Fra Filippo Lippi

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A greater contrast, in every respect, than that between Andrea del Sarto and Fra Lippo Lippi can scarcely be conceived. The story of Filippo Lippi [29] is taken, like that of Andrea, from Vasari's Lives: it is taken as literally, it is made as authentically living, and, in its own more difficult way, it is no less genuine a poem. The jolly, jovial tone of the poem, its hearty humour and high spirits, and the breathless rush and hurry of the verse, render the scapegrace painter to the life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fra Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti TWO
The painter of divine beauties, Filippo Lippi, or as he is often called, Fra Lippo Lippi, was not himself a handsome man. He had rather a full face, large features, and thick lips. Laziness and love were always interfering with his work. As a result of extravagance he was usually in debt, and not always careful to get out honestly. Yet the people of his time were kind-hearted enough to overlook boyish faults in an artist who brought so much renown to their country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The term Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation to bring together such men as Frà Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and Luca Signorelli, has so far an intelligible basis, that all this period, from Giotto to Raphael, amidst all diversities, is characterized throughout by a deference of Art to something extraneous. It is not beauty that Frà Angelico looks for, but holiness, or beauty as expressing this; it is not beauty that draws Filippo Lippi, but homely actuality. It is from this point of view that the Renaissance has been attacked as wanting in faith, earnestness, humility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One has the feeling, however, that they used human models—the portrait face looks through the angel face. This is still more apparent in Mantegna and Filippo Lippi. As we might have expected from the character of Fra Filippo, his angels want refinement: they have a boyish look, with their crisp curled hair, and their bold beauty; yet some of them are magnificent for that sort of angel-beings supposed to have a volition of their own. Andrea del Sarto’s angels have the same fault in a less degree: they have, if not a bold, yet a self-willed boyish expression. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Towards June 1456 Fra Filippo was settled in Prato (near Florence) for the purpose of fulfilling a commission to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral. Before actually undertaking this work he set about painting, in 1458, a picture for the convent chapel of S. Margherita of Prato, and there saw Lucrezia Buti, the beautiful daughter of a Florentine, Francesco Buti; she was either a novice or a young lady placed under the nuns’ guardianship. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit to him for the figure of the Madonna (or it might rather appear of S. Margherita) ”

“ Fra Filippo devoted the most earnest attention to this point, as is seen in this work; he has given the disciples who are burying St. Stephen attitudes so full of dejection, and faces so deeply afflicted, so drowned in tears, that it is scarcely possible to look at them without feeling a sense of sorrow. On the other side of the chapel is the History of St. John the Baptist, his Birth, that is to say, his Preaching in the Wilderness, his Baptism, the Feast of Herod, and the Decapitation of the Saint. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was also appointed by the wardens of the same church, who desired to retain a memorial of him, to paint the chapel of the High Altar, and here we have likewise good evidence of his power, for besides the excellence of the picture as a whole, there are certain heads and draperies in it which are most admirable. [27] In this work Fra Filippo made the figures larger than life, and hereby instructed later artists in the mode of giving true grandeur to large figures. ”

“ The eldest of these sisters, Margherita, was married off to Antonio Doffi in 1451, and in the same year two other sisters, Spinetta, born 1434, and Lucrezia, born 1435, were placed with the nuns of Sta. Margherita at Prato, Antonio paying the required fee of fifty florins for each of them. Needless to say, the two girls thus committed to a living tomb at the very time when life beckoned to them with all its joys and seductions, were not consulted in this matter any more than was Fra Filippo when, as a mere child, he had to enter the establishment of the Carmelites in Florence. ”

“ Over a well, in the court-yard of the Ceppo of Francesco di Marco, there is a small picture on panel by this master, representing the portrait of the above-named Francesco di Marco, the author and founder of that pious establishment. In the Capitular Church of Prato, on a small tablet which is over the side door as one ascends the steps. Fra Filippo depicted the death of San Bernardo, by the touch of whose bier many lame persons are restored to health. In this work are monks bewailing the loss of their master ”

“ Berenson, the most authoritative modern critic of Italian art, denies Fra Filippo a "profound sense of either material or spiritual significance—the essential qualifications of the real artist," although he admits in the same essay1 that "his real [19] place is with the genre painters, only his genre was that of the soul, as that of others—of Benozzo Gozzoli, for example—was of the body." Browning, with the true poet's intuition, states the case of Fra Filippo more clearly than the vast majority of professional critics from Vasari to the present day, when he makes the friar exclaim:
"... ”

“ 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. ”