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Filippo Lippi

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Fra'
Filippo Lippi
O.Carm.
Self-portrait of Fra' Filippo Lippi (1452)
Self-portrait of Fra' Filippo Lippi (1452)
Born Filippo Lippi
c. 1406
Florence, Republic of Florence
Died 8 October 1469 (aged 62–63)
Spoleto, Papal States
Other name Lippo Lippi
Known for Painting, fresco
innovative naturalism
Notable work Madonna and Child Enthroned, Annunciation
Movement Early Renaissance

Filippo Lippi O.Carm. (c. 1406 – 8 October 1469), also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) and a Carmelite priest. He was an early Renaissance master of a painting workshop, who taught many painters. Sandro Botticelli and Francesco di Pesello (called Pesellino) were among his most distinguished pupils.[1] His son, Filippino Lippi, also studied under him and assisted in some late works.

Biography

Lippi was born in Florence in 1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, and his wife. He was orphaned when he was two years old and sent to live with his aunt,[2] Mona Lapaccia. Because she was too poor to rear him, she placed him in the neighboring Carmelite convent when he was eight years old. There, he started his education. In 1420, he was admitted to the novitiate of the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, known commonly as the Carmelites, at the priory of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, taking religious vows in the Order the following year, at the age of sixteen. He was ordained as a priest in approximately 1425 and remained in residence at the priory until 1432.[2]

Giorgio Vasari, the first art historian of the Renaissance, writes in his Lives of the Artists that "while he was in his noviciate and under the discipline of the grammar master, did nothing but cover his books with drawings of figures, until at last the prior determined to give him every help in learning to paint. The [Brancacci] chapel in the [church of Santa Maria del] Carmine had been recently painted by Masaccio, and being most beautiful, pleased Fra Filippo greatly, and he used to go there."[3] Later "he painted a pope confirming the rule of the Carmelites and other pictures so much in Masaccio's style that many said that the spirit of Masaccio had entered into Fra Filippo.[4] Lippi's early work indeed, notably the Tarquinia Madonna (Palazzo Barberini, Rome) shows the influence of Masaccio.[5]

In 1432, Filippo Lippi quit the monastery, although he was not released from his vows. In a letter dated 1439 he describes himself as the poorest friar of Florence, charged with the maintenance of six marriageable nieces.[6]

According to Vasari, Lippi then went on to visit Ancona and Naples, where he was captured by Barbary pirates and kept as a slave. Reportedly, his skill in portrait-sketching helped to eventually release him.[7] Louis Gillet, writing for the Catholic Encyclopedia, considers this account and other details reported about Lippi, as "assuredly nothing but a romance".[2]

With Lippi's return to Florence in 1432, his paintings had become popular, warranting the support of the Medici family, who commissioned the Annunciation and the Seven Saints. Cosimo de' Medici had to imprison him in order to compel him to work, and even then the painter escaped by a rope made of his sheets. His escapades threw him into financial difficulties from which he did not hesitate to extricate himself by forgery.[2] His life included many similar tales of lawsuits, complaints, broken promises, and scandal.[5]

In 1441, Lippi painted the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin for the nuns of Sant'Ambrogio. The painting shows the Virgin being crowned among angels and saints, including many Bernardine monks. One of these, placed to the right, is a half-length figure originally thought to be a self-portrait of Lippi, pointed out by the inscription is perfecit opus upon an angel's scroll.[1] Later, it was believed instead to be a portrait of the benefactor who commissioned the painting.[8] The painting was celebrated in Robert Browning's poem "Fra Lippo Lippi" (1855).

In 1452, Lippi was appointed chaplain to the nuns at the Monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena in Florence.

Fra Filippo is recorded as living in Prato (near Florence) in June 1456 to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral. In 1458, while engaged in this work, he set about creating a painting for the monastery chapel of Santa Margherita in that city, where he met Lucrezia Buti, a beautiful boarder or novice of the Order and the daughter of the Florentines Caterina Ciacchi and Francesco Buti. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit for the figure of the Madonna (or perhaps Saint Margaret). Lippi engaged in sexual relations with her and abducted her to his own house. She remained there despite efforts by the nuns to reclaim her. This relationship resulted in their son Filippino Lippi in 1457, who became a famous painter following his father,[6] as well as a daughter, Alessandra, in 1465. Lucrezia is thought to be the model for many of Filippo Lippi's paintings of the Madonna, as well as for Salome in one of his monumental works.

