Filippino Lippi: An Abundance of Invention (Renaissance Lives) 9781789146011, 1789146011

Citation preview

filippino lippi

☞ Books in the renaissance

live s series explore and illustrate the life histories and achievements of significant artists, rulers, intellectuals and scientists in the early modern world. They delve into literature, philos­ophy, the history of art, science and natural history and cover narratives of exploration, statecraft and technology. Series Editor: François Quiviger Already published Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe Mary D. Garrard Blaise Pascal: Miracles and Reason Mary Ann Caws Botticelli: Artist and Designer Ana Debenedetti Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity Troy Thomas Donatello and the Dawn of Renaissance Art A. Victor Coonin Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Spirit of a Scholar William Barker Filippino Lippi: An Abundance of Invention Jonathan K. Nelson Giorgione’s Ambiguity Tom Nichols Hans Holbein: The Artist in a Changing World Jeanne Nuechterlein Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares Nils Büttner Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy Niccolò Guicciardini John Donne: In the Shadow of Religion Andrew Hadfield John Evelyn: A Life of Domesticity John Dixon Hunt Leonardo da Vinci: Self, Art and Nature François Quiviger Leon Battista Alberti: The Chameleon's Eye Caspar Pearson Machiavelli: From Radical to Reactionary Robert Black Michelangelo and the Viewer in His Time Bernadine Barnes Paracelsus: An Alchemical Life Bruce T. Moran Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer Christopher S. Celenza Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist Machtelt Brüggen Israëls Pieter Bruegel and the Idea of Human Nature Elizabeth Alice Honig Raphael and the Antique Claudia La Malfa Rembrandt’s Holland Larry Silver Rubens’s Spirit: From Ingenuity to Genius Alexander Marr Salvator Rosa: Paint and Performance Helen Langdon Titian’s Touch: Art, Magic and Philosophy Maria H. Loh Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the Heavens John Robert Christianson

FILIPPINO L IPPI An Abundance of Invention j onat h a n k . n e l s o n

R E A K T ION B O OK S

For Silvia

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2022 Copyright © Jonathan K. Nelson 2022 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78914 601 1

cover: Filippino Lippi, Wounded Chiron, mid-1490s, oil and tempera on wood. Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, photo Bridgeman Images.

contents

1 Design as Problem-Solving 7 2 Inventing a Personal Style, Late 1470s–Early 1480s 39 3 ‘Sweet’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli, 1484–94 67 4 Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel, 1488–93 97 5 ‘Appearances are often deceiving’ in the Strozzi Chapel, 1487–1502 129 6 Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion, 1494–1504 161 Epilogue: Filippino Rediscovered 195 chronology 199 References 204 select bibliography 234 Acknowledgements 240 photo acknowledgements 241 Index 243

one

Design as Problem-Solving

A

few decades after the death of Filippino Lippi (Prato c. 1457–Florence 1504), authors celebrated not only the beauty and verisimilitude of his works – these were then standard terms of praise – but his creativity.1 The ‘Anonimo Magliabechiano’, an unidentified Florentine, wrote in the mid-1540s about the ‘most beautiful adornments, and various bizarre and fantastic things’ in the chapel of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, in the Roman church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.2 This appreciation might refer to Filippino’s all’antica decorations of the framing elements, which also enchanted Giorgio Vasari. In his Life of Filippino, published in 1550, Vasari wrote that ‘such was the ingenuity (ingegno) of Filipp[in]o, and so abundant his invention in painting, and so bizarre and new were his ornaments, that he was the first who showed to the moderns the new method of giving variety to vestments.’3 At this date ingegno expressed innate intelligence, inventiveness and resourcefulness, and it is often translated as talent or ingenuity. 4 The latter term captures a central theme of this volume: Filippino’s pictorial intelligence, and his resourcefulness in creating visual and iconographic solutions to artistic problems. For Vasari, ‘it was a marvellous thing to see the strange fancies (capricci) that he 1 Filippino Lippi, Vision of St Bernard, 1484–5, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

8

expressed in painting.’5 The author included both passages about Filippino in his extended and highly accurate Life of 1568, our main source of information about the artist. Paintings mentioned by Vasari or other early sources that are also attributed to Filippino by modern specialists can be described as ‘secure’. The chapters that follow focus primarily on these secure works in an exploration of Filippino’s creativity, starting with three examples below: his first major altarpiece, the Vision of St Bernard; his self-fashioning in the Double Portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino Lippi; and his innovative (but undocumented) secular work the Wounded Chiron. Although book-length studies of an artist typically start with the earliest works, that standard approach creates a methodological problem for Filippino and many of his contemporaries. More information is available about the life and work of Filippino than virtually any other major artist active in fifteenth-century Florence, but the lack of documented works from the first decade or so of his career has led specialists to debate attributions and dates for well over a century. In Chapter Two, after establishing the distinctive qualities running through Filippino’s secure early works, we can see how the artist invented a personal style. Filippino’s first major work in Florence, the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, decorated in the early 1480s, together with several panel paintings from this period, shed light on the artist’s design principles. These provide a solid basis for reconsidering Filippino’s artistic origins as a student of Sandro Botticelli and the vexed question of the contributions of both artists to undocumented paintings illustrating the stories of Esther, Lucretia and Virginia. Chapter Three focuses on a small

9

Design as Problem-Solving

number of secure altarpieces from the 1480s, seen from the perspective of a letter from 1493. This intriguing text contrasts the ‘virile’ and ‘sweet’ air found in paintings by the four major painters then active in Florence: Botticelli, Filippino, Pietro Perugino and Domenico Ghirlandaio. The Carafa Chapel, explored in Chapter Four, represents a turning point in Filippino’s development: the presence of all’antica elements and monumentality, combined with dramatic motion and emotion, reveals how the artist reinvented himself during his Roman sojourn (1488–93). Filippino returned to Florence in 1493, and between 1494 and 1502 he painted the chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella, the subject of Chapter Five. This fresco cycle abounds in invention, as the term was defined by the ancient architect Vitruvius (ii.2): ‘the solving of intricate problems and the discovery of new principles by means of brilliancy and versatility’.6 Chapter Six looks at Filippino’s major altarpieces after his return from Rome until his death in 1504, when his style ranged from highly ornate works for various supporters of the Medici family, overflowing with charming details, to solemn altarpieces designed to stir the emotions of visitors, including some for followers of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola. A short epilogue considers the rediscovery of Filippino in the nineteenth century, when Algernon Charles Swinburne celebrated the artist’s gifts ‘of variety, of flexible emotion, of inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy’. Two related features appear frequently in Filippino’s works. First, vision often takes on the role of protagonist, as in his first major altarpiece, the Vision of St Bernard (illus. 1), from the mid-1480s. Figures in Filippino’s paintings read

filippino lippi

10

books with absorption or gaze intensely, activities that rivet our own attention. Second, the painter often highlights the artifice of his works, encouraging the beholder to perceive them as constructed visions, not windows to the natural world. For example, Filippino uses his mastery of perspective to confound our expectations in the San Gimignano Annunciation (1483–4; illus. 2), and later the Carafa Chapel. This approach triumphs in the Strozzi Chapel, where many ingenious details draw the viewer’s attention to different ways of looking.

11

Design as Problem-Solving

In a period when nearly all paintings were made on commission, except for small Madonnas or Crucifixions, Filippino was unusually sensitive to requests made by patrons. This helps us to understand both his great stylistic range and his extraordinary popularity. In an epigram dedicated to ‘Floren­ tine painters and sculptors worthy of being compared to the ancient Greeks’, written in the 1480s, the humanist Ugolino Verino praised Filippino above all others, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci.7 From the time Filippino left for Rome in 1488 until his death sixteen years later, he remained one

2 Filippino Lippi, Annunciation, 1483–4, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

12

of the most sought-after and praised painters in central Italy. His patrons wanted successful artistic solutions that met their needs. Typically, the person who commissioned Filippino established the general subject, size, setting and medium for a painting, and often additional details, such as inscriptions. Artists had to follow the unwritten but fundamental rules governing the appropriateness of style and actions – decorum, in the ancient sense of the term – for the subject. Filippino’s approach recalls what the twentieth-century designer Charles Eames considered one of the few effective solutions to a design problem: the ability ‘to recognize as many constraints as possible [and] the willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints’.8 Like that modern master, Filippino’s artistic intelligence allowed him to design novel solutions for different projects. In hundreds of surviving drawings, themselves often highly dynamic works of art, Filippino evinces his willingness and enthusiasm to work within constraints.9 In the 1480s Antonio Manetti indicated an appreciation for problem-solving when he wrote that ‘everyone’ who saw Filippo Brunelleschi’s trial relief for the Florence Baptistry door ‘was astonished and marvelled at the problems he had set himself’.10 The problems and solutions found in the Carafa and Strozzi chapels must have stimulated similar reactions. Two unusual decisions by patrons – the double dedication of the Roman chapel, and the lack of an altarpiece in the Florentine one – forced Filippino to seek out imaginative solutions for the end walls, thus creating two of the most original frescoes of the late Quattrocento. For many works, however, we have no reason to believe that Filippino’s artistic solutions reflect the explicit or

13

Design as Problem-Solving

perceived requests of patrons. Consider the Deposition altarpiece (see illus. 70) for the Servite church of the ss Annunziata, which Filippino left unfinished at his death in 1504. The attention to the mechanics of lowering Christ has clear precedents in Crucifixion scenes in the Brancacci Chapel (illus. 3) from the 1480s and the Strozzi Chapel painted a decade later (see illus. 50). It seems most unlikely that the friars specified these frescoes as prototypes for the Deposition. Filippino was following his aesthetic sensibility. The notion of artistic free­­ dom, so appealing to modern readers, already appears in a letter of 1506 about the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini, who had objected to the abundant written instructions supplied by his patron Isabella d’Este. ‘He is accustomed’, the scholarpoet Pietro Bembo explained, ‘always to wander at will in his paintings so that they will satisfy both himself and the viewer.’11 But Filippino, in common with nearly all artists of his day, rarely wandered at will. According to the view articulated by the architect Filarete, in his treatise from the 1460s, the patron of a building, like a father, had to ‘conceive’ the original idea for a new project, then the mother-architect gestated the seed for seven to nine months, using his imagination and intelligence to produce various designs.12 Before ‘giving birth’ to many of his paintings, Filippino had numerous exchanges with patrons over months or years, and sometimes drawings and documents allow us to verify this interaction. In other cases, patrons may have indicated iconographic models, and certainly approved final projects, but rarely engaged in micromanaging stylistic questions. To see how Filippino responded to design problems, we can look at a wide range of sources, beyond his drawings, both

filippino lippi

14

within and outside archives. Starting in the early 1480s, nearly all his major paintings are signed, dated, documented or mentioned by early sources. This plethora of documents, combined with close visual analyses, leads to an unexpected conclusion: Filippino’s works from the same time often look quite different. The following chapters generally proceed chronologically but without any suggestion of increased skill. Nevertheless, in the earliest works attributed to Filippino, the artist does not draw attention to the act of looking or to the artificiality of his creations. Moreover, before he arrived in Rome, Filippino’s figures rarely exhibit monumentality (the Rucellai altarpiece being an exception), but this quality, together with intense emotion, appears often in paintings and drawings made after 1488. 3 Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion of St Peter, early to mid-1480s, fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Florence.

