Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Bartholomew, John the Baptist, Thaddeus and Benedict (Monte Oliveto Altarpiece)

In 1410, when Lorenzo Monaco finished this altarpiece, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti was several years into his bronze reliefs for the north doors of the Florence Baptistery The painter was watching closely. The curving, pointed arches of the frame borrow their outline from Ghiberti, and the saints beneath them stand long and loose-limbed, their cloaks falling in looping lines. A friar named Giovanni Istrada ordered the work for the high altar of San Bartolomeo a Monte Oliveto, a church of the Olivetan monks in Florence, and that explains the cast. Bartholomew, the church's own saint, has the place of honour at the Virgin's right, beside John the Baptist, the friar's own patron. Benedict stands on the far side because the Olivetans followed his Rule. The pattern of the carpet under their feet was scratched through the paint to the gold beneath.