In 1457, he was appointed commendatory Rector (Rettore commendatario) of San Quirico in Legnaia, from which institutions he occasionally made considerable profits. Despite these profits, Lippi struggled to escape poverty throughout his life.

The close of Lippi's life was spent at Spoleto, where he had been commissioned to paint scenes from the Life of the Virgin for the apse of the cathedral. His son, Filippino, served as workshop adjuvant in the construction. In the semidome of the apse is the Coronation of the Virgin, with angels, sibyls, and prophets. This series, which is not wholly equal to the one at Prato, was completed after Lippi's death by assistants under his fellow Carmelite, Fra Diamante.

Lippi died in Spoleto, on or about 8 October 1469. The mode of his death is a matter of dispute. It has been said that the pope granted Lippi a dispensation to marry Lucrezia, but before the permission arrived Lippi had been poisoned by indignant relatives of Lucrezia or, in another version, by relatives of someone who had replaced her in the painter's affections.[6]

Works

The frescoes in the choir of the cathedral of Prato, which depict the stories of Saint Stephen and Saint John the Baptist on the two main facing walls, are considered Fra Filippo's most important and monumental works, particularly the figure of Salome dancing, which has clear affinities with later works by Sandro Botticelli, his pupil, and Filippino Lippi, his son, as well as the scene showing the ceremonial mourning over Stephen's corpse. This latter is believed to contain a portrait of the painter, but there are various opinions as to which is the exact figure. The figure of the dancing Salome in the scene of the Feast of Herod is believed to be a portrait of Lucrezia. On the end wall of the choir are Saint John Gualbert and Saint Alberto, while the vault has monumental representations of the four evangelists.[6]

For Germiniano Inghirami of Prato he painted the Death of Saint Bernard. His principal altarpiece in this city is a Nativity in the refectory of San Domenico: the Christ child on the ground adored by the Virgin and Joseph, between Saints George and Dominic, in a rocky landscape, with the shepherds playing and six angels in the sky. A Vision of Saint Bernard is held in the National Gallery, London.

In the Uffizi is a fine painting of the Virgin, also called "Lippina", adoring the infant Christ, who is held by two angels. The model for the Virgin is Lucrezia. A sometime lecturer at the gallery, the art historian Rocky Ruggiero identifies the painting as "one of the most beautiful paintings of the Italian Renaissance" and asserts that arguably, Lippi "is the first Italian painter with a true sensibility for feminine beauty".[9]

The painting of the Virgin and Child with an Angel also in the Uffizi is ascribed to Lippi, but that is disputed.[1][10]

Filippo Lippi died in 1469 while working on the frescoes of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (1467–1469) in the apse of Spoleto Cathedral. The frescoes show the Annunciation, the Funeral of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Christ Child, and the Coronation of the Virgin.[10] A group of bystanders depicted at the funeral includes a self-portrait of Lippi and his helpers, Fra Diamante and Pier Matteo d'Amelia, together with his son Filippino. Lippi was buried on the right side of the transept, with a monument commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici.[11]

Francesco di Pesello (called Pesellino) and Sandro Botticelli were among his most distinguished pupils who participated in his workshop.[1]

Selected works

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Filippo Lippi — Italian painter, b. at Florence about 1406; d. at Spoleto, 9 October, 1469. Left an orphan at the age of two he was cared for by an aunt who being too poor to rear him placed him at the age of eight in the neighbouring Carmelite convet, where he was educated. At the age of fifteen he received the habit, and at sixteen pronounced his vows (1421). At this time Masolino and Masaccio undertook in the Carmelite church those frescoes of the Brancacci chapel (1423-28), which brought about a revolution in the Florentine school. This event decided Lippi's vocation. Perhaps he even worked in the Brancacci chapel under the direction of the two masters but nothing remains of the cameo frescoes which he executed in the cloister.

