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

Moses

1408-10
Tempera on panel, 63 x 45 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

There are four panels in the Metropolitan Museum in New York representing Old Testament patriarchs, which are among the finest works of Lorenzo Monaco, who, at the time the panels were painted, was the leading master in Florence. The four patriarchs (Abraham, Noah, Moses, and David) are each portrayed seated on a cut stone bench or chest set on a fictive marble dais, which is alternately pink with a strip of green in the foreground (Noah and David) or green with a strip of violet in the foreground (Abraham and Moses).

Moses, in a blue tunic bound high above the waist with a knotted sash and covered by a violet cloak lined with yellow, with a blue shawl wrapped around his shoulders, supports the tablets of the Ten Commandments, one on each knee.

The function of these four paintings, possibly as flanking elements of an altarpiece, has been debated.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.