_Fra Filippo Lippi_ (Florentine: about 1406-1469).
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!...
Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so....
For me, I think I speak as I was taught;
I always see the garden and God there
A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,
The value and significance of flesh,
I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards....
Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,
Left foot and right foot, go a double step,
Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,
Both in their order?
BROWNING: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.
This and the companion picture by the same artist (667) were
painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's
crest--three feathers tied together in a ring), and are
identified with a story told by Vasari, which Browning worked
up in his poem on the artist. 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. At the age of fourteen or fifteen
he was induced to take the vows of the order. At this time he
must have seen Masaccio painting in the famous Branacci chapel
of the conventual church, S. M. del Carmine. Lippi himself
executed some works (now destroyed) in the church, and having
by this time found his true vocation, he was in 1431 permitted
to leave the convent in order to be free to practise his art.
Vasari relates that during an excursion on the Adriatic, Lippi
was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. But after a while
he found opportunity to draw a whole-length portrait of his
master with charcoal on a white wall, which the pirates deemed
so marvellous that they set him at liberty. This tale, however,
is inconsistent with the facts of Lippi's life as now known
from documentary evidence. Lippi enjoyed the patronage of the
Medici, and he received sinecure offices also from the Pope.
During the years 1431-53 many of his best panel pictures were
painted. Among these may be mentioned the "Coronation of the
Virgin" (Academy, Florence), in which is introduced a portrait
of himself with the tonsure, and bearing a scroll inscribed
_Is perfecit opus_, and the "Virgin adoring the Infant, borne
by two Angels" (Uffizi), which was selected by Ruskin for
one of his four "Lesson Photographs," and is fully described
by him in _Fors_, 1875, p. 307. At the end of the period in
question Lippi undertook the principal work of his life, which
occupied him for several years, the series of frescoes in the
choir of the Duomo at Prato. "These magnificent paintings,"
says Morelli, "were executed at about the same time as those
equally celebrated by Mantegna in the Cappella degli Eremitani
at Padua. Whoever would learn to know the aspirations and
artistic power of that period in the highest utterances, has
only to study those two wall-paintings. If we are carried away
by Fra Filippo's grandeur of conception and his pure dramatic
vividness, we are enthralled, on the other hand, by Mantegna's
greater fulness of expression and his perfect execution"
(_German Galleries_, p. 71). While engaged on these frescoes,
the friar-painter was appointed chaplain to the convent of
Santa Margherita. Here he became enamoured of one of the nuns,
Lucrezia Buti, and having persuaded the abbess to let Lucrezia
sit to him for a study of the Madonna, he carried her off
to his house. She remained with him for two years, and bore
him a son, the renowned painter, Filippino Lippi (293). Her
portrait is to be seen in the Virgin of the "Assumption," now
in the Communal Gallery at Prato. She was induced to return to
the convent, and took fresh vows, but again escaped to seek
the friar's protection. The scandal now became serious, and
Filippo was threatened with punishment. But Cosmo de' Medici
intervened, and the Pope issued a bull releasing the erring
pair from their vows and sanctioning their marriage. Lippi's
last work was a series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo
at Spoleto. Here he died, from an illness ascribed by some to
poison, leaving the work to be finished by his assistant, Fra
Diamante. He was buried in the Duomo. Over his tomb Lorenzo de'
Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote
Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of the friar-painter.
"His art," says Ruskin, "is the finest, out and out, that
ever monk did, which I attribute myself to what is usually
considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty
novice out of a convent.... The real gist of the matter is that
Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the
Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only
lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them--and too
foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person"[163]
(_Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii. 4; _Ariadne Florentina_, vi.
§ 5 _n._). In other words, Lippi, while true to his religion,
did not shut himself out from the world--to use the theological
language, he "sanctified," not "crucified," the flesh. His
pictures are "nobly religious work,--examples of the most
perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human
nature yet produced in this world" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p.
187). "The human element, with him so naïve and spontaneous,
gives," says Burton, "a singular charm to his works. His
colour is golden and broad, and his drapery finely cast and of
fascinatingly broken tones." Among his pupils (besides his son)
were Pesellino and Botticelli.
Here the traditional legend of the Annunciation is faithfully adhered
to, and there is much "unusually mystic spiritualism of conception" in
the dove, the Spirit of God, proceeding in rays of golden light from
the hand of an unseen Presence; but the painter delights to elaborate
also every element of human interest and worldly beauty. Note, for
instance, the prettiness of the angel's face, the gracefulness of
his figure, the sheen of his wings, and the dainty splendour of the
Virgin's chamber.