15

Design as Problem-Solving

Viewers often seek the reasons for such transformations in an artist’s private life, but the attempts to tease Filippino’s personality out of his paintings have led to radically different results. In 1861 the American collector James Jackson Jarves noted with pleasure that Filippino’s paintings ‘indicate industry, sincerity, and careful study’, but 25 years earlier, in a very popular manual on Christian art, the French author AlexisFrançois Rio had lamented the artist’s lack of sincerity.13 These and countless other passages by modern scholars blur a fundamental distinction between an artistic personality, as perceived in a few famous works, and a historical figure. In an essay written in the 1890s, Marcel Proust observed that ‘a book is the product of a self other than that which we display in our habits, in company, in our vices.’14 As for the historical figure of Filippino, we know that he was born in Prato in about 1457 to a nun, Lucrezia Buti, and the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, but lived primarily in Florence, where until 1488 he regularly attended meetings at the religious confraternity of St Paul.15 In 1494 he married Maddalena Monti, with whom he had three sons. The eldest, Roberto (1500–1574), also became an artist, but his only surviving work is an unpublished sketch of his family tree.16 For the tiny medallion with an image of Filippino, Roberto turned to the self-portrait that his father had included in the Brancacci Chapel, at the far right of the Disputation with Simone Magus (illus. 4). The fresco also served as the basis for the portrait of Filippino in the 1568 edition of Vasari’s Lives. The author knew Roberto from the Accademia del Disegno, and Filippino’s son must have provided details for Vasari’s biography. We thus have a wealth of information about Filippino’s habits,

filippino lippi

16

company and apparent lack of vices, but this volume focuses instead on his artistic self. One precious document that does provide insight into Filippino’s aesthetic interests and cultural world is the inventory taken of his home and workshop soon after his death, of heart failure, in 1504.17 In addition to tantalizing records of unfinished paintings and account books, now lost or untraced, we discover that Filippino filled his living quarters with objects that reveal his taste – also found in many late paintings – for crystal and gems (‘a pendant with a flat balas-ruby and beryl above’), and precious metals (‘six small silver spoons with a gilded pomegranate on top’). He also owned eleven volumes. One of these, Boccaccio’s Decameron, was listed as printed and two others as handwritten: Dante’s Divine Comedy, on parchment, and Livy’s History of Rome. Although we do not know if the other eight volumes were published or manuscripts, we can – aside from a ‘book on geometry’– identify the texts. For his reading pleasure, Filippino had four books written in the vernacular: ‘Poggio’s book’, probably an Italian translation of Poggio Bracciolini’s Facetiae, filled with amusing and occasionally risqué stories; Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the most popular poetry collection of the day; Boccaccio’s Ninfale fiesolano, a short work in prose; and Dante’s Convivio, popular also with artists because of its encyclopaedic range of learning.18 These titles, the Divine Comedy and the Decameron appear regularly in contemporary inventories of Florentine merchants, but Filippino’s small library held a few surprises. The ‘little book of the Sibyls’ is probably Filippo Barbieri’s Opuscula dedicated to the ancient prophetesses, given that Carafa was one of the dedicatees of the first edition (Rome, 1481). The

17

Design as Problem-Solving

vault of his chapel is adorned with four Sibyls, each holding a scroll with a text derived from Barbieri’s book.19 Most probably, the cardinal gave Filippino the book about Sibyls, perhaps together with Livy’s History, a source for the Stories of Virginia scenes in Carafa’s burial chamber.20 Other than these books, our main source of information about Filippino’s tastes and interests are his works. But what does it mean to say that a painting is a ‘Filippino’?21 If we sub­­stitute his name with, say, Édouard Manet, we mean that the artist alone conceived and executed the work. In Filippino’s day, however, all but the smallest paintings were 4 Filippino Lippi, Disputation with Simone Magus, early to mid-1480s, fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Florence.

filippino lippi

18

made with workshop assistance. The contract drawn up in 1487 between the painter and Filippo Strozzi provides insight into the fifteenth-century approach to authorship. This agreement obliged the painter to carry out the fresco decoration of the banker’s chapel, ‘entirely with his own hand and especially the figures’.22 For modern readers, the first phrase seems self-explanatory and in contrast with the second one. The patron, an astute and highly successful banker, wanted to minimize the risk familiar to anyone ordering a specialized service from a busy and famous provider. Although Strozzi expected Filippino’s assistants to carry out part of the work, he contractually limited their contribution to nonfigural areas. The phrase ‘with his own hand’ was a legal formula that prohibited the artist from subcontracting the work and bound him to complete the painting in his workshop.23 Collaborators must have assisted Filippino in painting the Strozzi Chapel, as was the norm. Patrons who offered above-average compensation might expect or demand that a higher percentage of the work be carried out by the master. In the Strozzi Chapel, however, Filippino decided that he was being underpaid for the frescoes. In 1497 the artist stopped working on them and demanded additional compensation, which he received. Nevertheless, scholars have not identified any areas carried out by Filippino’s students in this fresco cycle, aside from the window jambs, or in any documented altarpieces from the 1480s. This type of assistance in Filippino’s paintings differs fundamentally from the many copies and variations of the master’s creations that were carried out by his workshop. Even a replica by the master himself could not rival the original, according to Vasari. In the life of Filippino,

19

Design as Problem-Solving

we read that ‘for his friend Piero del Pugliese, he painted a scene with little figures, executed with so much art and diligence that when another citizen requested another one like it, he refused, saying that it was not possible to do it.’24 In his short discussion of Filippino’s students, Vasari mentions a certain Niccolò ‘Cartoni’. The nickname means ‘cartoons’, in the sense of scaled drawings, and might suggest that ‘Copycat Nick’ was known for his excessive use of these tools. He might be identifiable with the ‘Master of Memphis’, a student of Filippino so called for his major altarpiece now in Memphis, St Francis in Glory.25 Although this might reflect a lost painting by Filippino, it is probably based on an ‘autograph’ drawing, that is, one by the master’s hand.26 Vasari mentioned another student, Raffaellino del Garbo, who became a noteworthy artist in his own right.27 Together with other pupils and followers from outside the workshop, Niccolò and Raffaellino must have produced some of the countless copies of Filippino’s autograph works. A fascinating but undocumented series of Moses paintings reveals the impossibility of fully understanding how Filippino’s workshop operated. The master must have painted the head of the prophet in Moses Strikes the Rock (see illus. 57), but no other figures in the painting evince the rich modelling, precise outline and intense emotion found here.28 The rest of the panel was executed by the Master of Memphis, who also made the extant composition drawing; this must be a copy of a lost original sheet by Filippino. On the reverse side of the cartoon, Filippino himself drew a composition sketch of the Trial of the Young Moses. Another painting from the series, the Adoration of the Golden Calf (see illus. 56), is entirely by the

filippino lippi

20

Master of Memphis but undoubtedly based on drawings by Filippino, known today from copies probably made by Giuliano da Sangallo. A newly discovered painting by the Master of Memphis depicts The Submersion of Pharaoh. This variation on Biagio d’Antonio’s Sistine Chapel fresco does not seem to reflect any drawings by Filippino.29 The cycle was most probably begun in the early 1500s, and at least this third panel was completed after Filippino’s death in 1504. To complicate matters, the Apollo and Daphne Master painted a Trial of the Young Moses that resembles Filippino’s composition, as well as a Submersion of Pharoah based closely on the Sistine Chapel prototype. This artist, perhaps Botticelli’s student Giovanni di Benedetto Cianfanini, borrowed details and compositions from many painters.30 Although he was not part of Filippino’s workshop, he must have had access to drawings or studied a now lost painting of the Trial. The two paintings by the Apollo and Daphne Master differ in dimension and support from the three by the Master of Memphis, and must belong to a separate series. These considerations lead to a more general definition of authorship. In this volume, ‘Filippino’ refers to a painting produced in the master’s workshop, following drawings made by the artist, and carried out in large part by Filippino himself but often with sections painted by students. If students painted major sections of a painting, it is ascribed to ‘Filippino and workshop’, such as an undocumented variation on the Rucellai altarpiece, painted in collaboration with Raffaellino, or Moses Strikes the Rock.31 ‘Workshop of Filippino’ indicates that a student carried out the entire painting, such as a version of the Deposition by the Master of Memphis (see illus. 71). The

21

Design as Problem-Solving

distinctions between the three categories are far more fluid than most art historians would care to admit. Moreover, any work produced under the master’s direct supervision was most likely considered to be a ‘Filippino’ by his contemporaries. One example of these difficulties is the portrait depicting Piero del Pugliese, patron of the Badia altarpiece, together with Filippino (illus. 5).32 This fascinating work, a rare example of a double por­­trait in Renaissance Italy, and the first surviving one to show an artist and patron, also reveals Filippino’s ingenuity. For more than thirty years I questioned the attribution to Filippino, in large part because of the odd proportions of the figures and their abrupt juxtaposition. Nevertheless, two poems about a double portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino, written by the humanist Alessandro Braccesi between 1484 and 1487 and addressed to Cristoforo Landino, must refer to the damaged panel now in Denver, unless this is 5 Filippino Lippi, Piero del Pugliese with Filippino Lippi, c. 1486, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

