Filippo Lippi

“ To differentiate between the crowd of workmen that surrounded Filippo Lippi and Botticelli were impossible. They painted beautiful things because they lived in an age in which ugliness hardly existed, or was not as visible as it is now; they were content to merge their personalities in an artistic formula; none sought to invent a personality which did not exist in himself. Employing without question a method of drawing and of painting that was common to all of them, they worked in perfect sympathy, almost in collaboration. ”

“ The judgment of the Curia was confirmed, the Pope referring on this occasion to Fra Filippo as a painter qui plurima et nefanda scelera perpetravit. Nevertheless, some years later, our artist is still mentioned as rettore e commendatario di San Quirico a Legnaja. From which it may be assumed that the judgment deprived him merely of his spiritual office, and left him in enjoyment of the revenue connected with the post.
The ups and downs of Filippo Lippi's [37] career in the fifties of the fourteen-hundreds are more than a little confusing. ”

“ This incident is the subject of a fine fresco, painted by Filippo Lippi, on the left-hand wall of the Strozzi Chapel at Florence. It has the forcible expression and dramatic spirit of the painter, with that characteristic want of elevated feeling in the countenances and in the general treatment which is apparent in all his works: the group in one corner, of a child starting from a dog, is admired for its truth; but, by disturbing the solemnity of the marvellous scene, it repels like a falsehood. ”

“ Every phase of the triumphant progress of Renaissance art finds an echo in Filippo Lippi's painting. Masaccio helped him to shake off Gothic awkwardness and to achieve a certain degree of statuesque dignity. From Gentile da Fabriano he [75] took the delight in gay, festive attire and sumptuous pageantry, which is clearly expressed in Sir Frederick Cook's tondo, and in a modified form in the Academy "Coronation." ”

“ He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eat meat at the Pope's own table without the permission of the prior of his convent—a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up a prosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was no wonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and a sort of angel among realists—himself surnamed by his companions the 'Blessed' and the 'Angelic.'
Beside him, younger than he, but contemporary with him, stands out his opposite, Filippo Lippi. He was not born rich, like Angelico. ”

“ Having learned prosperously how to manage gold, [Pg 496] he took a fancy to know how to manage colour, and was put under the best master in Florence, the Monk Lippi" (see 666) . Some characteristics of Lippi's art—its union of a buoyant spirit of life and enjoyment with simplicity and tenderness of religious feeling—are seen in the pupil. But he added in his turn marked characteristics of his own, which are noticed in detail under his several pictures here. "Where Fra Filippo was all repose, Sandro was all movement." ”

“ Whereas all questions concerning Fra Filippo's artistic education remain largely [20] a matter of conjecture and deduction, there is no lack of documentary material for a fairly accurate reconstruction of his life. Vasari remains, of course, the basis for any such attempt; but the archives of Florence and Prato have yielded a rich harvest of contemporary records, on the strength of which it is possible to clear up the contradictions and to correct the numerous errors that have crept into Vasari's life of The Florentine Painter, Fra Filippo Lippi. ”

“ Fra Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite monk, whose frescoes at Prato and Spoleta and oil-paintings in Florence and elsewhere are among the most genial works of the pre-Raphaelite Renaissance. Vasari narrates his love-adventures with Lucrezia Buti, and Robert Browning has drawn a clever portrait of him in his “Men and Women.” His son, Filippo or Filippino, was also an able painter, some of whose best work survives in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella at Florence, and in the Church of S. Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome. ”

“ In the progress of his style from the early "Nativities" to the Prato frescoes is reflected the whole course of Early Renaissance art from Gothic awkwardness to full freedom. Of course, Fra [67] Filippo lived in a period of transition and of passionate striving for expression; and to a certain extent every artist is the product of the spirit of his time. The tendencies which resulted in the full blossoming of Renaissance art were at work, and would, no doubt, have conquered in the end, even if Filippo Lippi had never existed. ”

“ Meanwhile the Carmelite's art had made prodigious progress. Filippo Lippi, the pupil of the last Giottesque, was now swimming abreast of the mighty current of the Renaissance. If his early Madonnas recall something of the spirituality and naïve faith of Fra Angelico, the altarpieces of his later Florentine period, and, above all, the superb [40] "Coronation of the Virgin," painted for Sant' Ambrogio, and now in the Florence Academy, are inspired by the beauty of this visible world. The atmosphere is of this earth, and not of the celestial regions. ”

“ So, as she listened, joy died out of Lucrezia's life. Spring might come again, and summer sunshine make others glad, but for her it would be ever cold, bleak winter. For never more should her heart grow warm in the sunshine of Filippo's smile--that sunshine which had made every one love him, in spite of his faults, ever since he ran about the streets, a little ragged boy, in the old city of Florence.
SANDRO BOTTICELLI
We must now go back to the days when Fra Filippo Lippi painted his pictures and so brought fame to the Carmine Convent. ”

“ Sandro Botticelli, born at Florence in 1457, died 1515; a celebrated Florentine painter; “the wronged Lippino,” or Filippo Lippi, known as Filippino or Lippino (1460-1505) , a Florentine painter, son of Fra Lippo Lippi. Some of his pictures were attributed to other artists, hence the expression “wronged”; Frà Angelico (1387-1455) —Il Beato Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole—was the great Dominican Friar-Painter of Florence, the greatest of all painters of sacred subjects. ”

“ In his great works the proportions are larger than life.
Along with Vasari’s interesting and amusing, and possibly not very unauthentic, account of Lippo Lippi, the work of Crowe and Cavalcaselle should be consulted. Also: E. C. Strutt, Fra Lippo Lippi (1901) ; C. M. Phillimore, Early Florentine Painters (1881) ; B. Supino, Fra Filippo Lippi (illustrated) (1902) . It should be observed that Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1412 as the date of the painter’s birth, and this would make a considerable difference in estimating details of his after career. ”

