Carmelite Hermits at Elijah’s Fountain

Carmelite Hermits at Elijah’s Fountain is one of the predella compartments of the great altarpiece that Pietro Lorenzetti made in 1329 for the church of San Niccolò del Carmine in Siena. Now preserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, the scene shows several Carmelite religious figures in a rocky and silent landscape, arranged around a fountain that the order’s tradition associated with the prophet Elijah. One friar draws water with a jar while others read, pray or withdraw into the mountains.

Although it is a small panel, Lorenzetti concentrates within it a scene rich in spiritual and visual nuance. The work turns contemplative life into an image and presents a kind of miniature Carmelite Thebaid. The treatment of the landscape, the fountain and the monks’ different attitudes reveals the painter’s interest in the observation of nature, contained narration and the construction of a visual identity for the Carmelite order.