Home	Fra Filippo Lippi: The Life of Fra Filippo Lippi, Florentine Painter [c. 1406-1469]
	LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO (c. 1406-1469), became a Carmelite at an early age and, from that date, painted almost exclusively angels and Madonnas, as Fra Angelico, the Dominican, had done before him; but his pictures, in spite of their pious radiance, are more realistic and earthy. He peoples Masaccio's empty spaces with a wealth of detail. Often in Lippi, Masaccio's solemn, statuesque calm is broken up -- by a throng of common people, for example. Lippi flourished in Florence during the Early Renaissance; his works are to be found in Florence, Milan, Tarquinia, London, Paris, etc. There are frescoes by him in Spoleto. Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1406-1469) is the head of this tradition, which developed through Pesellino and Gozzoli and is closely associated in spirit as well as patronage with Florence and the rising Medici. Fra Filippo was born about 1406 in Florence, the son of a butcher, Tommaso di Lippo. Like his brother Giovanni, he became a novitiate of the Carmelite Order (ca. 1420) and took his vows June 18, 1421. He is listed among the members of the order until 1431, but not until 1430 with the title of painter (dipintore). Documents record that he was active on frescos in Santa Maria del Carmine in 1431, which were finished sometime after February, 1432. Various trips to Pistoia, Siena, and Prato are mentioned in records. Apparently he was not at the monastery after 1431 for some years, though as late as 1441 he is still referred to as frate Filippo del Carmine. In 1434, according to Marcantonio Michiel (i.e., the Anonimo Morelliano) and local records of payments, he was at work in Pistoia on frescos in the church of Sant' Antonio. Back in Florence he was commissioned on March 8, 1437, to execute an altar by the Capitani of Or San Michele for the Cappella Barbadori in Santo Spirito, which is referred to in Domenico Veneziano's letter of April 1, 1438, to Piero de' Medici offering his services to paint an altarpiece and commenting on the great amount of work which good painters like Fra Filippo and Fra Angelico have to do. A considerable number of commissions for altars is recorded in Florentine documents during this period. Besides, he was appointed by Pope Eugene IV in 1442 to the life-long position of rector of the church of San Quirico à Legnaja and in 1450 was made chaplain of the convent of San Niccolò de' Frieri in Florence. Having been convicted of forgery in a case of indebtedness to his assistant, Giovanni di Francesco, he was removed from his ecclesiastical offices, though in 1456 he was appointed chaplain of the convent of Santa Margherita in Prato. Other complaints of a more technical nature are frequently recorded against him, such as that of Antonio del Brancha, who brought suit in 1451 for delivering a commissioned altarpiece (lost) for San Domenico in Perugia which was not executed by his own hand. His activity in Prato began in 1452, and he was already listed as the painter of the choir chapel in the cathedral when his pupil, Fra Diamante, received the first payment for him on May 29. It was probably shortly after his appointment as chaplain that he abducted the nun, Lucrezia Buti, and is accused in 1461 of having a child by her (although the records, probably mistakenly, name her sister Spinella as the child's mother). By Lucrezia Fra Filippo had two children, the painter Filippino Lippi (b. ca. 1457) and a daughter Alessandra (b. 1465). The position of chaplain of that convent was taken over in 1466 by Lippi's pupil, Fra Diamante. The records reveal considerable outside activity during this same period while he was at work on the Prato frescos: for example, in 1454 he was called to Perugia to judge the newly completed frescos of Bonfigli; and in 1457-58 he conducted a correspondence with Giovanni di Cosimo Medici concerning an altar, probably executed in Florence, which was given to the king of Naples. In 1458 he was commissioned to complete an altarpiece (now in London) begun by Pesellino for Santa Trinitì in Pistoia, which was finished the next year and praised by the bishop of Prato as perfetta. Only after threats and considerable pressure from his ecclesiastical superior ( Bishop Donato de' Medici of Prato) were the frescos finally completed with Fra Diamante's help in 1464. The fresco project in Spoleto was taken over in 1466; the actual painting was begun in September 1468 and nearly completed by the time of his death (burial October 10, 1469), again with the help of Fra Diamante and Filippino. The final payment was made early the following year ( February 23, 1470) to Fra Diamante. Fra Filippo's teacher or the exact origins of his style are