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  • Abraham, Noah, Moses, David
  • Abraham, Noah, Moses, David
  • Abraham, Noah, Moses, David

Lorenzo Monaco (Piero di Giovanni; Italian, act. by ca. 1385–90, d. 1422)
Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, ca. 1408–10
Four panels of tempera on wood, gold ground; overall 26 x 16 7/8 in. (66 x 42.9 cm); 25 7/8 x 17 3/8 in. (65.7 x 44.1 cm); 24 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. (62.2 x 44.5 cm); 22 3/8 x 17 in. (56.8 x 43.2 cm), respectively
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gwynne Andrews Fund, and Gift of G. Louise Robinson, by exchange, 1965 (65.14.1), Gwynne Andrews Fund, and Gift of Paul Peralta Ramos, by exchange, 1965 (65.14.2), Gwynne Andrews Fund, and Bequest of Mabel Choate, in memory of her father, Joseph Hodges Choate, by exchange, 1965 (65.14.3), Gwynne Andrews and Marquand Funds, and Gift of Mrs. Ralph J. Hines, by exchange, 1965 (65.14.4)

Curator Comment

Lorenzo Monaco was the outstanding painter in Florence during the first quarter of the fifteenth century—before the appearance of Masaccio, Masolino, and Fra Angelico—and the undisputed master of the so-called International Gothic Style. These four pictures of Old Testament patriarchs, acquired while Philippe de Montebello was a curator in the Department of European Paintings, rank among Lorenzo's masterpieces. While the brilliant coloring and refined treatment of details recall his work as a miniaturist, the solid treatment of forms relates them to contemporary Florentine sculpture—especially that of Ghiberti and Nanni di Banco. A fifth, somewhat damaged panel showing Saint Peter (private collection) seems to have belonged to the series, the arrangement and function of which remain conjectural (were the panels for a secular setting, such as the courtroom of the Mercanzia?).

Keith Christiansen, Jayne Wrightsman Curator, Department of European Paintings

Provenance

65.14.1–.3: Private collection, Florence, until 1841; Biondi sale, Benou, Paris, March 12–13, 1841, lots 7, 8, 9; Henri Chalandon, La Grange Blanche, Parcieux, near Trévoux, by 1909; Chalandon family, La Grange Blanche, until 1956; [Wildenstein & Co., Paris and New York, 1956–65].
65.14.4: George Augustus Wallis, Florence, until d. 1847; his estate sale, Heberle, Berlin, May 24, 1895, lot 61; Königliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel, by 1903–29; A. S. Drey, Munich and New York, 1929; Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York, 1929–d. 1949; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1949–62; sale, Sotheby's, London, June 27, 1962, lot 14; [Wildenstein & Co., Paris and New York, 1962–65].

Bibliography

Millard Meiss, "Four Panels by Lorenzo Monaco," Burlington Magazine 100 (1958), pp. 191–96; Guy-Philippe de Montebello, "Four Prophets by Lorenzo Monaco," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 25, no. 4 (December 1966), pp. 155–69; Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 22–23, 79, 109, 112, 148–49, 151–53; Laurence Kanter, in Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti, eds., Lorenzo Monaco: A Bridge from Giotto's Heritage to the Renaissance (Florence: Giunti, 2006), pp. 186, 189–90.

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