“ And in this respect he was again an initiator in Florentine art. He was one of the first painters of his school who makes us feel that almost every character in his pictures is [78] the result of personal observation—is practically a portrait. He is the first true genre painter of his school. Benozzo Gozzoli, it is true, went far beyond him as a pictorial raconteur of Florentine fifteenth-century life; but the origin of Benozzo's genre-like treatment of scriptural incidents, which makes his frescoes at Pisa and San Gimignano such precious documents, is to be found in Fra Filippo Lippi. ”

“ It has been said that the pope granted Lippi a dispensation for marrying Lucrezia, but that, before the permission arrived, he had been poisoned by the indignant relatives either of Lucrezia herself, or of some lady who had replaced her in the inconstant painter’s affections. This is now generally regarded as a fable; and indeed a vendetta upon a man aged sixty-three for a seduction committed at the already mature age of fifty-two seems hardly plausible. Fra Filippo lies buried in Spoleto, with a monument erected to him by Lorenzo the Magnificent ”

“ He was indeed an artist of such power, that in his own time he was surpassed by none, and even in our days there are very few superior to him: therefore it is that he has not only been always eulogized by Michael Angelo, but in many things has been imitated by that master.
For the church of San Domenico-vecchio, in Perugia, Fra Filippo [36] painted a picture, which has since been placed on the high altar; it represents the Virgin, with San Piero, San Paolo, San Ludovico, and Sant’ Antonio the abbot. ”

“ Throughout his life, Fra Filippo, in his steady advance from Giottism to such triumphantly vital achievement as his Prato frescoes, evinced the greatest eagerness to absorb what was newest and best. No doubt he watched Masolino at work at the Carmine, and later on Masaccio, whose influence clearly appears in Fra Filippo's mature work. But he also learnt from the example of all the other masters who wrought in and near Florence in the early part of the fifteenth century. Sir Frederick Cook's tondo clearly shows the influence of Gentile da Fabriano. ”

“ Having been ever courteous, obliging, and. friendly, Filippo was lamented by all who had known him, but more particularly by the youth of Florence, his noble native city; who, in the public festivals, masks, and other spectacles, were always glad to avail themselves of his readiness and inventive genius, for in these matters this artist has never had his equal. ”

“ Filippo displayed equal art in the Serpent itself, insomuch that the venom, the foetid breath, and the fire, seem rather to be real than merely painted. The invention of the picture, in which the saint is crucified, has also been much commended; the artist would seem to have figured to himself that San Filippo had been fastened to the cross while it lay extended on the earth, and to have been then raised and dragged aloft by means of ropes, cords, and stakes ”

“ He lived creditably by his labours, [40] and expended very large sums on the pleasures to which he continued to addict himself, even to the end of his life. Fra Filippo was requested by the commune of Spoleto, through the medium of Cosimo de’ Medici, to paint the chapel in their principal church—that of Our Lady—and this work, with the assistance of Fra Diamante, he was conducting to a successful termination, when, being overtaken by death, he was prevented from completing it. ”

“ There is also abundant proof to show that Fra Filippo, in spite of the high esteem in which he was held as an artist, and which caused him to be entrusted with many a remunerative commission, was for ever in financial [17] straits, was involved in many vexatious law cases, attempted to cheat his own assistants, and had no hesitation to break faith with his patrons. But all this does not affect his art. To read sensuality into his types of womanhood can only be the result of prejudice, of approaching his pictures in the light of the knowledge gathered from the pages of the chroniclers. ”

“ Fra Filippo finished the course of his life in the year 1438, [42] being then fifty-seven years old. He left Filippo his son to the guardianship of Fra Diamante, with whom the child, then ten years old, returned to Florence, and was by liim instructed in the art of painting. Fra Diamante took three hundred ducats with him from Spoleto, which remained to be received from the commune for the work performed there, and with this sum he purchased a certain property for himself, appropriating but little of it to the child. ”

“ Masaccio wrought his Carmine frescoes between 1425 and 1427, so that his could not possibly have been the earliest influence upon the young monk's impressionable mind. Nor is there even a hint of Masaccio's monumental style in the earliest known works by Filippo: the two "Nativities" in the Florence Academy, and the "Annunciation" in the Pinakothek in Munich. That Fra Filippo, like all the masters of the Florentine [27] Renaissance, was, in his later life, powerfully influenced by the genius of Masaccio, is only natural, and cannot be doubted by anybody who has seen his frescoes at Prato. ”

“ It is this picture to which Domenico Veneziano refers in a letter to Piero de' Medici, dated Perugia, April 1, 1438, asking to be entrusted with the commission for an altarpiece, since "Fra Filippo and Fra Giovanni have much work to do, and especially Fra Filippo has a panel for Santo Spirito which, should he work day and night, will not be done in five years, so great is the work." ”

“ Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways, kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker done, but Lippi one night contrived a way of escape, and "from that time forward," adds Vasari, "Cosmo gave the artist more liberty, and was by this means more promptly and effectually served by the painter, and was wont to say that men of genius were not beasts of burden, but forms of light." Filippo was the son of a butcher, and, being left an orphan, was committed to the charge of the monks of the Carmelite convent close to which his parents had lived. ”

“ In Prato, near Florence, where Fra Filippo had some relations, he took up his abode for some months, and there executed various works for the whole surrounding district, in company with the Carmelite, Fra Diamante, who had been his companion in noviciate. Having then received a commission from the nuns of Santa Margherita, to paint a picture for the high altar of their church, he one day chanced to see the daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent to the Convent, either as a novice or boarder. ”