Description
THE PROPERTY OF A BAVARIAN NOBLE FAMILY LORENZO MONACO ACTIVE 1399 - 1423 OR 1424 FLORENCE(?) SAINT PETER SEATED ON A BENCH, HOLDING A BOOK AND KEY
tempera on poplar panel, gold ground, pointed top
PROVENANCE
Bought by an ancestor of the present owner in Italy in the first half of the 19th century (see note above);
Thence by descent.
EXHIBITED
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, on loan from the present owner's family from the 1950s until 2005 (inv. no. L970).
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES
B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London 1896, p. 119 (as Lorenzo Monaco);
O. Sirén, Don Lorenzo Monaco. Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes, vol. XXXIII, Strasbourg 1905, pp. 43-44 (as Lorenzo Monaco, datable to circa 1403-5);
B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London 1909, p. 153 (as Lorenzo Monaco, an early work; omitted from the 1932 and 1963 editions);
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. vol. 9, The Hague 1927, p. 168, footnote 3 (as Lorenzo Monaco);
W. Suida, "Lorenzo Monaco", in U. Thieme & F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 23, Leipzig 1929, p. 392 (as Lorenzo Monaco);
G. Pudelko, "The Stylistic Development of Lorenzo Monaco", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. LXXIII, no. 429, December 1938, p. 238, footnote 13 (as Lorenzo Monaco, datable to after 1405);
M. Meiss, "Four Panels by Lorenzo Monaco", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. C, no. 663, June 1958, pp. 192, and 195-6 (as Workshop of Lorenzo Monaco, and less sure about the connection with the Metropolitan panels);
G.-P. de Montebello, "Four Prophets by Lorenzo Monaco", in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 25, no. 4, 1966, p. 167 (as possibly by Lorenzo Monaco);
F. Zeri, in Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School, New York 1971, pp. 62-6 (as slightly inferior to the Metropolitan panels which could be due to it being partly by the workshop or due to its condition);
M. Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400, Florence 1975, p. 349 (as Lorenzo Monaco, datable to 1405-10);
R. Kultzen, Alte Pinakothek München, Katalog V: Italienische Malerei, Munich 1975, p. 66, no. L970 (as Lorenzo Monaco, from the same series as the Metropolitan panels, datable to circa 1610);
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen: Alte Pinakothek, Munich 1983, pp. 299-300;
M. Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco, Princeton 1989, pp. 148-9, and pp. 152-3, reproduced fig. 172 (as Workshop of Lorenzo Monaco, datable to circa 1408-10 but not necessarily related to the Metropolitan panels);
L. Kanter, in Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300-1450, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17 November 1994 - 26 February 1995, p. 259 (as Lorenzo Monaco, datable to before 1404 and not belonging to the same complex as the Metropolitan panels);
R. an der Heiden, Die Alte Pinakothek. Sammlunsgeschichte Bau und Bilder, Munich 1998, p. 524, reproduced.
CATALOGUE NOTE
This panel almost certainly once formed part of a larger complex or polyptych. It relates, in both scale and iconography, to Lorenzo Monaco's four panels depicting Abraham, Noah, Moses and David in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and this has led scholars to assume that their similarity in design indicates a common origin (inv. nos. 65.14.1-4; see Eisenberg, under Literature, pp. 151-3, reproduced figs. 40-43). Zeri and Eisenberg, for example (see Literature), believe that the five panels belonged to the same altarpiece though their original arrangement and function is unclear. The positioning of Saint Peter, seated frontally on a bench rather like the ones in the Metropolitan panels, led them to suppose that this painting once held a central position in the complex, flanked by the Metropolitan panels in pairs on either side. The fact that there is an area of damage on the Saint Peter, almost certainly as a result of being repeatedly placed over a burning candle, might substantiate an argument for placing this panel centrally. Eisenberg favours Meiss' suggestion that the Metropolitan panels were arranged in pairs on two different registers: he bases his hypothesis on the fact that the colouring of the floors, the fall of light on the figures, and the viewpoint of the benches would all suggest a natural 'pairing'. Eisenberg makes a further suggestion that they may have been inserted into the doors of a custodia, enclosing either a painting or a piece of sculpture, though this is unlikely as the panels would have constituted the wings or doors themselves and there are no hinge marks to lead to such a conclusion.
More recently, Kanter has rejected the possibility that the five panels once belonged to the same polyptych, arguing that the similarity in shape and size between the Saint Peter and the Metropolitan panels is nothing more than coincidental. Kanter believes the Metropolitan panels may have belonged to an intermediary tier of the altarpiece painted by Lorenzo Monaco in 1407-9 for the Camaldolese monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence, other panels of which are in the National Gallery in London; a theory not sustained by Dillian Gordon (inv. NG 215, 216, 1897, 2862, 4062, and L2; see D. Gordon, National Gallery Catalogues. The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. I, London 2003, pp. 162-87). The halo patterns of the four Metropolitan patriarchs match those on the San Benedetto altarpiece and this at least argues for a similar date of execution. Given that the tooling on Saint Peter's halo is different from that in the Metropolitan panels, it seems unlikely that this too belonged to the same complex and Kanter has dated the present work to 1400-04, that is a few years earlier than the Metropolitan patriarchs (dated by Kanter and Gordon to 1407-9, and by Eisenberg to circa 1408-10). It is not unusual for Lorenzo Monaco to repeat iconographical motifs or compositions years later: the detail of Saint Peter's foot pointing downwards, for example, recurs in the figure of John the Evangelist in Lorenzo Monaco's Crucifix in the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, Florence, dated by Eisenberg to circa 1415 (reproduced as a detail in Eisenberg, op. cit., fig. 76).
This picture was one of a number of Italian paintings bought in Italy in the first half of the 19th century by Karl Ludwig, Freiherr von Lotzbeck (1786-1873). Although his taste in pictures was gregarious, and he bought works from the 14th to the 19th century, Baron von Lotzbeck was nonetheless one of the first generation of German collectors to buy Italian primitives in the wake of Crown Prince Ludwig's purchases in the early years of the century.
We are grateful to Dr. Laurence Kanter and Everett Fahy for independently confirming that they believe this painting to be a fully autograph work by Lorenzo Monaco.