not clear, but his early works (i.e., before 1437) reveal a quite independent handling of the various influences of Gentile da Fabriano, Masolino, and Masaccio. The first of these (aside from the damaged fragments in Santa Maria del Carmine) is the tondo with the Adoration of the Magi (Cook Collection, Richmond) in which the late Gothic love of detail (e.g., in the meadows and animals) and the awkward recession of massed figures (the cavalcade at the right) seem to be done under the influence of Gentile's Adoration of 1423. The figure types and abstract architectural ruins suggest Masolino or Fra Angelico. The best example of his early work is the rather small altar panel of the Virgin Adoring the Child in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, signed Frater Philippus P. (the only panel signed), originally painted for the altar of the house chapel in the Medici palace and listed there in later inventories. The idea of an intimate devotional scene of the Virgin Mother kneeling in adoration before the Child is related to similar motifs of Lorenzo Monaco, as is the light and delicate coloration of the figures (particularly the light blue of the Virgin's mantle), the dark, romantic background of the forest interior. Further details of interest are the subdued perspective in the rocky background, the delicate use of decorative gold dots about the rays from the Dove, the inclusion of the infant St. John with his scroll and staff and the presence of an adoring monk suggestive of Fra Angelico's almost contemporary San Marco frescos. Two variations of this composition in the Uffizi were probably done somewhat earlier and were likewise originally Medici commissions, one from the Camaldolite monastery in the Casentino, the other from the Annalena convent in Florence. A similar Fra Angelico spirit may be found in the two lunettes of the London National Gallery depicting the Annunciation and a group of adoring saints. Fra Filippo's best known altarpiece and the one most characteristic of this period is the Coronation altar in the Uffizi. From the testament of Francesco Maringhi of July 28, 1441, the panel was begun that year for the high altar of Sant' Ambrogio in Florence. The last payment, and hence probably its completion, came in 1447. Its composition is a logical development over that of the Louvre altar: the triptych frame appears wider and more horizontal in proportions, the central group is placed further into the background behind a row of kneeling figures, the alternating rows of angels and saints with their decorative lilies are placed diagonally on either side of the throne rather than around it, and the centralized perspective with its relatively high eye level and point of flight takes the dominant form of a pyramid about which the figures are arranged. Two standing saints (St. Ambrose and St. John the Baptist) receive special emphasis on either side. Fra Filippo's own self-portrait is at the right, indicated by the scroll with the words is perfecit opus inscribed on it. To be noted again is the realistic emphasis on detail (seen in the designs of headdresses, brocades, the many garlands and lilies) and the realistic character of facial types, which leads one to believe that many of the figures are actual portraits (note the figures in the immediate foreground). The character of Lippi's third period is to be found in the Prato frescos and a number of small house altars. The finest of these is the tondo in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, representing the seated Madonna and scenes with the Birth of Mary and the Meeting of Joachim and Anna in the background. The picture and its date are associated with a document of August 8, 1452, from which the artist is required to complete a tondo panel with a Madonna for Leonardo Bartolini by December of that year. The style shows a certain clarification of the coarser and more realistic features of the earlier period into a new facial type which became almost the established norm for later fifteenth-century painters (Botticelli). Various figure compositions and poses are crystallized here for the first time (e.g., the moving basket carrier at the right). A new language is given to perspective, which may be noted in the separation of the several picture planes and spaces that recede from fore- to middle- and background, and from the right of the Virgin to the left and right again. In keeping with this, the arrangement of figures and scenes into three receding groups and the choice of genre details reveal the intimate, romantic, and narrative character of this peculiarly realistic survival of the Gothic style. A parallel to the Pitti tondo Madonna is the Virgin and Child with two angels in the Uffizi and the later Madonna in the Palazzo Riccardi.