A life of adventure was about to begin for the young Carmelite. Vasari's account of a journey to Ancona, during which, in the course of a sea-trip, he was seized by Barbary pirates and held captive for two years, is assuredly nothing but a romance. It is not likely that he was at Padua in 1434; on the contrary everything proves that at that date he was not absent from Florence, where he had already acquired a great reputation. Cosmo de' Medici commanded him to paint for his private oratory the charming "Madonna" of the Uffizi, and for his wife's the "Nativity" of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1438 he painted the retable of San Spirito, now at the Louvre, and the "Coronation of the Blessed Virgin", ordered by Charles Marsuppini, and preserved at Rome in the Lateran museum. In 1441 he painted a variation of the same subject at the Academy of Florence for the religious of S. Ambrogio, receiving 1200 livres for it. Lastly, in 1447 he painted for the Chapel of the Signiory the wonderful "Vision of St. Bernard" now in the National Gallery. In the midst of all these labours the painter could not have taken long journeys. The great artist lived in the continual embarrassments caused by his deplorable morals. Never was anyone less fitted for religious life. His portraits show us a flat-nosed individual with a jesting, but vicious looking, thick-lipped, sensual face. To compel him to work Cosmo de' Medici was forced to lock him up, and even then the painter escaped by a rope made of his sheets. His escapades threw him into financial difficulties from which he did not hesitate to extricate himself by forgery. Callistus III was obliged to deprive this unworthy monk, "who perpetrated many nefarious crimes", of a benefice. In 1452 the Carmelite was requested by the commons of Prato to paint the choir of the cathedral.

At length, despite his evil reputation, Lippi succeeded in having himself appointed chaplain of a congregation of Augustinians. Here his misbehaviour was no less flagrant than elsewhere. It is significant and shows plainly what were the ideas of the Renaissance that Lippi was not punished for his bad conduct. Glory or genius then constituted a soil of privilege and a warrant of impunity. Talent placed its possessor beyond and above the moral law. Not only did Cosmo di' Medici make merry over what he called the "folly of the frater" (Letter of J. de Medici, 27 May, 1458), but Pope Pius II thought he could do no better than to release him from his vows and permit him to marry. A son, Filippino Lippi, had already been born to him. He afterwards had a daughter (1465). In the midst of these intrigues and disorders Filippo continued to paint his greatest works. From this period, indeed, (1452-64) date, besides several pictures of the Prato Museum, his works at the cathedral, which are perhaps the chief work of the second generation of the Renaissance, before the decorations of the Sistine chapel and the frescoes of Ghirlandajo at Sta Maria Novella. The theme of these paintings is borrowed from the lives of St. John Baptist and St. Stephen. The two most celebrated scenes represent the "Feast of Herod with the dance of Salome", and the "Death of St. Stephen". Both have remained classics. In his "Salome" the painter has in fact created the leading type which owes nothing to the chastely observed formulæ of the preceding age, and which in its voluptuous grace, the delicate and rare arabesques of its draperies, and the affected arrangement of the coils of the head-dress, became the favourite type of Botticelli's "Judith" and "Daughters of Jethro". His "Death of St. Stephen" on the other hand shows us a magnificent architectural study, which reproduces the outlines of the nave of S. Lorenzo, one of the earliest examples of great monumental composition and majestic symmetry in a portrait scene, such as those which were later to form the glory of Ghirlandajo.

This was the period at which Filippo's talent grew and broadened and seemed to reach its even perfection. His last works, the "Death and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin", at the cathedral of Spoleto, are also his noblest and most strongly conceived. He did not have time to complete them. His pupils, especially his friend Fra Diamante, finished the remainder of the work (an Annunciation and a Nativity) after his death. He was buried in the cathedral of Spoleto, the inhabitants of the city having refused to allow Florence to remove the ashes of so great a man. Lorenzo de' Medici erected his tomb at his own expense, and Angelo Poliziano composed his epitaph.

In the evolution of the Renaissance Fra Filippo played a part of the utmost importance. This man of fiery passions is one of the great workmen of art. He is the incarnation of the invincible naturalness of this period. His power springs exactly from the attitude of instinct and spontaneity, and is not at all the result of a system or a theory. It is a great plebeian force, tumultuous and unconscious, let loose through art and life. Nothing equals the ingenuity and the sort of innocence of his love of nature. This monk without rule or cloister possesses literally the senses of a primitif. He adores everything, the commonest herb and the least flower. Certain of his pictures, such as the "Nativity", in the Louvre, contain an amount of documents and a collection of studies, birds, lizards, sheep, plants, stones, still-life, which equal the contents of ten albums of a Japanese artist. He was an indefatigable student of the universe. He embraced life in all its forms with the candour of a child, as well as the eyes of a naturalist and a miniaturist. Hence the extreme poetry of his early pictures. The "Nativity", in Berlin, is a sylva rerum unequalled in art. No one has ever done more to bring art closer to life and to make it the complete mirror of reality, which accounts for the good humour and novel familiarity of his touch. One cannot be astonished at the enthusiasm aroused by his fervent works. His art is like a window looking out upon a flower garden and exhibiting all its beauties.

