Last Judgment in an Initial C

Lorenzo Monaco's Last Judgment in an Initial C, dating to around 1406, demonstrates his parallel career as a manuscript illuminator at the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The monastery's scriptorium was one of Florence's most important centers of book production, and Lorenzo Monaco was its greatest painter. Lorenzo Monaco — Piero di Giovanni — was a Camaldolese monk who became one of Florence's most gifted painters in the transition between the Gothic and the Early Renaissance.

The historiated initial showcases Lorenzo Monaco's ability to work at miniature scale with extraordinary precision, compressing the complex Last Judgment iconography into the curved space of a letter with luminous pigments and gold.