A new work by Beato Angelico at the San Marco Museum

The Hall of Beato Angelico, at the San Marco Museum, is enriched with a new work from the Uffizi Galleries: the Thebaid, a fascinating and controversial work, currently attributed to the young Angelico. Arriving at the Uffizi in 1783 with the attribution to Gherardo Starnina, it was subsequently attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti, to Maso di Banco, to an anonymous contemporary of Lorenzo Monaco and even to Paolo Uccello. It was Roberto Longhi, in 1940, who first referred it to the beginnings of Beato Angelico.
The painting represents the lives of the Holy Fathers in the desert, near Thebes, and stands out for its extraordinary richness of detail. A hermit-like and mountainous landscape, populated by a series of small characters who bustle around the monks' hermitages, with a river full of boats downstream. And then animals, saints who resist the temptations of the devil, churches, vegetable gardens, trees and a small crowd of faithful who watch over Saint Ephrem. The scene is broken down into a myriad of details that lead the gaze to get lost in the search for anecdotal and curious details.

Watch the video: The Thebaid