Florentine painting in the fourteenth century may be seen to best advantage in the churches of Florence and in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, for here in the Uffizi there is nothing from Giotto’s or Orcagna’s hand, though the work of their schools is plentiful.  In the first long gallery, among certain Sienese pictures of which I speak elsewhere, you may find these works; and there, too, like antique jewels slumbering in the accustomed sunlight, you come upon the tabernacles and altar-pieces of Don Lorenzo Monaco, monk of the Angeli of Florence, 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 Rome, St. Mark writes his Gospel, the Kings come to adore Jesus in Bethlehem, and St. Mark is martyred.  The whole is like some marvellous introit for St. Mark’s day, in which the name of Mary has passed by.