[Master of the Chiostro degli Aranci] (fl c. Florence, 1436–9). Italian painter of Portuguese or Spanish descent. He was probably the author of ten scenes from the Life of St Benedict, frescoed in the lunettes of the upper loggia of the cloister (called the Chiostro degli Aranci) of the Badia, a Benedictine abbey in Florence which is attributed to the Florentine architect and sculptor Bernardo Rossellino, and which was completed in 1437. The scenes are arranged along two walls so that they seem to take place beneath the loggia; the lunettes are divided from each other by fictive painted fluted pilasters. The fourth scene in the sequence was damaged and replaced by a fresco of St Benedict in the Wilderness by Agnolo Bronzino. Beneath the lunettes runs a decorative wainscoting set in an illusionistic architecture with busts of Benedictine saints set in tondi. A Latin inscription, painted between the scenes and the frieze, describes the scenes and names the saints. Two extra lunettes of scenes from the ...