Adoring Saints: Left Main Tier Panel

A crowd of saints dressed in glowing colours gather on an elaborately decorated floor. Their crowns and haloes glisten with burnished gold, and gold embroidery edges their robes and vestments. This is the company of heaven as imagined in fourteenth-century Italy. Many hold objects or wear clothes which would have allowed the Renaissance viewer to identify them immediately: saints, who were seen as able to intervene with God on behalf of sinful humankind, were shown with attributes that related to their lives or deaths.This painting was part of a very large and complex polyptych (a 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 are also in our collection.Like many early Renaissance paintings, the altarpiece has suffered drastic changes in appearance over the centuries. The saints are looking at the coronation of the Virgin at the centre of the altarpiece; there were more adoring saints on the other side. These are now separate, but they were originally constructed and painted as a single panel (you can just see – on the far right of this painting – the wings of angels who surround the Virgin’s throne). We don‘t know exactly when it was split into three, but at that point two vertical bands about seven centimetres wide were lost between the side and main panels. These missing sections have been reconstructed in the gallery on structural elements of the modern frame.San Benedetto was a Camaldolese monastery and the saints chosen were those who were important to the monks. On the far left is Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order. He holds a book inscribed with words from his Rule, or code of practice, which the Camaldolites followed, and wears white in place of his usual black, as did they. Beside him, in a pink robe over a hair tunic, is Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence. He was a hermit and a role model for the austere Camaldolites. Next to him is Saint Matthew, whose book has words from his Gospel. In the back rows are other patron saints of Florence, along with Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order; Saint Stephen, with the rocks of his martyrdom balanced on his head; and Saint Paul, carrying the sword with which he was beheaded.The bright colours and gilding are typical of painting in Florence around 1400. Although the figures are painted to look three-dimensional, and the throne and floor are shown in a basic linear perspective, the light does not fall consistently from one direction and the drapery folds are arranged across the picture in rhythmic patterns. Lorenzo Monaco wasn’t trying to show a real space, but was using decorative effects to evoke the kingdom of heaven.