LORENZO Monaco
(b. ca. 1370, Siena (?), d. ca. 1425, Firenze)

Diptych: Madonna of Humility

c. 1420
Panel, 22,8 x 17,8 cm
Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen

This panel originally formed a diptych with the St Jerome in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Small though they may be, as a diptych these little panels form an impressive and rare monument to Italian painting for private devotion. St Jerome has removed the thorn from the lion's paw, illustrating the monastic virtue of chastity, while the Virgin displays her humility by seating herself on the ground.

It is believed that Lorenzo's diptych of St Jerome and the Virgin was used as a visual aid by a learned monk in the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, where Lorenzo also lived and for which he made many works of art.

One genuinely new Marian theme was the Madonna dell'Umiltà, or Madonna of Humility. That title has come down to us more or less by accident, thanks to a number of scenes of the Virgin bearing the inscription "Maria dell'Umiltà" or some such designation. Here the Virgin is seated not on a throne but on a cushion on the ground. It is assumed that all Virgins seated on the ground, with or without a cushion, were regarded at the time as humble Virgins. The first images of the Madonna dell'Umiltà, datable around 1300, appeared simultaneously on altarpieces, murals and small panels for private devotion. Frescos with the Madonna dell'Umiltà were the object of special veneration in northern Italy. In Siena, at the end of the fourteenth century, images of the Madonna dell'Umiltà for private devotion were produced en masse by Andrea di Bartolo's workshop.