22

a workshop copy of a lost original. Braccesi accepted the small painting as a work by Filippino and we should do the same. Behind the two figures, Filippino depicted a bookshelf with an open volume, the highly abraded text of which shows a verse from a canzone by Dante, ‘The sweet rhymes of love.’33 The painting reflects the intense interest in the poet in the late Quattrocento, when many editions and manuscript copies of Dante’s Rime appeared. The first publication of the Divine Comedy in Florence, in 1481, constituted a major cultural event. Landino’s introduction, his detailed philological and platonic commentary, and a series of engravings, several based on drawings by Botticelli, transformed this volume into a deluxe edition. A few fifteenth-century representations of Dante included passages from the Comedy, which served to identify the sitter, but not from a canzone. The verse found in the Double Portrait, and especially the line ‘Nobility resides wherever virtue is’ (È gentilezza dovunqu’è vertute), provided learned viewers with a key to interpreting the unusual imagery. Cristoforo Landino analysed this line in his treatise on the true nature of nobility, completed by 1487 but probably begun a few years earlier. He explained that Dante had discussed the canzone in the last section of the Convivio and presented the verses as a demonstration that true nobility is not an inherited trait restricted to the aristocracy. The Double Portrait flattered Piero del Pugliese, a successful businessman of modest origins, by suggesting that he, too, was noble, thanks to the cultural activities he promoted. He not only commissioned numerous paintings but owned many important manuscripts, one of which appears in Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard.34 Perhaps Piero, whom Vasari described as a friend of Filippino, even gave the

23

Design as Problem-Solving

painter the copy of the Convivio that later appeared in his inventory. Before exploring the creation of the Double Portrait, we can briefly consider an undocumented painting of a young man holding a lyre, generally attributed to Filippino in the 6 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Canterino, mid- to late 1480s, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

24

mid-1480s, which also includes a shelf laden with objects and a key inscription from a fourteenth-century text (illus. 6).35 The first known portrait in Europe to include a musical instrument, the painting also departs from fifteenth-century norms by showing the figure as interacting with his attribute. The front side of the lira da braccio faces the youth, who with his right hand turns one of its keys. The prominent Italian inscription on the back, seen in the lower foreground, translates as ‘it’s not too early to begin now’, which many original observers would have recognized as a line from a celebrated love poem by Petrarch.36 Instead of depicting the sitter playing

25

Design as Problem-Solving

or posing, Filippino combined text and action, showing the youth with a side gaze as he prepares himself mentally and tunes his instrument. He probably represents a canterino, one of the poets who became famous in Filippino’s day by singing verses in the vernacular while improvising a musical accompaniment on a lyre.37 The portrait not only represents the appearance and setting of an individual but identifies the sitter by his professional activity. Although Filippino’s innovative work may have been commissioned by the canterino or an admirer of his performances, I prefer to consider it as a gift from one creative artist to another. 7 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, Raising of Theophilius’ Son, early to mid-1480s, fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Florence.

filippino lippi

26

We must also hypothesize about the origins of the Double Portrait. Perhaps Filippino gifted the painting to Piero del Pugliese as a variation on another portrait by the artist, depicting only his patron and known today from an epigram by Verino, although we cannot be sure that this lost work 8 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, detail from Raising of Theophilius’ Son.

27

Design as Problem-Solving

pre-dated the Double Portrait.38 Piero certainly appears, but in three-quarter view, in the Brancacci Chapel Raising of Theophilus’ Son (illus. 7 and 8); we can identify Filippino’s patron by his distinctive jutting ears, standing just behind the kneeling youth. For the Double Portrait, Filippino needed to adapt the representation of himself at the far right of the Disputation with Simone Magus (illus. 4). As in all other fifteenth-century selfportraits, the painter in the fresco looks out in full face. In the Double Portrait, however, decorum dictated that the painter be less prominent than his patron. Filippino is in profile in the middle ground and off to the side, his lips slightly parted in speech, while Piero appears in full face in the centre foreground, tilting his head, and seems to be listening. He displays his magnanimity to fifteenth-century viewers such as Braccesi by paying attention to someone of lower social status. The re­­­­­ purposing of earlier portraits helps to explain the oddity of the proportions in the Denver panel, and perhaps a fragment of the setting was lost when the paint layer was transferred to its current support. If Filippino made this as a gift, the painting allowed him to show respect and gratitude, and to suggest that he, too, possessed ennobling qualities. We find a rough parallel in Vasari’s story about Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles.39 Filippino’s teacher reputedly created this painting, depicting a learned subject about a virtuous painter, as a gift for a wealthy Florentine. While Filippino’s generosity to Piero del Pugliese remains hypothetical, we can firmly document another ingenious act of self-fashioning from the same period. Vasari wrote that the marble tomb of Fra Filippo Lippi, still in Spoleto Cathedral (illus. 9), was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici ‘the

filippino lippi

28

Magnificent’, the political and cultural leader of Florence, and designed by Filippino.40 The work, datable to about 1490, includes the Medici coat of arms, as expected, but also a shield with the invented arms of the Lippi family. The son of a friar and nun wanted to create the impression that his family, too, had a respected lineage. Also adorning this tomb is a Latin inscription by Angelo Poliziano, the most famous poet of the day, which begins, ‘Here I have been buried, Filippo, the pride of painting/ To no one is unknown the wondrous grace of my hand.’41 Always attentive to text and eager to invent new visual solutions, Filippino adapted the traditional portrait bust for the upper part of the tomb and included his father’s celebrated right hand, pointing down towards the epitaph. Originally, I suspect, a painted background completed the composition,

9 Ambrogio Barocchi (?), Filippino Lippi (design), tomb of Fra Filippo Lippi, c. 1490, gilded marble.

29

Design as Problem-Solving

but the tomb was moved and now appears oddly isolated on the wall. For Piero del Pugliese, Filippino also painted the Vision of St Bernard in the mid-1480s; since at least Vasari’s day it has been his most famous altarpiece.42 The work originally adorned the Del Pugliese Chapel in Santa Maria delle Campora, a small church attached to a Benedictine monastery outside the Porta Romana. An undated financial record, which precedes one from 1486, indicates that Piero paid 150 florins for an altarpiece ‘painted by Master Filippino, son of Master Filippo, and for the gold and the curtain’. This was not an unusual price, especially considering the gilded frame. The total financial out­­­lay for fifteenth-century Italian altarpieces rarely amounted to 200 florins, regardless of size or artist, and almost two-thirds cost 100 florins or less. 43 The patron must have requested not only a depiction of the Vision of St Bernard, a subject known from several Florentine examples, but the inclusion of a donor portrait. The facial features seen in the lower right correspond to those in the Double Portrait and Brancacci Chapel, although Vasari, in one of his rare errors about Filippino’s works, misidentified this figure in the Vision as Piero’s nephew Francesco. The artist had additional and unu­­sual constraints in the altarpiece, given that the patron must have provided all three inscriptions. Texts play a key role in Filippino’s altarpiece, in which Bernard appears pen in hand. A few fragmentary lines in Latin are legible on the left side of his manuscript. To represent this correctly, Filippino probably consulted the manuscript, donated by Piero del Pugliese to the Campora monks in 1490, with a selection of the saint’s writings. The inclusion of the

filippino lippi

30

word ‘star’ allowed learned observers to recognize the most famous passage from Super Missus Est, the second homily in praise of the Virgin. Bernard compared Mary to a star; her virginity remained intact after the birth of Christ, just as the rays emanating from a star do not diminish its brightness. Filippino included a star on Mary’s right shoulder, radiant clouds in the upper left corner, and in the right background two monks who marvel at this supernatural light. In the same sermon, Bernard also told his followers, ‘If storms of temptations arise, if you crash against the rocks of tribulation, look to the star, call upon Mary,’ and another stanza refers to her as freeing prisoners from chains. Alluding to these passages, Filippino gave great prominence to the sharp rocks behind the saint. These create a dark cave where, far from the Virgin’s divine illumination, an owl peers out and a bound devil gnaws on his chain.

In an earlier altarpiece depicting the Vision of St Bernard, Matteo di Pacino represented the Virgin dictating to the saint, who transcribes a different text. In contrast, Filippino shows the moment when Bernard stops writing. Near the end of his second homily, he told readers, ‘we must pause in order that we may contemplate awhile the splendour of so great a luminary as Mary . . . I prefer the delight of gazing in silence upon that which no laboured eloquence can sufficiently describe.’44 Bernard’s line about the limitations of words served as the point of departure for a painting that reveals the power of images. To express in visual terms the saint’s contemplation, Filippino followed the artistic tradition of representing the

