together with the monastery, and has left no other memory than its name, which is still retained, that part of the city beyond the Arno being called the Camaldoli, from that holy place. Finally, having fallen sick of a grievous imposthume,[1] from which he suffered during several months, Don Lorenzo died, at the age of fifty-five, and was honourably interred by his brethren the monks, as his virtues well merited, in the chapter-house of their subterranean monastery.
Experience has sufficiently proved that from one sole germ, the genius and industry of men, aided by the influences of time, will frequently elicit many fruits, and thus it happened in the aforesaid monastery of the Angeli, of which the monks were ever remarkable for their attainments in the arts of design and painting.[2] Don Lorenzo was not the only excellent master among them: on the contrary, there flourished for a long space of time in that monastery many brethren of merited distinction in art, some of whom preceded him: among them was one whom I can by no means pass over in silence, —a certain Florentine monk called Don Jacopo, who lived long before Don Lorenzo, and was a good and worthy brother of his order, as well as the best writer of large letters that had ever then been known in Tuscany, or indeed in all Europe; nor has his equal been seen even to the present day. And of this we have still proof, not only in the twenty large choral books which he left in his monastery, and which are the most beautiful, as respects the writing, as they are perhaps the largest, to be found in Italy, but also in many other works from his hand, preserved in Rome, Venice, and other cities in different parts of Italy. Some that may be particularly specified are in San Michele and San Mattia di Murano, a monastery of his own order of the Camaldolines. For these his labours this good father well merited the homage paid to him by Don Paolo Orlandini, a learned monk of the same monastery, who wrote a large number of Latin verses to his honour, many years after Don Jacopo had himself passed to a better life. His right hand, moreover, that namely with
- ↑ Brought on, as was believed, by the attitude demanded by his work, which kept him constantly leaning on his chest.
- ↑ We have ourselves discovered the works of a Camaldoline monk, hitherto unknown, in the miniatures of the choral books belonging to the church of Santa Croce; the name of this master was Don Simon.— Ed. Flor. 1846.