Filippo afterwards lost something of this charming freshness. A more scholarly generation, the school of Castagno and Uccello, began to appear. He borrowed from it his passion for rigorous form and for extreme linear definition. By dint of pursuing the true he arrived at crudity, sometimes at grimace and caricature. There is nothing more vulgar than certain of Filippo's angels, the models of which were taken from among the rabble of Florence. His colour began to decompose and took on a hard and metallic reflection. But this was only a crisis. At Prato and Spoleto, though under the influence of pedantic theories he receovered himself, but ripened and transformed. He regained even in the labour and exigencies of fresco, the decorative sense and the great laws of composition imparted by his first masters, Masaccio and Masolino. His naturalism tempered by artistic feeling inspired him with the most beautiful masterpieces; and as his early and descriptive paintings were to be the inspiration of Benozzo Gozzoli, so the author of the frescoes of Prato and Spoleto was to inspire Ghirlandajo and Botticelli. It will be readily understood that his contemporaries did not rigorously condemn the errors of the poor Carmelite, since he was always so great a painter and was in the end so perfect an artist.

VASARI, ed. MILANESI, II (Florence, 1878); CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE, Storia della Pintura in Italia (Florence, 1892), V, VI; MUNTZ, Histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance, les primitifs (Paris, 1889); BALDANZI, Relazione della pitture di Fra Filippo Lippi nel coro della cattedrale di Prato (Prato, 1835); MILANESI in L'Art (30 Dec., 1877; 6 and 7 Jan., 1878); MENDELSOHN, Fra Filippo Lippo (Berlin, 1909).

References

  1. Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Back to citation occurrence 1.2 Back to citation occurrence 1.3 Rossetti 1911, p. 742.
  2. Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Back to citation occurrence 2.3 Gillet, Louis. "Filippo Lippi". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. Retrieved 4 April 2015
  3. Back to citation Chapter IX: "Filippo Lippi and Botticelli" In: Stories of the Italian Artists from Vasari (abridged). Arranged and translated by E. L. Seeley. Duffield, London/New York 1908, p. 96.
  4. Back to citation Vasari/Seeley 1908, p. 97. (Italics are not original.)
  5. Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 "Fra Filippo Lippi", on the website of the National Gallery, London.
  6. Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 Back to citation occurrence 6.2 Back to citation occurrence 6.3 Rossetti 1911, p. 741.
  7. Back to citation Greene, Robert (2000). The 48 Laws of Power. Penguin Books. pp. 187. ISBN 0-14-028019-7.
  8. Back to citation Browning, Robert (2004). Robert Browning: Selected Poems. England: Penguin Books. p. 311. ISBN 978-0-140-43726-3.
  9. Back to citation Ruggiero, Rocky, Madonna and Child with Two Angels, Fra Lippo Lippi, Making Art and History Come Alive, rockyruggiero.com, accessed 10 June 2023
  10. Back to citation occurrence 10.0 Back to citation occurrence 10.1 Rowlands, Eliot. "Lippi". Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 14 February 2017.
  11. Back to citation "Filippo Lippi", Virtual Uffizi Gallery
  12. Back to citation "Madonna and Child". The Walters Art Museum. Retrieved 26 September 2021.

Bibliography

  • Canaday (1969). The Lives of the Painters Vol. 1. New York: Norton and Company.
  • Kleiner, Fred S; Mamiya, Christian J. (2005). Art Through the Ages. Thomson & Wadsworth. ISBN 0534167055.
  • Hartt, Frederick (1980). The History of Italian Renaissance Art. London: Thames and Hudson.

Further reading

  • Ruda, Jeffrey (1993). Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0714838896.

Historical novels

  • Proud, Linda (2012). A Gift for the Magus. Godstow Press. ISBN 9781907651038. [A literary novel about Filippo Lippi and Cosimo de' Medici.]
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