31

Design as Problem-Solving

Virgin Mary accompanied by angels of indescribable charm. They watch with a mixture of devotion and curiosity as Mary barely rests her fingers on the saint’s manuscript. For both Filippino and Piero, the most famous account of Bernard’s vision appears not in writings by the saint but in Dante’s Comedy. In Paradiso xxxi and in the altarpiece, the inspired saint appears with eyes and cheeks ‘suffused with a kindly joy’. Dante gazes with awe at Bernard as one who had tasted heavenly peace while ‘still within the confines of this world’. The poet likens this event to that of a pilgrim looking at the image of Christ in the Veil of Veronica, a relic in Rome. Filippino’s donor gazes upwards but does not literally see the Virgin, as some have suggested. Rather, he has the pose that Piero must have assumed when he entered his chapel, kneeled before the altarpiece and prayed with clasped hands. Filippino created a visual parallel to Dante’s multilayered text: just as the pilgrim, the character in the Comedy, observes Bernard when he is having his vision, the donor in the painting looks in the direction of the saint who sees the Virgin. Piero appears in a different space from Bernard, both physically and spiritually. By showing the donor cut off by the lower edge of the compo­ sition, Filippino represented Piero as humble and respectful, yet equal in size to the saint. In Paradiso xxxi, Bernard directs Dante to contemplate the heavens, and the canto closes with an intricate description of the impact of inspired looking. The fiery intensity of Dante’s gaze leads Bernard to look at the Virgin with great affection; this, in turn, makes the poet’s eyes ‘more ardent to gaze again’. Likewise, the painted repre­ sentation of Bernard’s vision was designed to inspire the devotion of all who saw it. Filippino’s genius was to transform

filippino lippi

32

Dante’s intricate sequence of intense looking into an image that explores the nature of holy vision and religious con­­tem­ ­plation. In the central part of the altarpiece, Filippino gave special attention to the handwriting of four texts. For the Bible, propped up on the rock and open at the account of the Annunc­iation in the Gospel of Luke (1:26), which served as the point of departure for Bernard’s Homily, Filippino used Gothic minuscule; for the paper leaning on it, he shows some informal jottings in cursive. Above the saint’s head, Filippino included the motto Substine et abstine (bear and forbear), by the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, painted in appropriately classicizing majuscules. Most importantly, for the patron, Filippino re-created the humanistica script of Bernard’s manu­ script. The different handwriting shows that the form of expression holds importance. This use of different modes of lettering recalls Filippino’s brilliant deployment of a range of painting styles. He could have read about the need to differ­ entiate styles in three books in his library. Dante begins the canzone depicted in the Double Portrait, and included in the Convivio, stating that he will put aside ‘the sweet style’, used for love poetry, and write instead ‘with harsh and subtle rhymes’ about nobility. Boccaccio, in the introduction to the fourth day in the Decameron, explained that he employed a ‘homely and simple style’, appropriate for vernacular stories, and Petrarch, in the opening poem of his Canzoniere, refers to ‘all the modes (stile) in which I talk and weep’. For these poets, and painters such as Filippino, one mode is not enough. In the Vision of St Bernard, only the Virgin shows the gracefulness celebrated by Poliziano in the works of Fra Filippo,

33

Design as Problem-Solving

and by viewers today in paintings by Botticelli, the student of Filippo and master of Filippino. To emphasize Mary’s weightlessness, Filippino carefully concealed her feet, while depicting those of the well-grounded and boyish angels who flank her. In contrast to this visionary and impassive figure, Bernard appears all too human, with his abrupt gesture and the bulging vein in his forehead. Of all the personages, only the donor reveals Filippino’s indebtedness to the painting of Northern Europe, especially that of Hans Memling, although the rocky outcroppings here and in the Wounded Chiron recall those in Jan van Eyck’s St Francis.45 The remarkably lifelike quality of the donor, together with the fur-trimmed robes that establish Piero’s social status, creates a spiritual distance between the divinely inspired saint and Piero, bringing him closer to the viewers’ world. Piero probably asked Filippino to include the ancient text because it was then the talk of Florence in learned circles. In the letter of 1479 accompanying his translation of Epictetus’ Enchiridion, commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano included this epigram because he felt it epitomized the philo­ sopher’s teachings. In 1483 Poliziano exchanged letters on this topic with the philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. For the latter, ‘bear and forbear’ perfectly expressed the themes of perseverance and abstinence in Bernard’s writings. Crucially, the saint claimed that he resisted vices through his reading of sacred texts. The painting not only reflects the central goal of Renaissance humanists – to reconcile ancient learning with Christian values – but offers the educated viewer the opportunity to read passages from Luke, Bernard and Epictetus. Filippino also included ‘bear and forbear’ in a frescoed

filippino lippi

34

tabernacle in Prato, dated 1498 (see illus. 69). Vasari greatly admired this work, now sadly damaged, that ‘shows Our Lady, most beautiful and modest, with a choir of seraphim on a ground of dazzling light’. In 1550 Vasari added that the work wisely demonstrates how Filippino ‘tried to penetrate matters of the heavens with his ingenuity’. This passage re­calls Vasari’s observation that Botticelli, ‘being a clever man, made a commentary on a part of Dante’.46 We, too, can consider Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard, conceived by Piero del Pugliese and developed by Filippino, as a visual commentary on canto xxxi of Paradiso. This work demonstrates that Filippino, with his ingenuity, abundant invention and skilful use of styles, tried to penetrate the very question of inspired looking, while encouraging viewers to do the same. Vasari did not provide the subject of the ‘scene with little figures’ that Filippino painted for his friend Piero del Pugliese, but if this, too, showed the artist’s ingenuity in reimaging literary texts, one candidate is the Wounded Chiron (illus. 10).47 This undocumented work probably dates to the mid-1490s; in 1493–4 the artist included a similar centaur in his Death of Laocoön, a now ruined fresco mentioned by Vasari, in situ at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. 48 The panel painting depicts an obscure ancient myth for the first time. In Fasti (v.397), Ovid recounts that Chiron, the wisest of the centaurs, wounded his hoof with one of the poisoned arrows of Hercules, then died after groaning with pain.49 Filippino’s centaur does not grimace as he examines a bright red quiver; this belongs not to Hercules but to Cupid, who reclines in the distance with a red bow in hand. The extensive landscape includes a cave with a female centaur and her two infants.50 For the first time,

10 Filippino Lippi, Wounded Chiron, mid-1490s, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

36

a Renaissance artist accurately re-created a lost work by Zeuxis as described by Lucian. The ancient poet recounted seeing a wonderful painting that depicted a centaur with her equine limbs on the ground: The human part is slightly raised up on her elbows. Her forefeet are not now stretched out . . . one foot is bent with the hoof drawn under like one who kneels, while the other, on the other hand, is beginning to straighten and is taking a grip on the ground . . . She holds one of her offspring aloft in her arms, giving it the breast in human fashion.51 Filippino followed the text so faithfully that he must have had access to a translation, presumably made available by the patron. As is often the case in his paintings, even when we can identify literary sources, Filippino combined and added elements in a novel fashion. In this way he followed in the footsteps of Zeuxis himself, who, according to Lucian, ‘avoided painting popular and hackneyed themes as far as he could . . . he was always aiming at novelty’. Because of this passage, and another in Horace’s Ars Poetica, the mythological beast had come to represent the inventive freedom of painters and poets.52 Perhaps the centaur carried the same meaning for Filippino. By the 1490s the term poesia was used in Florence to refer to paintings.53 A few decades later, in his 1568 Life of Filippino, Vasari praised his allegoric scenes (now lost) in the Carafa Chapel as the ‘most beautiful poems, all of which he made with great ingenuity, as it was always his nature to do’.54 To understand what ‘poetry’ meant in Filippino’s day, we can

37

Design as Problem-Solving

turn to a passage by Boccaccio, also copied out by Poliziano. A sublime fervour impelled the mind ‘to desire to express or imagine rare and unheard of inventions . . . to cover the truth beneath the veil of graceful fables’.55 A similar fervour led Filippino, in this all’antica fable, to combine various sources and invent something new. In the tradition of Lucian, he avoided a traditional moralizing theme, so popular for dom­ estic decorations. Instead, by depicting both the danger of Cupid’s arrow and the joy of family life, Filippino presented the pain and pleasure of love under a graceful veil. The very ambiguity of the work encourages us to look and reflect, as the centaur himself does in the painting. Several authors from Filippino’s lifetime put a positive spin on ambiguity. In his gloss on a cryptic passage in the Inferno, Landino wrote in 1481 that he does not disapprove of those who believe that Dante ‘wants to be ambiguous and obscure’.56 In 1475 the humanist Giovanni Aurelio Augurello wrote a Latin epigram about a standard designed for Giuliano de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s brother, by Botticelli, then Filippino’s master. After he listed some unu­­­ sual aspects of Cupid’s representation, Augurello concluded, ‘many express different opinions of it, no one agrees with any­ one else, and all this is even more beautiful than the painted images.’57 The humanist saved his highest commendation for the difficulty of interpretation and would have found much to praise in many works by Filippino, including the Wounded Chiron.

11 Filippino Lippi, Sts Benedict and Apollonia and Sts Paul and Frediano (Bernardi altarpiece), 1482–3, oil and tempera on wood.

two

Inventing a Personal Style, Late 1470s–Early 1480s

I

n the second half of the fifteenth century, when Filippino, born in about 1457, was growing up in various Tuscan cities, authors began to articulate the notion of an identifiable style, something that went beyond mere skill and the imitation of nature. According to the architect Filarete, a painter ‘is known by the manner of his forms’, and as a result, ‘though everyone may vary to some or another degree, one can still recognize the products of his hand.’1 The products of Filippo Lippi, Filippino’s father, were recognized by Cristoforo Landino in his 1481 preface to the Divine Comedy as ‘graceful and ornate’, while those by Masaccio were ‘pure, without ornateness’, and demonstrated great skill in ‘three-dimensional modelling’.2 Fra Filippo, as a young friar at the Florentine church of Santa Maria del Carmine, had ample opportunities to study the modelling in Masaccio’s con­­ tributions to the Brancacci Chapel frescoes. We can imagine Filippo in 1469, the year of his death, while he was frescoing the apse of Spoleto Cathedral, telling his assistant, the twelveyear-old Filippino, about Masaccio’s paintings.3 In the early 1480s, when Filippino had to complete the already celebrated Brancacci cycle, he imitated the manner of Masaccio’s forms in some scenes but showed his own approach in others. The

filippino lippi

40

question of individuality had been addressed a century earlier by Petrarch, whose Italian poetry found a place in Filippino’s small library. The poet admonished readers in one of his letters, ‘if you come upon something worthwhile reading or reflecting, change it into honey by means of your style.’4 We can ask, then, what types of nectar did Filippino find worthwhile, and what is distinctive about his flavour of honey? A document of 1472 establishes that the teenage Filippino was in Botticelli’s studio, and he probably began working there even earlier.5 Botticelli needed his promising student to paint sections, replicas and variations of his works in a style and tech­­nique very similar to his own.6 In 1478 Filippino completed his first known independent commission, an altarpiece for a church in the Tuscan city of Pistoia.7 Alas, the work is lost, but we can assume that the young master, now 21 and emancipated, worked in his own style. In his early paintings, from the late 1470s to the early 1480s, Filippino created graceful and ornate works in the tradition of both Fra Filippo and Botticelli, but when he came upon something worthwhile in the art of other masters, he adopted it to dev­elop a very personal and recognizable style. In telling this story, we will look at numerous works, but only those ascribed to the young Filippino by nearly all scholars; most are also associated with the artist in early sources. This leaves little time for some topics that interested Filippino’s patrons and original audience, such as how and why particular subjects were commissioned. Those questions, important as they are for understanding Filippino’s works, tell us little about his early style. After establishing a series of distinctive qualities running through Filippino’s secure works, we can reconsider

