ence, as Vasari calls
him, the pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, who has most loved the work of the
Sienese. Lorenzo was of the Order of Camaldoli, and belonged to the
monastery of the Angeli, which was founded in 1295 by Fra Guittone
d'Arezzo, himself of the Military Order of the Virgin Mother of Jesus,
whose monks were called Frati Gaudenti, the Joyous Brothers. Born about
1370, seventeen years before Angelico, and dying in 1425, his works,
full of an ideal beauty that belongs to some holy place, are altogether
lost in the corridors of a gallery. Those works of his, the Virgin and
St. John, both kneeling and holding the body of our Lord (40), dated
1404; the Adoration of the Magi (39), or the triptych (41), where
Madonna is in the midst with her little Son standing in her lap, while
two angels stand in adoration, and St. John Baptist and St. Bartholemew,
St. Thaddeus and St. Benedict, wait on either side, was painted in 1410,
and was brought here from the subterranean crypt of S. Maria of Monte
Oliveto, not far away. Another triptych (1309), the Coronation of the
Virgin, in the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, is perhaps his masterpiece. In
the midst is the Coronation of our Lady, surrounded by a glory of
angels, while on either side stand ten saints, and on the frames are
angels, cherubs, saints, and martyrs, scattered like flowers. Painted in
1413 for the high altar of the Monastery of the Angels, it was lost on
the suppression of the Order, and only found about 1830 at the Badia di
S. Pietro at Cerreto, in Val d'Elsa. Though it has doubtless suffered
from repainting, for we read of a restoration in 1866, it remains,
lovely and exquisite beyond any other work of the master.

Fra Angelico may well have been the pupil of Lorenzo Monaco. Here in the
Uffizi are two of his works, the great Tabernacle (17), with its
predella (1294), and the great Coronation of the Virgin (1290), with its
predelle (1162 and 1178). The Tabernacle was painted in 1433 for the
Arte de' Linaioli, which paid a hundred and ninety gold florins for it.
It is an early work, but such an one as in Florence at any rate, only
Fra Angelico could have achieved. Within the doors is the Virgin
herself, with Christ standing on her knee between two saints, surrounded
by twelve angels of heavenly beauty playing on various instruments of
music In the doors themselves are St. John Baptist and St. Mark while
outside are St. Peter and St. Jerome. In the predella St. Peter preaches
at