Full title | The Coronation of the Virgin: Central Main Tier Panel |
---|---|
Artist | Lorenzo Monaco |
Artist dates | active 1399; died 1423 or 1424 |
Series | San Benedetto Altarpiece |
Date made | 1407-9 |
Medium and support | Egg tempera on wood |
Dimensions | 220.5 x 115.2 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1902 |
Inventory number | NG1897 |
Location | Room 60 |
Art route(s) | A |
Collection | Main Collection |
Christ and his mother, Mary, are seated on a throne. He places a crown on her head, and she crosses her hands on her chest in a gesture of acceptance. This is the coronation of the Virgin, a popular subject in medieval Italy where Mary was especially revered. According to medieval Christian legend, her soul was carried up to heaven after her death and she was crowned as Queen of Heaven.
This feast of gold and colour is a perfect example of early Renaissance painting. It was originally at the centre of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) painted by Lorenzo Monaco for the monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence. Other panels from the same altarpiece survive in the National Gallery and in other collections.
Seated on a delicate throne and dressed in glowing colours, Christ places a jewelled and gilded crown on his mother Mary’s head. Graceful angels kneel before them, swinging censers of incense and making music. This is the coronation of the Virgin, the final drama of Mary’s life, and a very popular subject in medieval and Renaissance Italy. According to Christian legend, Mary’s soul was carried up to heaven after her death and she was crowned as Queen of Heaven.
This feast of gold and colour is a perfect example of early Renaissance painting. It originally appeared in the centre of a very large polyptych painted by Lorenzo Monaco for the monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence. Other panels from the same altarpiece survive in the National Gallery and in other collections.
The composition, with Christ and the Virgin together on a single throne surrounded by angels and saints, was derived from an altarpiece Giotto made around 1334 for the Baroncelli chapel. It was repeated on many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Florentine altarpieces (like Jacopo di Cione’s The Coronation of the Virgin).
The gorgeous colours are carefully arranged to complement each other and set up visual harmonies across the panel. Christ’s brilliant blue mantle – painted with lapis lazuli, a pigment more expensive than gold – is set off by the glowing yellow of its lining and the pink of his tunic; all are echoed in the dress of the angel with the barrel organ who kneels before the throne. On either side of the throne angels with golden hair and delicate pink cheeks gaze up adoringly, their lips open in songs of praise, their careful symmetry emphasised by their matching outfits.
Lorenzo Monaco was especially skilled at gilding techniques. The gilding of the background and haloes was done first, before the painting, and you can see the red bole where the gold of the background has worn away. The haloes of the angels, Christ and the Virgin were burnished and then stamped with different punches to create patterns which would have flickered in the candlelight.
The sgraffito cloth of honour was painted with vermilion, a red pigment, over burnished gold that was punched to suggest raised gold threads. The cushion on which Christ and the Virgin sit has been modelled by punching to suggest the light and shade of its folded fabric. Mordant gilding, where gold leaf is applied over a glue, decorates the edges and hems of the draperies: look closely and you can see the delicate fringe around the edge of the Virgin’s veil.
Some of the colours have changed over time: the Virgin’s robe has almost entirely faded from a deep pinkish-mauve to white, and the vermilion of the cloth of honour has darkened. The gilded inscription along the base of the parapet is now almost invisible. At some point an arched doorway was cut into the centre of the panel for a tabernacle to store the bread of the Eucharist. It does not seem to have been original, and had been filled in and painted over before the eighteenth century.
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San Benedetto Altarpiece
A glorious, glowing, multi-coloured company of saints and angels surround Christ and his mother as he delicately places a golden crown on her head, making her Queen of Heaven. This huge polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) was painted for the high altar of the monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence. It was originally even bigger: its main panels are in the National Gallery, but other parts are scattered in collections across the world.
The Camaldolites (a religious order founded in 1012) were famous for their strict lifestyle, although they lived among great visual riches. The monastery’s register records how it was commissioned by a Florentine citizen, Luca Pieri Rinieri Berri, who was to pay almost the entire cost. In recompense his name was painted on the altarpiece – a few letters can be made out on the grey step of dais – so that he would be remembered in the monks' prayers.
A glorious, glowing company of saints and angels surround Christ and his mother, watching as he delicately places a golden crown on her head. This is heaven seen through fifteenth-century eyes. Crowns and haloes shimmer with burnished gold; angels with multi-coloured wings swing censers and make music; ranks of saints in gorgeous colours gesture gracefully to each other or gaze adoringly at the culminating drama of the life of the Virgin – her coronation as Queen of Heaven.
This huge polyptych was painted for the high altar of the monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence between 1407 and 1409. It was originally even bigger and more complex: its main panels and parts of the predella are in the National Gallery, but other parts are scattered in collections around the world.
The panels which make up the main tier – The Coronation of the Virgin, Adoring Saints: Left Main Tier Panel and Adoring Saints: Right Main Tier Panel – were originally constructed and painted as a single panel. We don‘t know exactly when it was split into three, although the altarpiece was probably taken apart when San Benedetto was destroyed in the run up to the siege of Florence in 1529. At some point, two vertical bands about seven centimetres wide were lost between the side and main panels. These missing sections have been reconstructed in the structural elements of the modern frame.
In the predella were scenes from the life of Saint Benedict, patron saint of the monastery: we see him admitting Saints Maurus and Placidus into the Benedictine Order and telling Maurus to save Placidus from drowning. A panel showing Benedict’s death is now on indefinite loan to the National Gallery, and other panels are in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome and the National Museum, Poznań. The pinnacles at the top showed the Annunciation flanking Christ the Redeemer. There were Old Testament prophets in the pilasters at the sides, and a tier showing Abraham, Noah, Moses and David (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) between the predella and the main panels.
San Benedetto belonged to the Camaldolites, a reformed branch of the Benedictine Order, famous for their strict lifestyle although they lived among great visual riches. The artist, Lorenzo Monaco, was himself a Camaldolite monk, and this painting is a kind of dress rehearsal for his most important surviving work, the great altarpiece for Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Even this smaller and simpler version measures almost 265 by 360 cm.
Unusually, we know quite a lot about why and when this altarpiece was made. The monastery’s register records how it was commissioned in 1407 by a Florentine citizen, Luca Pieri Rinieri Berri, who was to pay almost the entire cost. In recompense his name was to be included on the altarpiece – a few letters of an inscription can be made out on the grey step of dais – so that he would be remembered in the monks’ prayers. The altarpiece was never to be removed from the high altar, on penalty of a fine of 200 gold florins. It was in place by 1409 when the monks moved choir stalls from a side chapel into the main church.





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