41

Inventing a Personal Style

the vexed question of his contribution to several narrative paintings that I believe are based on drawings by Botticelli. The first set tells the story of Esther and the second set the stories of Lucretia and Virginia. Filippino’s earliest surviving altarpieces were made for churches in the Tuscan city of Lucca. For the Magrini Chapel in San Michele in Foro, Filippino painted Sts Roche, Sebastian, Jerome and Helen (illus. 12), probably begun in 1481 and completed the following year.8 In 1483 he received final payment for an altarpiece for the Bernardi Chapel in Santa Maria del Corso.9 This included two panels – Sts Benedict and Apollonia and Sts Paul and Frediano (see illus. 11) – flanking a wooden statue of St Anthony. The statue was carved by Benedetto da Maiano and painted by Filippino, who was contractually required to select the sculptor. Years later, in the Carafa and Strozzi chapels, it seems that Filippino once again had the role of ‘artistic director’. In both Lucchese altarpieces, the delicate and elongated female saints, with their heads slightly tilted and adorned with thin veils, recall a type favoured by Botticelli, as seen, for example, in the three Graces in the Primavera.10 The composi­ tions, however, and specifically the spatial arrangement of the figures in Filippino’s early works, differ considerably from those of his former teacher. Throughout Botticelli’s career, the older master placed figures at varying depths from the picture plane, as seen in works in Florence from the 1470s, such as the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, Del Lama Adoration of the Magi and Primavera.11 Filippino had a different approach. The saints in both Lucchese altarpieces appear in the immediate foreground, virtually equidistant from the viewer. In addition, Filippino used the landscape as a neutral backdrop, whereas

filippino lippi

42

Botticelli always placed his figures within their setting, be it architectural or natural. Filippino also shows his distance from his former teacher in his fascination with precise and realistic depictions of surface textures and optical effects. As with many of his contemporaries, Filippino closely studied the painting from present-day Flanders, now known as Early Netherlandish art.12 In some works, such as the Bernardi altarpiece, Filippino meticulously re-created the jewelled borders of the robes of the saints and their intricately carved and gilded staffs. In his Annunciation (see illus. 2), commissioned for the town hall of 12 Filippino Lippi, Sts Roche, Sebastian, Jerome and Helen (Magrini altarpiece), 1481–2, oil and tempera on wood.

43

Inventing a Personal Style

San Gimignano in 1483 and probably completed the following year, we can imagine the sensation of touching the cold wrought-iron chair next to the kneeling Virgin.13 This interest and skill in re-creating the precise appearance of paper, parchment and rocks find full expression in Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard, from 1484–5 (see illus. 1). Another quality of Netherlandish painting that fascinated most Florentine artists, including Filippino, is the depiction of landscape, often embellished with Northern architecture and tiny vignettes of everyday life. For the city gate and well in the background of the Bernardi altarpiece, Filippino found inspiration in Hans Memling’s Pagagnotti Triptych, which by 1481 he could have seen in Florence.14 The more dramatic landscape behind the Virgin in the San Gimignano Annunciation reveals Filippino’s reactions to Hugo van der Goes’s monumental Portinari altarpiece, which arrived in Florence in 1483.15

13 Filippino Lippi, Three Archangels, early 1480s, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

44

In the Strozzi Madonna (see illus. 27), painted in about 1483–4, the window allows a view on to another Netherlandishinspired landscape, now populated with Black servants. The Strozzi arms depicted in the spandrel of the loggia resemble those in the loggia of the Strozzi villa at Santuccio. The painting might even be identifiable with a ‘Madonna’ listed in the inventory from 1491 of the residence, although every villa had images of the Virgin.16 The owner, Filippo Strozzi, who in 1487 commissioned Filippino to fresco his chapel, paid the artist in 1482 for the design of a wall decoration with greenery, perhaps a painted fabric.17 As is known from his extant paintings, Filippino often devoted considerable space to the natural world. Consider his delightful Three Archangels (illus. 13), which is probably identifiable with a painting attributed to Filippino in an inventory of 1603.18 Here Raphael strolls with Tobias, flanked by Michael on the left and Gabriel on the right. For the overall composition and many details, Filippino turned to earlier representations of the subject by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio and Francesco Botticini. The differences between his version and theirs allow us to better appreciate the younger artist’s aesthetic sensibilities. After considering these prototypes, Filippino moved his figures to the foreground, much as he did in his Lucchese altarpieces. Raphael and Gabriel, each with one extended foot barely touching the ground, their draperies fluttering in the breeze, appear as ethereal as Botticelli’s dancing Graces, themselves based on the lithe female figures painted by Fra Filippo. These individuals embody leggiadrìa, a term Florentines used in the period to express a poised manner of holding the body so that it seems to move weightlessly. Much the same

45

Inventing a Personal Style

can be said of Filippino’s Tobias and the Angel, an undocumented work that seems to be from a few years earlier, and thus one of his first known independent paintings.19 For all the physical signs of movement, none of these archangels seems to be traversing terrain. Filippino’s interest in extensive natural settings also distinguished him from Botticelli, whom Leonardo da Vinci criticized because he ‘does not take pleasure in landscapes’.20 According to Leonardo, Botticelli even declared that the study of nature ‘was of no use, since by merely throwing a sponge full of different colours at a wall, it left on that wall a stain wherein was seen a fine landscape’. Given that Leonardo wrote this during his first sojourn in Milan, between 1482 and 1499, the entry in his notebook probably records the comments he heard before he left Florence. Filippino may have received similar lessons from Botticelli in the early 1470s. Although we should not take Leonardo’s quotation literally, it indicates Botticelli’s desire to go beyond reproducing the world as he saw it. This finds expression not only in Botticelli’s artificial landscapes but in his bizarre depictions of female anatomy and his predilection for figures with misaligned eyes. In all three of those areas, Filippino did not follow Botticelli’s teachings. Another difference between the two artists was Filippino’s ability to express himself with different visual languages, as we have seen in his Vision of St Bernard. We can explore how Filippino used his unusual skills when, in the early 1480s, he completed the Brancacci Chapel. Vasari, writing in 1550, described this fresco cycle as a work from Filippino’s ‘earliest youth’, and one that brought him ‘glory and great fame’.21 Just how Filippino obtained this prestigious fresco commission

filippino lippi

46

remains a mystery, especially since he was not invited to join four more established fresco painters –Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli – who decorated the side walls of the Sistine Chapel in 1481–2. Perhaps their absence from Florence cleared the field for Filippino when the decision was made to complete the Brancacci Chapel. Possibly, Filippino’s status as the son of Fra Filippo helped him to obtain a commission in the Carmelite church. His name may have been suggested by Piero del Pugliese, patron of the Vision of St Bernard. As we saw in Chapter One, Filippino included a portrait of Piero in the centre of the Raising of Theophilus’ Son, and the Del Pugliese family had another chapel in the church. Filippino was asked to complete the fresco cycle that Masaccio and Masolino had begun in the 1420s and abandoned a few years later. On the left-hand wall, for a celebrant facing the altar, Masaccio must have carried out the entire scene of the Raising of Theophilus’ Son (see illus. 7 and 8), although Filippino later added several figures. Frescoes are always painted from the top down, and Masaccio executed the upper half of this scene, the group left of centre (including St Peter) and St Peter Enthroned, on the far right. Some time after Felice Brancacci, the original patron, was exiled from Florence in 1436, owing to his opposition to the Medici family, several portraits in this scene must have been destroyed and Filippino replaced them with images of the new Florentine elite. In the group at the far left, one clue allows us to distinguish easily between works by the two artists. Masaccio painted the head of a Carmelite friar, but Filippino did not give him a body when he added four standing men. This suggests that Masaccio had painted other heads in this area that were subsequently 14 Filippino Lippi, St Peter Being Freed from Prison, early to mid-1480s, fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Florence.

filippino lippi

48

demolished. The artist was recognized by Landino for his skill in creating figures that express solidity and weightiness, the very opposite of the qualities we associate with Botticelli and his school. Nevertheless, Filippino captured Masaccio’s style so perfectly that scholars still debate over who painted some passages in the Brancacci Chapel. We find a Botticellian sensibility in St Peter Being Freed from Prison (illus. 14), painted entirely by Filippino. The young artist created an angel on tiptoe, an exemplar of leggiadrìa closely related to his depiction of Raphael in the Three Archangels. To identify other qualities in Filippino’s fresco, we can borrow the concept of ‘lightness’, developed a few decades ago by the author and critic Italo Calvino. In his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, written in 1985, Calvino praised texts with a light narrative structure, where ‘meaning is conveyed through a texture that seems weightless.’22 To represent the moment when Peter crosses the threshold to freedom, Filippino reduced the composition to just the prisoner, guard and liberator. Calvino also appreciated ‘a visual image of lightness that acquires emblematic value’, a phrase that aptly describes Filippino’s ethereal angel. This figure represents divine lib­ er­ation, especially when contrasted with the soldier, a repre­ sen­tative of earthly authority, slumped against his staff. Similarly, in the Vision of St Bernard, the lightness of the Virgin took on emblematic value, in opposition to the earthbound Devil, literally chained to the rock. Lightness, a quality rightly associated with Botticelli, was used selectively by his former student. Two themes that Botticelli explored in paintings from the 1480s held little interest for the young Filippino: the depiction

