 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(November 2023) |
The Monastery of St. Mary of the Angels (Italian : Monastero di S. Maria degli Angeli) was a monastery of the Camaldolese Order in Florence, Italy.
| | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(November 2023) |
The Monastery of St. Mary of the Angels (Italian : Monastero di S. Maria degli Angeli) was a monastery of the Camaldolese Order in Florence, Italy.
During the early part of the Renaissance, this monastery was known for the high-quality manuscripts and other works created by its scriptorium. Many of the illuminations from these works are found in museum collections around the world. [lower-alpha 1] Strongly tied to most powerful families of Florentine society, the monks took part in the artistic flourishing in the city in that era, and they were able to produce works in the High Gothic art of the Sienese School.
Additionally, the greatest artists of the city worked to decorate the monastery. Among them was Nardo di Cione.
It was in this monastery that the famed artist, Lorenzo Monaco (Lorenzo the Monk), entered monastic life. He kept this title, despite the fact that he chose not to take religious vows as a monk, and returned to secular life. Even after his departure, Lorenzo continued to contribute to the beautification of the monastery with his art.
Monks executed a variety of tasks and obligations which took place throughout the year. Among these was a lengthy and solemn procession, held on specific feast days, that took the community to every altar and altarpiece in the monastic complex. The route they took and the images they saw caused each monk to see this collection of images in sequence, and thus encouraged him to consider the altarpieces both individually and collectively. The culmination of this procession came to be the extraordinary high altarpiece produced by Lorenzo Monaco in 1413, the Coronation of the Virgin, which summarized the entire program of monastic imagery. [1]
Fra Angelico, OP was a Dominican friar and Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.
Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. In his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano, which were wrongly entitled the Battle of Sant'Egidio of 1416 for a long period of time.
Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, also spelt as Ghirlandajo, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli. Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothers Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi from San Gimignano, and later his son Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo. His particular talent lay in his ability to posit depictions of contemporary life and portraits of contemporary people within the context of religious narratives, bringing him great popularity and many large commissions.
Lorenzo Monaco was an Italian painter and miniaturist of the late Gothic to early Renaissance age. He was born Piero di Giovanni. Little is known about his youth, apart from the fact that he was apprenticed in Florence. He has been considered the last important exponent of the Giotto style, before the Renaissance revolution that came with Fra Angelico and Masaccio.
Domenico di Michelino (1417–1491) was an Italian Renaissance painter who was born and died in Florence. His real name was Domenico di Francesco. The patronymic "di Michelino" was adopted in honour of his teacher, the cassone painter Michelino di Benedetto, by whom no works have been identified. Giorgio Vasari reports that Domenico was also a pupil of Fra Angelico, whose influence is reflected in many of Domenico's paintings along with that of Filippo Lippi and Pesellino.
The Badìa Fiorentina is an abbey and church now home to the Monastic Communities of Jerusalem situated on the Via del Proconsolo in the centre of Florence, Italy. Dante supposedly grew up across the street in what is now called the 'Casa di Dante', rebuilt in 1910 as a museum to Dante. He would have heard the monks singing the Mass and the Offices here in Latin Gregorian chant, as he famously recounts in his Commedia: "Florence, within her ancient walls embraced, Whence nones and terce still ring to all the town, Abode aforetime, peaceful, temperate, chaste." In 1373, Boccaccio delivered his famous lectures on Dante's Divine Comedy in the subsidiary chapel of Santo Stefano, just next to the north entrance of the Badia's church.
Raffaellino del Garbo (1466–1527) was a Florentine painter of the early Renaissance.
For the village near Livorno, see Sassetta, Tuscany
Ridolfo di Domenico Bigordi, better known as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter active mainly in Florence. He was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena, becoming a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante's texts. He was one of the most important painters of the 15th century Sienese School. His early works show the influence of earlier Sienese masters, but his later style was more individual, characterized by cold, harsh colours and elongated forms. His style also took on the influence of International Gothic artists such as Gentile da Fabriano. Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Miracle of St. Nicholas of Tolentino painted about 1455 and now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while his last works, particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell from about 1465 and Assumption painted in 1475, both at Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena), are grotesque treatments of their lofty subjects. Giovanni's reputation declined after his death but was revived in the 20th century.
Santa Maria degli Angeli is the former church of a now-defunct monastery of that name in Florence, Italy. It belonged to the Camaldolese order, which was a reformed branch of the Benedictines. The order is based on the hermitage which was founded near Arezzo in 1012 by the hermit St. Romuald at Camaldoli, hence the name. Very little of the medieval building exists today.
