Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Marvin Eisenberg examines the art of Lorenzo Monaco, the Camaldolese monk who was the preeminent Florentine painter during the two decades before the advent of Masaccio and Fra Angelico. In Don Lorenzo's works, which are among the most expressively beautiful images in late medieval European art, traditional Christian themes and elegant Late Gothic forms were infused with a fervent monastic devotion. His earliest panels and miniatures, of the 1390s, reflect various stylistic trends in later fourteenth-century Florentine painting and sculpture; in his maturity he assimilated elements of the International Style into an essentially Tuscan idiom; the final works, from the early 1420s, convey a degree of recognition of the emergent Renaissance.


This is the first comprehensive book on the art of Lorenzo Monaco since 1905, including an essay on his principal works, an extensive catalogue of the altarpieces, crucifixes, choir book miniatures, and frescoes by Don Lorenzo and his prolific shop, and a catalogue of other works ascribed to him. The book is lavishly illustrated, and numerous comparative illustrations provide the artist's work with a visual context.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An excellent monographic study of the Florentine painter preeminent during the transition from the late Medieval to early Renaissance art in the decades before the advent of Fra Angelico and Masaccio. Eisenberg, the foremost authority on Lorenzo Monaco for more than 35 years, is the best-qualified author to write the first comprehensive study of the artist published since 1905. A well-written essay on Monaco's principal works precedes the extensive, scholarly catalogue raisonne that constitutes well over half the book. The catalogue is divided in two parts (autograph and ascribed works) and gives detailed entries on each work, including condition, history, previous literature, and comments by Eisenberg. There is an appendix of documents and a good bibliography. The book is generously illustrated with 337 good quality black-and-white figures; the 17 color plates unfortunately do not do justice to a virtuoso colorist. Eisenberg's work is akin to a number of recent monographs, such as Keith Christiansen's Gentile da Fabriano, (CH, Jul'82), yet it is highly traditional in its emphasis on style and iconography. For advanced undergraduate and graduate students. -W. E. Wallace, Washington University