LIPPI, Fra Filippo

Filippo Lippi (Filippo di Tommaso di Lippo), Florentine painter. He was brought up as an unwanted child in the Carmelite friary of the Carmine, where he took his vows in 1421. Unlike the Dominican Fra Angelico, however, Lippi was a reluctant friar and had a scandalous love affair with a nun, Lucrezia Buti, who bore his son Filippino and a daughter Alessandra. The couple was released from their vows and allowed to marry, but Lippi still signed himself "Frater Philippus". His biography (romantically embroidered to include capture by pirates) is one of the most colourful in Vasari's Lives and has given rise to the picture of a wordly Renaissance artist, rebelling against the discipline of the Church. He must certainly have had a more eventful life than most, but there is little documentary evidence of his character and personality.

Vasari writes that Lippi was inspired to become a painter by watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church, and his early work, notably the Tarquinia Madonna (Galleria Nazionale, Rome) is certainly overwhelmingly influenced by him. In 1432 Lippi probably painted a frescoGLOSSARYWall painting technique in which pigments are applied to wet (fresh) plaster (intonaco). The pigments bind with the drying plaster to form a very durable image. Only a small area can be painted in a day, and these areas, drying to a slightly different tint, can in time be seen. Small amounts of retouching and detail work could be carried out on the dry plaster, a technique known as a secco fresco. in the cloisterGLOSSARYquadrilateral enclosure surrounded by covered walkways, the centre of activity for the inhabitants of a monastery. of Santa Maria del Carmine, the so-called Rules of the Carmelite Order, and in the same year he apparently left the convent permanently.

He traveled to North Italy where he disseminated the latest Florentine discoveries and, at the same time, was open to the stylistic currents he found there. Lippi was in Padua in 1434 and perhaps earlier, where he was recorded together with Francesco Squarcione, the local painter and powerful personality. Back in Florence, he signed and dated the Tarquinia Madonna in 1437 and obtained an important commission for an altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about., the Madonna Enthroned with Saints (begun 1437, Louvre, Paris) for the Barbadori family chapelGLOSSARYa small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building. in Santo Spirito, which he apparently finished during the following year. Lippi's art, and probably this painting, are warmly praised by Domenico Veneziano in a letter of 1438 to Piero, son of Cosimo de' Medici, with whom Fra Filippo had close dealings. In 1442, with Medici support, Pope Eugenius IV awarded him an important benefice. A large payment was made in 1447 for St Bernard's Vision of the Virgin (The National GalleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen)., London), produced for the PalazzoGLOSSARYPalaces: large urban dwellings, 'palazzo' in Italian carries no regal connotations. Alberti described the palace as a city in little, and, like cities, Italian Renaissance palaces vary in type according to differences of climate, tradition and social structure. On to these regional stocks were grafted new architectural strains, reflecting theoretical reinterpretations of antiquity and individually influential examples. The atrium and peristyle house described by Vitruvius and now known from Pompeii did not survive antiquity, and much of the interest of Renaissance designs lies in creative misunderstandings of Vitruvius's text. Medieval palace architecture probably inherited the insula type of ancient apartment house, related to the modest strip dwellings which never disappeared from Italian cities. In Florence a merchant palace developed from fortified beginnings, with vaulted shop openings on the ground floor, and the main apartments above, reached by internal stone staircases opening from an inner court. Renaissance developments regularized without changing the essential type, although large cloister-like courtyards were introduced, while shops came to be thought undignified. At Michelozzo's Medici Palace (1444) a square arcaded courtyard with axial entrance lies behind a façade of graduated rustication, with biforate windows, a classical cornice replacing the traditional wooden overhang. The apartments on the 'piano nobile' formed interconnecting suites of rooms of diminishing size and increasing privacy. The classical orders which Alberti introduced to the façade of the Palazzo Rucellai (c.1453) were not taken up by the conservative Florentines, who continued to build variations on the Medici Palace (Palazzo Pitti; Palazzo Strozzi). In the 16th century rustication was reduced to quoins and voussoirs, and large windows appeared on the ground floor, 'kneeling' on elongated volutes. At Urbino the Ducal Palace (1465) reflected Alberti's recommendations for the princely palace, and was in turn influential on late 15th century palaces in Rome (e.g. the Cancelleria). A harmonious Florentine courtyard and ample staircase replace the embattled spaces of medieval seigneurial castles, of which vestiges remain only in the towers flanking the balconies of the duke's private apartments, designed as a scholarly retreat. In the absence of a merchant class or a cultured nobility in 15th century Rome, the architectural pace was set by the papal court. Papal incentives to build, and large households, meant less compact plans for cardinals' palaces, often built next to their titular churches. Renaissance forms appear in the unfinished courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia (1460s), with its arcade system derived from the nearby Theatre of Marcellus, and in the delicately ordered stonework of the Cancelleria (1485). In the 16th century vestigial corner towers and shops disappear from cardinals' palaces, and Antonio da Sangallo's Palazzo Farnese (1516) introduces symmetrical planning and Vitrivuan elements, like the colonnaded vestibule, behind a sober Florentine façade, enlivened by Michelangelo's cornice. A smaller palace type supplied the needs of an enlarged papal bureaucracy, more ambitious for display than for domestic accommodation. Bramante's 'House of Raphael' sets the façade style not only for this new type, but also for Renaissance houses all over Europe. Raphael and Peruzzi made ingenious use of difficult sites (Palazzo da Brescia; Palazzo Massimi), and their sophisticated façades flattered the architectural pretensions of patron and pope (e.g. Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila). Movement of patrons and architects, especially after the Sack of Rome, meant a diffusion of Roman forms to central and northern Italy, where Sanmicheli's palaces in Verona, and Palladio's in Vicenza, adapted Roman types to suit local conditions. Palladio's 4-columned atrium is a Vitruvian solution to the traditionally wide Veneto entrance hall, and his plan for the Palazzo da Porto-Festa contains explicit references to Vitruvius's House of the Greeks. In Venice, defended by its lagoon and a stable political system, the hereditary aristocracy built palaces open to trade and festivity on the Grand Canal. The traditional Venetian palace has a tripartite structure: long central halls above entrance vestibules used for unloading merchandise are lit on the canal façade by clusters of glazed windows (rare elsewhere), and at the back from small courts with external staircases (as in the Ca' d'Oro). Codussi's palaces introduced biforate windows and a grid of classical orders into the system, while Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro retains vestiges of the Venetian type (small courtyard; tripartite façade) despite its Bramantesque coupled orders and licentious window surrounds. Other cities, like Genoa, evolved influential types. Through engravings and the illustrated treatises, Italian Renaissance ideas of palace planning, originally evolved in response to specific conditions, came to be applied all over Europe. della SignoriaGLOSSARYfrom the late Middle Ages, the governing body of some of the Italian city states, usually presided over by individual families., as well as final payments for the Coronation of the Virgin, made for Sant'Ambrogio, which was commissioned in 1441.