49

Inventing a Personal Style

of intense emotion and the creation of depth in figural groups. Many subjects in the Brancacci Chapel allowed the artist to show awe, horror and anger: the Raising of Theophilus’ Son, as well as the double scene on the opposite wall, the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Disputation with Simon Magus, painted entirely by Filippino. Nevertheless, most of the bystanders and even the executioners seem oddly impassive. When Filippino depicts emotion in works carried out before he left for Rome in 1488, such as the Vision of St Bernard, he conveys it primarily with facial expressions and hand positions. In contrast, Botticelli used the entire body to communicate passion, as we can see in many figures from his Sistine Chapel frescoes.23 Portraits, too, reveal important differences between the two artists. In the Brancacci Chapel, Filippino gave more attention to the careful rendering of skin tones, whereas in the Vatican, Botticelli expresses emotion through the eyes and dramatic poses. Most of Botticelli’s narrative works, including his many representations of the Adoration of the Magi, include figures of importance in the middle ground, often at a consid­erable distance from the foreground. In contrast, the actors in Filippino’s sections of the Brancacci Chapel usually stand in tight groups and close to the picture plane, an approach to composition that is already found in his first altarpieces. In the Raising of Theophilus’ Son, Filippino even flattened out the composition originally designed by Masaccio. The older master probably painted the central figures in a semicircle, much as they appear in his Tribute Money on the upper part of the same wall and in his nearby St Peter Enthroned. The figures added by Filippino, to the right of Peter, stand in a straight line. Significantly, Filippino changed the pose of Peter, who

filippino lippi

50

points to the resurrected son. To judge from the position of the saint’s shoulder and upper arm, Masaccio planned to position the boy further back from the picture plane. Instead, Filippino placed him in the foreground and thus created a new forearm for Peter, now clearly visible because the new paint has aged to a different shade of blue from the original. Architecture in Filippino’s early works usually serves as a backdrop. In striking contrast, Botticelli showed a highly sophisticated use of space and figures within architecture, as we see in a predella, perhaps for the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, painted in the early 1470s and now in Philadelphia.24 Draw­ ings from later in Filippino’s career suggest that figural groups, conceived in isolation, remained the basis of his compositions. In preparatory sheets for the Death of Laocoön (see illus. 43) and the Certosa Pietà (see illus. 25), Filippino kept figures unchanged while experimenting with different architectural settings. Especially in his work before he left for Rome, there is often little connection between foreground figures and background buildings, but in some examples, architectural ele­­ments create an exquisite sense of rhythm. Far more than his contemporaries, Filippino gave importance to the pauses between notes. Between the Crucifixion and the Disputation in the Brancacci Chapel, he created a large arch that frames an open sky and distant landscape. In the Sistine Chapel, prominent arches also appear in Botticelli’s Punishment of Korah and Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys, but with a completely different function, namely, to focus attention on the main scenes taking place below. Filippino’s use of space recalls another aspect of lightness discussed by Calvino. The writer describes the ancient author Lucretius as ‘the poet of physical concreteness, viewed

51

Inventing a Personal Style

in its permanent and immutable substance, but the first thing he tells us is that emptiness is just as concrete as solid bodies.’ The young Filippino, with his Netherlandish sensibility for the accurate rendering of objects, was a poet of physical concreteness, but his works also reveal the value of a void. Of course, Botticelli, too, sometimes showed the importance of carefully modulated spaces, best seen in the Primavera. Most of his works from this period, when compared to Filippino’s paintings depicting a similar subject, seem to overflow with an abundance of riches. The younger artist included far more intervals, displaying what Calvino praised as the ‘poetry of the invisible’.

Perhaps the clearest example of this poetic sensibility, and distance from Botticelli, is Filippino’s undocumented Adoration of the Magi (illus. 15), which all scholars date to before the Brancacci Chapel.25 The biblical account of the three wise men, travelling from afar to see the newborn Christ Child, led most earlier artists to represent the King of Kings as the end point of a royal procession, depicted at the far left or right of a panel or fresco. The central placement of the Virgin and Child in Filippino’s painting, also found in a related composition drawing, suggests that he borrowed from the revolutionary composition found in Botticelli’s two earlier Adoration of the Magi paintings from the 1470s, the Del Lama altarpiece (Florence) and Pitti tondo (London).26 Both works are crowded with onlookers and animals and show the Holy Family carefully arranged within elaborate architectural settings. Filippino dramatically reduced the number of figures

filippino lippi

52

and moved them all to the foreground. He left spaces to the left and right of the Virgin and Child to draw attention to this group, but most unexpectedly, Filippino shows the beauty of emptiness by creating a gap at the far left. Just beyond this visual pause in the composition, a boy and his greyhound sit in repose after their long journey. The youth rests his head on his hand and looks out at us as we, the viewers, contemplate the altarpiece. Filippino seems to invite us to roam with our eyes in the extensive landscape, where we discover half a dozen tiny scenes of saints, and above them the glowing, golden rays from the star of Bethlehem.27 Although Filippino did not use ‘one-point perspective’ in this painting, he certainly knew how to create a series of orthogonals, the diagonal lines that appear to converge on a single point in the distance. This type of normative perspectival scheme, innovative in Masaccio’s day, had become standard by the time Filippino was a student. Already in 1435, in his treatise On Painting, Leon Battista Alberti compared the picture plane to an ‘open window’ through which observers see the world. Decades later Botticelli created an interesting variation for his Annunciation of 1481, a large fresco in Florence that originally adorned a loggia in Santa Maria della Scala. The left-hand side, depicting the Angel Gabriel, was made to be seen straight on, and so the orthogonals in this section lead to a central point, but on the right-hand side, showing Mary, the lines created by the floor tiles tilt very noticeably to the left. Botticelli adapted the conventions of depicting perspectival space, and his former student immediately adapted the idea for his undocumented Corsini tondo (illus. 16), from circa 1483.28 Although Botticelli typically arranged

53

Inventing a Personal Style

figures in his tondi to accentuate the round shape of the panel, Filippino introduced predominately vertical architectural structures, as well as an assertive grid pattern in the floor. The underside of the arch in the central niche is visible only on the left side, above the Virgin and Child, indicating the intended point of observation as right of centre, in front of the three singing angels. The orthogonals created by the floor tiles lead to a vanishing point behind these same kneeling figures. Filippino used these devices to draw viewers’ attention to an unusual feature: a carefully depicted scroll of music held by one angel, with a popular song of the day. This detail and the innovative use of perspective reveal how Filippino faced the challenge of creating a captivating variation on the most traditional of subjects. We can imagine the original audience of this extremely large tondo when they saw it in its intended setting, probably in a grand villa or palazzo, where singers would perform on occasion. While listening to these songs, observers could follow the orthogonals to find a scroll depicting the same or similar music. Another novelty appears behind the right-hand angel. The indistinct mountains in the distance indicate that Filippino was among the first artists to learn from the hazy appearance of Leonardo’s revolutionary landscapes. A year or so after completing this work, Filippino outdid both himself and Botticelli in the perspectival constructions in his San Gimignano Annunciation (see illus. 2), where he had to depict the scene in two separate panels. Both tondi have prominent patterns created by the floor tiles. Each work has an independently coherent and centrally planned perspective, although the pavement design continues across the two

filippino lippi

54

panels. In photographs, we can easily detect inconsistencies in Filippino’s solution: the foreground step, floor tiles and golden rays travelling from the angel to Mary do not align per­­ fectly. Nevertheless, when seen in their original setting – well above eye level in the San Gimignano town hall, in their elaborately carved and gilded frames (still extant) and with considerable space between them – the Annunciation panels appear perfectly harmonious. Filippino created an innovative perspec­ tival system to link his two paintings and draw in the viewer. Here the orthogonal lines seem to project out of the tondi into our world and converge in the space between the panels and viewers. To provide us with even greater access to this Annunciation, the artist constructed a foreground step. The spectator’s gaze unites and completes the scene. The poet of the invisible created a space for us while drawing attention to the artificiality of the entire construct. 15 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, 1478–80, oil and tempera on wood.

55

Inventing a Personal Style

Filippino’s frescoes and panel paintings from the late 1470s and early 1480s provide a firm foundation for understanding and recognizing his personal style: the qualities he favoured and avoided, as well as typical gestures and facial types. We find some of these same characteristics in earlier paintings produced in the workshop of Botticelli and even that of Fra Filippo. The young Filippino surely had a hand in these works, but what role did he have in their conception and composition?29 This question comes to a head with the Story of Esther, largely painted by Filippino in the mid-1470s,

16 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Four Angels (Corsini tondo), c. 1483, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

56

in collaboration with Botticelli and perhaps another member of the workshop.30 This cycle of six panels originally decorated two cassoni, large wedding chests. Each one had three paintings set into a richly decorated frame: a large horizontal panel on the front and squarish ones on the two short ends. The deli­ cate figures in the Esther Chosen by Ahasuerus (illus. 19), the main panel from the first cassone, recall those in the Corsini tondo and the London Adoration in their poses, facial types, attire and delicate gait. This panel must have been painted by the young Filippino, along with much of Esther’s Swoon (illus. 22), the main panel from the second cassone, with some figures by Botticelli. A close examination of this cycle leads us into the organization of an early Renaissance workshop and to an overlooked revolution in early Renaissance domestic paintings. Part of the ingenuity expressed in this cycle lies in the organization of the narrative into various scenes. The patron must have re­­­quested the story of the Old Testament heroine and determined the number of panels to decorate, but he would have left to the artist – a specialist in visual expression – more technical details such as the selection of scenes and their placement. The front panels show the most important scenes, with subsidiary events in the background, and the smaller end panels develop the main themes. For the original audience, the story of Esther was best known from sermons and especially a sacra rappresentazione (mystery play), first published in Florence in 1483 but surely performed earlier in the streets of the city.31 This play, not the Bible, is the source for some of the scenes found in the paintings. In the first cassone, most of the main panel is devoted to the beauty pageant arranged by Ahasuerus, king of Susa, to

57

Inventing a Personal Style

select a new consort after he had banished his queen, Vashti, for insubordination. In the background are two earlier scenes: on the left, the king’s banquet, where Ahasuerus asks three kneeling courtiers to bring Vashti to him; and on the right, the queen’s banquet, where she refused the king’s order. The panel on the left end (illus. 17) shows Esther approaching the city walls and looking up, the very expression of modesty, grace and expectation. We see her again in the centre of the main panel, where the king selects her as the new queen. The right end panel (illus. 18) represents Vashti as literally marginalized after her banishment; the queen, downcast, seems to pause and reflect before proceeding into the barren landscape. In the second cassone, in the centre of the large panel (illus. 22), Esther faints after Ahasuerus grants her an audience in his chamber. On the left of the same painting, we see the pre­­­ceding event, when the new queen and two female attendants stop in front of Esther’s distraught uncle, Mordecai. He had learned that the king’s advisor, Haman, planned to kill all the Jews, which led Esther to intercede with Ahasuerus for her people; Haman’s subsequent execution is represented in the right background. The left end panel (illus. 20), a painting of extraordinary power and simplicity, rightly attributed by most scholars to Botticelli, depicts Mordecai’s despair. Esther’s uncle sits on a step before the palace gate, his beard covered with ashes and torn clothes strewn nearby. The narrative ends with the right end panel (illus. 21). In a variation on textual sources, Ahasuerus (and not Haman) leads Mordecai in triumph on horseback. The small images of extreme triumph and utter desperation complement the scenes of contrasting moods found in the side panels of the first cassone.

17 Workshop of Botticelli (Filippino Lippi), Esther at the Palace Gate, first cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood. 18 Workshop of Botticelli (Filippino Lippi), Vashti Leaving the Palace, first cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood. 19 Workshop of Botticelli (Filippino Lippi), Esther Chosen by Ahasuerus, first cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood.

20 Sandro Botticelli, Mordecai's Despair (La derelitta), second cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood. 21 Sandro Botticelli, The Triumph of Mordecai, second cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood. 22 Workshop of Botticelli (Filippino Lippi and collaborator), Esther’s Swoon, second cassone, mid-1470s, tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

60

To judge from all the paintings attributed to Filippino before the Story of Esther, the young artist had experience only with small works, usually Madonnas, and never created a narrative scene on his own. Although undoubtedly precocious and extraordinarily skilled, the teenage Filippino probably lacked the intellectual and visual sophistication necessary to orchestrate this grand narrative over six panels, and many details point to Botticelli as artistic director. Cassone paintings by earlier artists show little spatial depth; typically, they include many figures stacked one above the other, covering most of the panel. The main Esther panels, however, exhibit a highly accomplished use of perspective and architecture. Each event is depicted in a clear, coherent and easily comprehensible composition. In both main panels, the carefully rendered arches and piers frame the space and add drama to the narrative, much as they do in Botticelli’s Adoration tondo and Annunciation fresco. In each of those paintings, viewers can easily imagine how the architecture would appear if constructed, and protagonists often stand or walk within it. In contrast, the young Filippino typically placed figures in a frieze-like arrangement, even in paintings carried out after the Esther panels. The approach to space and figural organization in the Story of Esther quickly became the norm for domestic narrative paintings. In the 1480s, patrons started to commission narra­ tives not for cassone panels but for larger horizontal paintings. These were set into the wainscoting, or spalliera, which covered the walls up to approximately shoulder (spalla) height. Special­i­­sts have explored how spalliera paintings use different visual conven­t­ions from cassone panels, but the shift in narrative mode does not reflect the change in format. Rather, the Story

61

Inventing a Personal Style

of Esther transformed norms of visual storytelling in Florence. One of the first spalliera cycles to use this new compositional approach was the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, from the early 1480s.32 These four panels were described by Vasari as works by Botticelli, and all modern scholars agree, although the master himself carried out little of the actual painting. Rather, Botticelli must have provided detailed drawings so that collaborators could paint the works to his specifications, and under his supervision, to create a harmonious ensemble. Much the same must have taken place with the Story of Esther, especially if we consider that Botticelli himself painted Mordecai’s Despair. This representation of Esther’s uncle also differs significantly from Filippino’s depic­tion of him in the adjacent main panel. Nevertheless, in the first cassone, entirely painted by Filippino, the importance of the empty landscapes in the end panels and the poetic pauses in the foreground of the main scene suggest that Botticelli gave the young artist enough freedom to develop his own mode of expression. The Esther cycle rarely appears in books on Botticelli, unless the panels are listed among works wrongly attributed to the master.33 Would Renaissance observers agree? Most probably, the patrons of both the Esther and Nastagio cycles commissioned them from Botticelli, who then produced drawings for the compositions and figural groups. Even if the master did not paint most of these works, they indicate his artistic goals and accomplishments, and the patron probably gave him credit for these exquisite panels. We, too, should recognize that Botticelli was ultimately responsible for all the paintings produced in his workshop and, more specifically, for the revolutionary design of the Esther panels. In the

filippino lippi

62

present volume, they appear as ‘Botticelli and workshop (Filippino)’. This approach also leads to a reconsideration of two sets of spalliere that depict the stories of Lucretia and Virginia, the ancient Roman heroines often cited in medieval and Renais­s­ance texts as paragons of virtue. Filippino must have painted the first pair (illus. 23 and 24) in about 1478–80,34 and virtually all specialists agree that the works have signi­ficant similarities to another pair, painted by Botticelli in about 1500.35 Normally, one would expect later works to reflect earlier ones, and perhaps that is the case here too, but we have no other examples in which Botticelli borrowed an overall composition, or so many details, from another artist. Most probably, Filippino studied composition drawings or panels by Botticelli, now lost, who revised his ideas a couple of decades later for the surviving late paintings. Members of Botticelli’s workshop certainly had access to many sketches that are no longer extant. Both panels by Filippino depict three main scenes, in sequential order from left to right, arranged before an architectural setting. On the left side of the Story of Virginia (illus. 23), the maiden is abducted; in the centre, she is put on trial; 23 Filippino Lippi, Story of Virginia, c. 1478–80, oil and tempera on wood.

63

Inventing a Personal Style

and on the right, she is killed by her father. These two figures derive from a Roman sarcophagus, but no other early works by Filippino exhibit comparable quotations from ancient statuary. Significantly, the father and daughter reappear in the same pose in Botticelli’s later panel, and many other figures have virtually identical gestures. The two paintings share not only an overall tripartite organization but very similar compositions for the abduction and trial. In virtually all representations of Lucretia from fifteenthcentury Florence, the heroine is shown as she commits suicide after having been raped by Sextus Tarquinius. Only Botticelli and Filippino (illus. 24) depict the moment that follows, which appears on the left of Filippino’s painting and the right of Botticelli’s. This poignant scene, with the lower part of Lucretia’s body still in her home but her torso falling forwards into a more public realm, brilliantly illustrates a point emphasized by Boccaccio: that Lucretia’s sacrifice transformed her personal tragedy into an act of civic significance. Filippino’s painting is the first to show Lucretia’s funeral, another scene with undeniable similarities to Botticelli’s panel. The two artists depict a piazza with a column in front of three arched openings. The column is topped by a statue, not mentioned 24 Filippino Lippi, Story of Lucretia, c. 1478–80, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

64

in written sources or included in other paintings. Both Filippino and Botticelli also show Lucretia’s kinsman Brutus, who urges Romans to take up arms in revenge against the Tarquins. On the right, Filippino alludes to this revolt with a soldier on a rearing horse, followed by a page, although the exact spatial orientation of these figures remains unclear. Botticelli does not represent these figures, but includes a comparable scene in the centre of his Virginia. In both narratives, Filippino depicts all the figures in the foreground, much as we found in the slightly later Brancacci Chapel narratives. As in those frescoes, individuals are not integrated with the architecture, especially in comparison with Botticelli’s related paintings. The younger artist created much airier compositions, with far fewer figures. In the Lucretia, Filippino included large pauses to separate the three main scenes, and in the Virginia, he depicted a broad landscape; both are typical features of the younger artist but absent in Botticelli’s paintings. The correspondence between many episodes in the two paintings allows us to identify the differences in the poses, which are more dance-like in Filippino’s and more emotional in Botticelli’s. All these factors suggest that Filippino studied the figures, but not their setting, in lost works by Botticelli. Perhaps the older master received the com­­mission and collaborated with his former student. A radically different solution to the enigma of the authorship of these works was proposed in the late nineteenth century by Bernard Berenson, who was then establishing his reputation as the leading connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting. ‘Connoisseurship’ was defined at the time by Mary Costelloe, his partner and later wife, as ‘the identification of

65

Inventing a Personal Style

resemblances between works of art so close as to indicate identical authorship’.36 She mentioned this in her review of the first book on Botticelli, written at a time of great confusion over which Renaissance artists painted what. In 1895 Berenson argued that three paintings now attributed to the young Filip­pino – the Lucretia, Virginia and Adoration of the Magi – were ‘by an unnamed artist of great fascination’.37 The following year Berenson identified this ‘Master of the Death of Lucretia’ as the author of the Story of Esther. In comparison with Filippino, Berenson found that artist to be ‘more dainty, subtler; his movement is more graceful and vivacious.’38 Finally, in a celebrated article of 1899, Berenson baptised his invented artist the ‘Amico di Sandro’, a friend of Botticelli, who was responsible for most of the undocumented panel paintings discussed in this chapter.39 The essential flaw in Berenson’s method, which is followed by all too many connoisseurs even today, was to start from preconceived notions about an artist’s style. In the 1932 edition of his Italian Painters of the Renaissance, Berenson silently omitted the ‘Amico’ and reattributed his works to the young Filippino. Alfred Scharf made the same decision the first book-length study of Filippino, published in 1935 and still invaluable today, but three years later, in her own monographic study, Katharine Neilson still accepted the existence of the Amico. 40 Also in 1938, Berenson decided to kill off his creation. In that essay, Berenson expressed his longing for a history of art that would explore ‘the evolution of forms’, not the life and times of those who create them: ‘I would prefer to consider artists as discarnate torchbearers, without any civic existence.’41 The present volume, too, pays little attention

filippino lippi

66

to the civic existence of artists. Nevertheless, we can best understand Filippino’s emerging artistic personality by identifying the stylistic decisions he made in documented frescoes and paintings from his early years. Berenson rightly identified one characteristic of works by Filippino: weightlessness in dainty figures, who move with extreme gracefulness and vivaciousness, more Botticellian than those by Botticelli himself. In fundamental ways, however, the young Filippino distinguished himself from his former teacher. We find an interest in surface texture and extensive landscapes, and a desire to experiment with perspective while relegating architecture to a backdrop. In figural groups, Filippino’s light touch and poetry of pauses help also to define his inimitable personal style.