Lorenzo di Niccolò or Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino was an Italian painter who was active in Florence from 1391 to 1412. This early Renaissance artist worked in the Trecento style, and his work maintains influences of the Gothic style, marking a transitional period between the Gothic sensibilities of the Middle Ages while simultaneously beginning to draw on the Classical. Lorenzo's works were usually religious scenes in tempera with gold backgrounds.
Neri di Bicci (1419–1491) was an Italian painter active in his native Florence. A prolific painter of mainly religious themes, he studied under his father, Bicci di Lorenzo, who had in turn studied under his father, Lorenzo di Bicci. The three thus formed a lineage of great painters that began with Neri's grandfather.
The decade of the 1410s in art involved some significant events.
Lorenzo di Bicci was an Italian painter of the Florentine School considered to be one of the most important painters in Florence during the second half of the 14th century. He is believed to have learned his trade from his father, about whom little is known. Lorenzo’s style, as well as that of his contemporaries Jacopo di Cione and Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, was influenced by the artist Andrea di Cione. Lorenzo's paintings made use of bright colors and his compositions avoided complexity. The figures he painted tended to have round faces and were often expressionless. Another one of Lorenzo's distinctive characteristics was his precision of execution. He was known for exceptional talent in drawing, an ability that he put to use at the initial stages of his painting. Unlike many celebrated Florentine artists of this period, Lorenzo mostly received commissions from the country clergy and from the lower-middle-class Florentine guilds. His successors, Bicci di Lorenzo and Neri di Bicci, continued to serve these groups.
Mariotto di Nardo di Cione was a Florentine painter in the Florentine Gothic style. He worked at the Duomo of Florence, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, and the Orsanmichele. He created both frescoes and panel paintings, and was also active as a manuscript illuminator.
Zanobi di Benedetto di Caroccio degli Strozzi, normally referred to more simply as Zanobi Strozzi, was an Italian Renaissance painter and manuscript illuminator active in Florence and nearby Fiesole. He was closely associated with Fra Angelico, probably as his pupil, as told by Vasari. He is the same painter as the Master of the Buckingham Palace Madonna. Most of his surviving works are manuscript illuminations but a number of panel paintings have also been attributed to him, including seven altarpieces and six panels with the Virgin and Child, along with some designs for metalwork.
Andrea di Giusto, rarely also known as Andrea Manzini or Andrea di Giusto Manzini was a Florentine painter of the late Gothic to early Renaissance style in Florence and its surrounding countryside. Andrea was heavily influenced by masters Lorenzo Monaco, Bicci di Lorenzo, Masaccio, and Fra Angelico, and tended to mix and match the motifs and techniques of these artists in his own work. Andrea was an eclectic painter and is considered a minor master of Florentine early Renaissance art. Andrea trained under Bicci di Lorenzo as a Garzone. He painted his most significant works, three altarpieces, in the Florentine contado, or countryside; these altarpieces were created for Sant’Andrea a Ripalta in Figline, Santa Margarita in Cortona, and the Badia degli Olivetani di San Bartolomeo alle Sacce near Prato. Aside from his major altarpieces, Andrea painted several Frescoes over the course of his career. He, along with other minor masters, are also known to have provided several different types of art, including triptychs and frescoes, for Romanesque pievi, or rural churches with baptistries. Moreover, he was well known for several types of smaller craft objects, such as small tabernacles. He is said to have worked between 1420 and 1424 under Bicci di Lorenzo on paintings for Santa Maria Nuova. He is said to have worked with Masaccio in painting the Life of San Giuliano for the Polyptych of Pisa, including the painting of the Madonna and Child, in 1426. He also appears to have collaborated in 1445 with Paolo Uccello in the Capella dell'Assunta in the Prato Cathedral. In 1428, he is listed as a member of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali guild in Florence as "Andrea di Giusto di Giovanni Bugli". His son, Giusto d'Andrea, was also a painter and worked with Neri di Bicci and Benozzo Gozzoli. Andrea died in Florence in 1450.
Niccolò Gaddi was an Italian nobleman and art collector
Dillian Rosalind Gordon OBE is a British art historian who worked as a curator at the National Gallery, London from 1978 to 2010, latterly as Curator of Italian Paintings before 1460. She lives in Oxford. She was appointed OBE in 2011 for services to Early Italian Painting. She has authored and co-authored many books, including several National Gallery catalogues.