From about 1440, however, his style changed direction, becoming more linear and preoccupied with decorative motifs - thin, fluttering draperies, brocades, etc. Lippi is associated particularly with paintings of the Virgin and Child, which are sometimes in the form of tondi, a format he was among the first to use - a beautiful example, showing the wistful delicacy and exquisite pale lighting that characterizes his best works, is in the Pitti, Florence. Another formal innovation with which Lippi is closely associated is the "sacra conversazioneGLOSSARYA representation of the Virgin and Child attended by saints. There is seldom a literal conversation depicted, though as the theme developed the interaction between the participants - expressed through gesture, glance and movement - greatly increased. The saints depicted are usually the saint the church or altar is dedicated to, local saints, or those chosen by the patron who commissioned the work." - his Barbadori Altarpiece is sometimes claimed as the earliest example of the type.

Fra Filippo began to fresco the enormous choirGLOSSARYthe part of a church interior, usually raised and set apart from the rest of the church, reserved for the clergy to pray together, or for choral singing. Since Carolingian times, "choir" has been the word for the part of the central nave of the church extending over the crossing (the place where nave and transept intersect), and including the apse (a niche in the wall, roofed with a half dome) that often stands at the end of this area. of the CathedralGLOSSARYThe principal church of a province or diocese, where the throne of the bishop is placed. For reasons lost to time and tradition, a cathedral always faces west - toward the setting sun. The altar is placed at the east end. The main body, or nave, of the cathedral is usually divided into one main and two side aisles. These lead up to the north and south transepts, or arms of the cross, the shape in which a cathedral is usually formed. of Prato in 1452 (after Fra Angelico had turned down the assignment). He was aided by his chief assistant of the period, Fra Diamante; the work dragged on for years. As a fresco painter Lippi's finest achievement is this cycle on the lives of Sts Stephen and John the Baptist (1452-65). In Prato Lippi also obtained a number of other assignments and purchased a house there in 1455. He is nominated chaplain in the nunnery of Santa Margherita in Prato.

By 1458 he completed a painting for the king of Naples, a commission negotiated by the Medici, for whom Filippo produced an Adoration of the Child (now lost) in 1459. In spite of his secular activities, Filippo's late works are infused with religious feeling and are far more lyrical than the early ones. The Nativities in Florence, in Berlin, and in Florence, as well as the Madonna and Child in Florence are examples.

By 1466 he had put the finishing touches on the frescoes in Prato; in the previous year negotiations had been underway for him to fresco the choir of the Cathedral of Spoleto in Umbria. The actual painting began in 1467 with the assistance of Fra Diamante, who completed the work about the time of Lippi's death in 1469. Despite the wishes of the Florentines, who wanted him to be interred in his native city, Fra Filippo was buried in Spoleto, where there is a monument dedicated to him in the Cathedral with an inscription by the humanist poet Angelo Poliziano.

Filippo Lippi was not dedicated to the study of nature firsthand; instead, he depended largely upon painted and sculptured prototypes, and his figures are often inorganic and unanatomical, rendered without an ultimate conviction for their three-dimensional presence. Nor was Filippo deeply motivated by a desire to imitate antiquity; there are remarkably few paraphrases from ancient sculpture, and when isolated, they appear to have been achieved indirectly, filtered through Donatello or Luca della Robbia.

For the most part his painted architecture, the buildings he invented, cannot even vaguely be reconstructed. Like Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi was taken with landscape, and he was successful in this genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. in the backgrounds of many pictures; but his world is predominantly fantasy, accentuated by an unnaturalistic palette. Lippi, however, had moments of the greatest power, like the frescoes in Prato, which stand among the finest and most eloquent statements of the age.

Lippi was highly regarded in his day (he was patronized by the Medici, who came to his aid when he was imprisoned and tortured for alleged fraud) and his influence is seen in the work of numerous artists, most notably Botticelli, who was probably his pupil. Four centuries later he was one of the major sources for the second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism.