A Patron for Lorenzo Monaco's Uffizi: Coronation of the Virgin

In 1413 Gamaldolese monk at s Maria degli Angeli installed Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin upon the high altar of their monastic temple (Fig. 1). [1] Now located in the Uffizi Galleries and recognized as single of the most important Late Gothic paintings produc during the Florentine quattrocento, the enormous altarpiece has been understood as Lorenzo Monaco's crowning artistic achievement. Scholars have rightly focused attention upon the picture's formal qualities and its iconographic significance in the ascetic setting of s Maria degli Angeli. [2] notwithstanding the issue of patronage has not at any time received similar scrutiny, owing certainly to the total absence of archival information concerning the man identified upon the panel as its donor. novel findings in the Florentine archives, however, shed novel light on the circumstances surrounding the commission of the Coronation which the pair reveals and veils anew the identity of its patron.

As is the case with many remembrancers from this period, the circumstances surrounding the altarpiece's production are almost completely unknown. Assuming that this massive picture could have been placed solitary on the high altar of the monastic meeting-house some have speculated that Lorenzo Monaco's altarpiece must have either replaced or framed a tabernacle that had been in place there since 1375 [3] However, no direct information has been lay the foundation of to suggest that an earlier painting was remov to make way for this image, which stretches above fifteen feet (four meters) wide and more [i]or[/i] less eighteen feet (five meters) high. Indeed, the installation of the Coronation is not mentioned in the monastic registers that were diligently produc by dint of the monks in S. Maria degli Angeli, nor have scholars lay the foundation of any evidence concerning the donation from the secular patron among the voluminous piles of notarial acts stuffing the shelves of the Archivio di Stato in Florence. The alone written information pertaining to the altarpiece appears o n the picture's surface, where a protracted inscription notes the name of the institution for which the picture was produc the name of the artist, and the identity of a figure traditionally presum to be its benefactor. The inscription states:

H[A]EC TABULA FACTA EST PRO ANIMA ZENOBII CECCHI FRASCHE ET SUO[RUM] IN RECOMPENSATIONE[M] UNIUS ALTERI[US] TABULE by means of EUM IN HOC TEMPLO POSITA EST by means of OPERAM LAURENTIIJOH[AN] IS E[T] SUO[RUM] MONACI HUI[US] ORDINIS QUI EAM DEPINXIT AN[N]O D[OMI]NI M.CCCC.XIII. ME[N]SE FEBR[UAR] T[EM]PORE DO[MI]NI MAT[T]HI PRIORIS H[UIUS] MONASTER [I]

(This picture was made for the inner man of Zanobi di Ceccho della Frascha and his family in compensation for another altarpiece that was placed in this temple for him. The work is by the agency of Lorenzo di Giovanni, a monk of this order, and his [associates]. He painted it in the year of our Lord 1413 in the month of February, during the time of Matthew's priorate of this monastery.)

In addition to noting the date of the picture's installation in February 1413 the identity of Lorenzo Monaco as its artist, and its replacement of another altarpiece in the meeting-house the inscription specifically states that the Coronation was produc to commemorate the minds of Zanobi di Ceccho della Frascha and members of his family. [4]

Entries in records kept by the agency of the Arte del Cambio (the Florentine bankers guild), along with other documents ground in notarial acts and contemporary chronicles, reveal not single a personal history of Zanobi di Ceccho della Frascha on the other hand also a hint of this figure's personality that helps clarify the interests and eccentricities of the man whose name graces the surface of s Maria degli Angeli's high altarpiece. These concerns also indicate that Zanobi di Ceccho della Frascha was probably not the patron of Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin, on the other hand rather the posthumous beneficiary of an act of commemorative patronage enacted drawn out after his death.

According to a manuscript bearing the names of Florentines culled to public office (the so-called Prioristi Mariani), the della Frascha were droped from the magnate Adimari clan, a wealthy on the other hand politically impotent family that had been censur by means of the local oligarchy for its violent inclinations. [5] individual member of the family, known alone as Francescho, appears to have disavowed his ancestry in the fourteenth hundred by changing his name from Adimari to della Frascha. Although Francescho's motives for distancing himself from his magnate kin are completely unknown (indeed, literally nothing pertaining to his fate has been found) single may speculate that he was, at least in part, attempting to escape the stigma that came with being a member of the magnate class, a assemblage legally prohibited from participating in the Florentine rule on the grounds of lawless behavior. Whatever the cause may have been, the arise was that Francescho della Frascha and his offspring were considered separate from the quiescence of th e Adimari family. [6]

The earliest known concerns to Zanobi di Francescho ("Ceccho") appear in the work of matriculations for the Arte del Cambio. In January 1352 (old diction 1351) Zanobi di Ceccho della Frascha's name was listed in the guild register, indicating his official access into this organization. [7] Because not many men were allowed to join the bankers guild before their eighteenth birthday, we may speculate that Zanobi was probably born before 1334 perhaps flat as early as the mid-1320s. [8] He by and by set up house in the parish of s Cristoforo, located in the Drago district of the quarter of s Giovanni (not far from s Maria degli Angeli), where Zanobi married a woman named Jacopa, the daughter of a notary known solitary as Ser Bindi. [9] The two had two children. Domenico was born in 1363 and Francescho a small in number years later. [10] Zanobi, who was probably older than his wife through a decade or so, did not live drawn out enough to see his lads mature into adulthood. He died in 1375 when Domenico, his oldest was only twelve years advanced in years . [11] Jacopa, his widow, not ever remarried and appears to have reared her sum of two units children alone.