca. 1420–22).
One of the most important painters at the moment of transition from the Trecento to the Quattrocento, he influenced many of the Florentine artists of his time. – Vedi tav. CVII.