Lorenzo Monaco, St. Benedict Revives a Boy

1414
Tempera on wood
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

This panel is in the predella of Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin in the Uffizi Gallery (originally in Santa Maria degli Angeli). It illustrates chapter 11 of Gregory the Great's life of St. Benedict. Envious of the saint's successes, a demon has caused a wall that the monks were building to fall down. On the right we see the broken wall, a pile of fragments, and in the shadows an unhappy monk with a measuring stick, perhaps the architect. In falling down, the wall has killed a boy monk and broke his body into pieces, which the monks put into a sack to bring to St. Benedict. In the center the boy is standing on the sack, revived and restored to health by the saint.

View this image in full resolution.
View the entire altarpiece.
Read more about St. Benedict.

• Home Page
• The Coronation of the Virgin
• Don Lorenzo's "Coronation"
• This Detail

Photographed at the Uffizi by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.