This painting shows two stories from the life of Saint Benedict happening at once. Benedict, reading in his cell, had a vision that one of his disciples was drowning. On the left, we see him tell Saint Maurus to run down to the lake and rescue Saint Placidus, who has fallen in while fetching water. Maurus has walked out on to the lake as if it were land and is pulling Placidus – still grasping his jug – out by the hair. On the right, Benedict visits his sister, Saint Scholastica, who is near death. When he refuses her invitation to stay the night, she prays for him to remain and a miraculous rainstorm prevents him leaving; you can see the rain lashing the roof.
Saint Maurus’s halo was initially left out, perhaps by mistake, and was added later using a type of lead-white oil mordant (or adhesive) that Lorenzo Monaco used elsewhere in the altarpiece.
Although members of the Benedictine Order wore black, here they are dressed in the white habits of the Camaldolese Order, founded in the eleventh century as a reformed branch of the Benedictines, as this panel was painted for them. It comes from the predella of a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted for a church just outside Florence. That church, San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti, was eventually destroyed, but it belonged to the Camaldolese Order. Saint Benedict was the church’s patron saint, and the small scenes in the predella show episodes from his life (another is also in our collection – Saint Benedict admitting Saints Maurus and Placidus into the Benedictine Order). A third panel, showing Saint Benedict’s death, is on permanent loan to the National Gallery.
The predella originally had three compartments with two scenes in each. When they were in the altarpiece, the predella panels were set into shaped compartments in the base of the frame, which diagonally covered the top and bottom left-hand corners. When the frame was removed it left unpainted triangles which have been filled in with modern paint. The predella panels seem to have been done by different painters, presumably assistants in Monaco’s workshop.
The scenes in the predella emphasise not just Benedict but the role of his followers, especially youthful monks, and the power of prayer and obedience. They would have been very suitable for San Benedetto, only recently founded as a dependent house of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence.
We don't know exactly when the altarpiece was taken apart, but the predella panels show no sign of the water damage which affects the main tier panels. If, as seems likely, this damage was caused by the devastating floods of 1557 in Florence, the predella must have been separated from the rest of the altarpiece before then, probably in 1529 when the church at San Benedetto was destroyed.
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