Paintings in the 1430s

Nothing is known of Lippi's artistic origins and early style. The first information that can be offered falls into the 1430s. In 1432 Lippi probably painted a fresco in the cloister of Santa Maria del Carmine, the so-called Rules of the Carmelite Order, and in the same year he apparently left the convent permanently. A small cutdown painting of a Madonna and Child with Saints (in Empoli) has good claim to predate the Rules of the Carmelite Order and to be Lippi's. The picture is notably Masaccesque; recalling to a certain extent the central section of the Pisa Altarpiece, upon which Lippi may even have worked.

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 altarpiece, the Madonna Enthroned with Saints for the Barbadori family chapel in Santo Spirito, which he apparently finished during the following year.