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Fra' Filippo Lippi (1406 October 8, 1469), also called Lippo Lippi,
was an Italian painter of the Italian Quattrocento (15th century)
school.
Lippi was born in Florence to Tommaso, a butcher. Both his parents died
when he was still a child. Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, took charge of the
boy.In 1420 he was registered in the community of the Carmelite friars
of the Carmine in Florence, where remained until 1432, taking the
Carmelite vows in 1421 when he was sixteen.[1] In his Lives of the
Artists, Vasari says: "Instead of studying, he spent all his time
scrawling pictures on his own books and those of others," The prior
decided to give him the opportunity to learn painting. Eventually Fra
Filippo quit the monastery, but it appears 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.
In 1452 he was appointed chaplain to the convent of S. Giovannino in
Florence, and in 1457 rector (Rettore Commendatario) of S. Quirico in
Legania, and made occasional, considerable profits; but his poverty
seems chronic, his money being spent, according to one account, in
frequent amours. Vasari relates some romantic adventures of Fra Filippo
that modern biographers are not inclined to believe. Except through
Vasari, nothing is known of his visits to Ancona and Naples, nor of his
capture by Barbary pirates and enslavement in Barbary, where his skill
in portrait-sketching helped to release him. From 1431 to 1437 his
career is not accounted for.
In June 1456 Fra Filippo is recorded as living in Prato (near Florence)
to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral. In 1458, while engaged
in this work, he set about painting a picture for the convent chapel of
S. Margherita of Prato, where he met 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 for the figure of the Madonna (or perhaps S.
Margherita); he made passionate love to her, abducted her to his own
house, and kept her there despite the nuns' efforts to reclaim her.
The result was their son Filippino Lippi, who became a painter no less
famous than his father. Such is Vasari's narrative, published less than a
century after the alleged events; it is not refuted by saying, more
than three centuries later, that perhaps Lippo had nothing to do with
any such Lucrezia, and perhaps Lippino was his adopted son, or only an
ordinary relative and scholar. The argument that two reputed portraits
of Lucrezia in paintings by Lippo are not alike, one as a Madonna in a
very fine picture in the Pitti gallery, and the other in the same
character in a Nativity in the Louvre, comes to very little; and it is
reduced to nothing when the disputant adds that the Louvre painting is
probably not done by Lippi at all[clarify]. Besides, it appears more
likely that not the Madonna in the Louvre but a S. Margaret in a picture
now in the Gallery of Prato is the original portrait (according to
tradition) of Lucrezia Buti.
The frescoes in the choir of Prato cathedral, which depict the stories
of St John the Baptist and St Stephen 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.
On the end wall of the choir are S. Giovanni Gualberto and S. Alberto,
while the vault has monumental representations of the four evangelists.
The close of Lippi's life was spent at Spoleto, where he had been
commissioned to paint, for the apse of the cathedral, scenes from the
life of the Virgin. In the semidome of the apse is Christ crowning the
Madonna, with angels, sibyls and prophets. This series, which is not
wholly equal to the one at Prato, was completed by Fra Diamante after
Lippi's death. That Lippi died in Spoleto, on or about the 8th of
October 1469, is a fact; the mode of his death is a matter of dispute.
It has been said that the pope granted Lippi a dispensation for marrying
Lucrezia, but before the permission arrived, Lippi had been poisoned by
the indignant relatives of either Lucrezia herself or 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 age of fifty-two seems
hardly plausible. Fra Filippo lies buried in Spoleto, with a monument
erected to him by Lorenzo the Magnificent; he had always been zealously
patronized by the Medici family, beginning with Cosimo de Medici.
Francesco di Pesello (called Pesellino) and Sandro Botticelli were among
his most distinguished pupils.
The altarpiece Lippi painted in 1441 for the nuns of S. Ambrogio is now a
prominent attraction in the Academy of Florence, and was celebrated in
Browning's well-known poem. It represents the coronation of the Virgin
among angels and saints, including many Bernardine monks. One of these,
placed to the right, is a half-length portrait of Lippo, pointed out by
the inscription perfecit opus upon an angel's scroll. The price paid for
this work in 1447 was 1200 Florentine lire, which seems surprisingly
large.
For Germiniano Inghirami of Prato he painted the Death of St. Bernard.
His principal altarpiece in this city is a Nativity in the refectory of
S. Domenico the Infant 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. In the Uffizi is a fine
Virgin adoring the infant Christ, who is held by two angels; in the
National Gallery, London, a Vision of St Bernard. The picture of the
Virgin and Infant with an Angel, in this same gallery, also ascribed to
Lippi, is disputable.
Filippo Lippi died in 1469 while working on the frescos Storie della
Vergine (Scenes of the life of the Virgin Mary, 1467 - 1469) in the apse
of the Spoleto Cathedral. The Frescos show the Annunciation, the
Funeral, the Adoration of the Child and the Coronation of the Virgin. A
group of bystanders at the Funeral includes a self-portrait of Lippi
together with his son Fillipino and his helpers Fra Diamante and Pier
Matteo d'Amelia. Lippi was buried on the right side of the transept.
The frescos were completed by Filippino Lippi, who also designed the
funerary monument for his father. Although it was commissioned by
Lorenzo de Medici it was not actually made until 1490 by an unknown
Florentine sculptor |
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