Incidents in the Life of Saint Benedict

Lorenzo Monaco's Incidents in the Life of Saint Benedict, painted around 1408, forms part of the predella of the San Benedetto altarpiece. As a Camaldolese monk following the Rule of Saint Benedict, Lorenzo Monaco would have been intimately familiar with the episodes from Gregory the Great's account of Benedict's life depicted in these panels. 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 narrative scenes demonstrate Lorenzo Monaco's skill in miniature storytelling, with clearly articulated spatial settings and expressive figure poses that compress complex narratives into the predella's compact horizontal format.