three

‘Sweet’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli, 1484–94

U

nexpected observations on art by Renaissance authors can help us to shake off habitual ways of seeing fifteenth-century paintings. We learn from a short note, now in the Milan state archives, that Botticelli’s paintings ‘have a virile air’, those by Filippino and Perugino are ‘sweeter’, and Ghirlandaio’s have a ‘good air’. The text can provide a refreshing perspective on five altarpieces painted by Filippino between the mid-1480s and the mid-1490s, especially when these are compared with works by his three main rivals. A few clues in the memo, together with the choice of words, organization and handwriting, indicate that it was written in the second half of 1493 by a learned Florentine who wanted to assist Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan. Sforza was looking for a painter who could continue the decoration of the Certosa di Pavia in Lombardy. Leonardo da Vinci was then busy in Milan with another commission for the duke, an equestrian monument to his father, Francesco Sforza, and Ludovico needed accurate information about the major painters active in Florence. For this reason, the memo avoids the stock phrases of praise found in most period texts about artists. It was written not to celebrate the four painters but to allow

filippino lippi

68

the intended reader to distinguish clearly between them, even without seeing their works. A literal translation of the entire memo reads as follows: Sandro di Botticelli, a most excellent painter on panels and walls. His things have a virile air [aria virile] and are done with the best method and perfect proportion. Filippino, the son of Fra Filippo, excellent, a student of the above-mentioned, and son of the most singular master of his time. His things have a sweeter air [aria più dolce], but I do not think that they have as much skill. Perugino, an outstanding master, and particularly on walls. His things have an angelic and very sweet air [aria angelica et molto dolce]. Domenico di Ghirlandaio, a good master on panel and even more so on walls. His things have a good air [bona aria], and he is an expeditious man who executes a lot of work. All these masters have given proof of themselves in the chapel of Pope Sixtus, except Filippino, but all of them afterwards at the Spedaletto of the Magnificent Lorenzo, and it is hard to say who carries off the palm.1 The last paragraph, at least, presents no problems of interpretation. In the previous chapter, we briefly considered the fresco cycle on the side walls of the Sistine Chapel, to which Filippino did not contribute. All four painters, we learn from this memo, carried out works in a private residence of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the leader of Florence. To judge from information

69

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

in other sources, these lost paintings were made in the early 1490s and depicted mythological subjects. Filippino’s dramatic drawings recounting the Death of Meleager might have been made for this project, or else for Lorenzo’s villa at Poggio a Caiano. Here, in 1493–4, Filippino began his Death of Laocoön, an incomplete and now ruined fresco best known from drawings (see illus. 43).2 Ludovico’s informant carefully arranged the names in order of preference: the ‘most excellent’ Botticelli was followed by the ‘excellent’ Filippino, the ‘outstanding’ Perugino and the ‘good’ Ghirlandaio. Borrowing from an ancient Latin expression, he did not state outright who should carry off the palm of victory, and prudently left this decision to the duke. In the end, the altarpiece commissions in Pavia were offered only to Perugino, who completed his panel, and Filippino, who finished at least a series of drawings for a Pietà (illus. 25).3 The artists were selected by Ludovico, as we learn from a letter of 1499 in which the angry patron tried to track down Filippino and Perugino. Three years earlier, we read, he had proposed the two as painters who were ‘excellent in their work, and who were in that city’ of Florence. 4 We should not be surprised that Ludovico selected only the two painters described in the memo of 1493 as ‘sweet’, given that a decade or so earlier he had welcomed Leonardo to his court. That painter was praised in a letter of 1504 by Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, for the ‘sweetness and pleasing air’ in his works.5 Two years earlier she had tried to obtain a painting from Filippino, but even for such a prestigious patron the artist was too busy.6 Isabella was informed by her agent that Botticelli was available and had earned praise ‘both as an excellent

25 Filippino Lippi, Pietà with Sts Anthony Abbot, Paul the Hermit and Angels (Certosa Pietà), recto, late 1490s, pen and ink.

71

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

painter, and as a man who works willingly’, but she turned to Perugino instead. For both Isabella and Ludovico, artists with a ‘sweet’ air triumphed over Botticelli. Viewers today often associate Botticelli with sweetness, especially because of his large mythological paintings, but given that Ludovico needed an artist to carry out altarpieces and perhaps frescoes for the Certosa, his informant probably focused on artists who had recently completed large-scale devotional works. References in the memo to Pope Sixtus iv and Lorenzo de’ Medici suggest that the duke was interested in artists who had been shown preference by important pat­rons. With that in mind, we can invite Ludovico’s agent to guide us on a visit to the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence, where he must have gone to see Filippino’s most im­­­­por­tant commission after the Brancacci Chapel. The Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius (illus. 26), dated 20 February 1486, was ordered by the city government.7 Lorenzo played an active role in establishing Filippino’s compensation, which also indicates his appreciation of the painting. Our imaginary guide might tell us a story we know today from the ‘Anonimo Magliabechiano’, a usually reliable source written in Florence in the mid-1540s, that the panel was begun by Leonardo, then given to Filippino and ‘completed on Leonardo’s designs’.8 Records show that in 1478 Leonardo had received the commission and advance payment for an altarpiece in a different place in the town hall. When the artist left for Milan in 1482, the ever-practical Florentine officials may have given his presentation drawing, but not an unfinished panel, to Filippino. This sequence would help to explain two surprising aspects of the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece.

filippino lippi

72

The curved top, unlike any previous large painting by Filippino, recalls the Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo’s first Milanese altarpiece. The fluttering draperies of the angels in the upper section resemble those in some early works by Leonardo.9 This clothing, together with the shape of the altarpiece, helped Filippino to enliven his representation of a very traditional subject. For Ludovico’s agent, Filippino’s advantage over Botticelli was the ‘sweeter air’ in his works. In this way, his paintings resembled those of Perugino, which had an ‘angelic and very sweet air’. Both the Milan memo and the letter from Isabella refer to the ‘air’ of paintings. Two centuries earlier, in a letter to Boccaccio, Petrarch had explained that what painters call ‘air’ is the intangible quality that characterizes the presence of a person and, by extension, of his work.10 In Filippino’s day an obscure painter named Francesco Lancilotti wrote a treatise, first published in 1506, that sets up an opposition reminiscent of the Milan memo: ‘Where a sweet or proud air is needed, vary every attitude, head and figure.’11 In both texts, ‘air’ refers to a quality found in a painting, not to the distinguishing characteristic of the painter or his region. Renaissance writers often used the Italian word dolce (sweet) together with soave (pleasing to the senses) to express a single concept. This pairing appears in Isabella’s letter and throughout Cristoforo Landino’s glosses to the 1481 edition of the Divine Comedy. When Dante mentioned the ‘sweet [dolce] hue’ of a sapphire, Landino explained that the poet referred to a ‘delicate [soave] and pleasing colour. And although sweetness is really part of taste, anything else that pleases any of the senses is nevertheless called sweet.’12 We understand that a sweet style, such as the one used by Dante in his love poetry,

26 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard, and Zenobius (Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece), 1486, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

74

is pleasing, often delicate, and never harsh or bitter. In both literature and painting, sweet are the light-footed figures that embody leggiadrìa and populate so many of Filippino’s early works. Perhaps the poetic pauses in many of those paintings would have been interpreted by Filippino’s contemporaries as a sweet and delicate touch. If we ask our guide what he finds sweet in Filippino’s Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece, Ludovico’s informant can point to the pleasing depiction of the Leonardesque angels, and the tender interaction between the Virgin and Child. Mary holds a holy book for the baby Jesus, who grabs at a handful of pages. The detail reappears in several copies and variations of this Virgin and Child group by Filippino’s students and followers. These modest paintings provide us with precious evidence of the popularity of a given motif in the Renaissance. In Filippino’s slightly earlier Strozzi Madonna (illus. 27), the Christ Child even crumples the pages, a detail also found in Nether­landish works visible in Florence at the time.13 This infantile behaviour strikes modern viewers as charming, and Filippino’s contemporaries might have described it as sweet. Landino did not mention sweetness when he praised the leading artists in his preface to the Divine Comedy, but as we saw briefly in the previous chapter, he admired the ornate quality in the works by Fra Filippo Lippi and could have found this in Filippino’s paintings. One difficulty for present-day readers is our view of ornaments as pleasing but non-essential additions. But Landino – professor of rhetoric and poetry at the Florentine Studio, a forerunner of the university – had studied this topic in the most authoritative ancient sources. Accord­ing to Quintilian (Institutes of Oratory viii.iii.61), ‘the

75

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

ornate is something that goes beyond what is merely lucid and acceptable. It consists firstly in forming a clear conception of what we wish to say, secondly in giving this adequate expression, and thirdly in lending it additional brilliance, a process which may correctly be termed embellishment.’14 Landino extended this definition to include the visual arts. If we invite him to join our visit to the Palazzo Vecchio, we can imagine him praising Filippino’s work because it went beyond a clear and adequate representation of the Virgin with saints. In the upper part of the panel, for example, the abundance of flowers and intertwined ribbons evinces Filippino’s interest in the ornate. This added to the pleasing quality of the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece for its original audience, for whom an abundance of soft petals and fabric was considered sweet. In the Milan memo, we read that Botticelli’s works revealed more ability (arte) than those of Filippino. This specific term recalls the discussion on the technical skills needed by painters in Alberti’s On Painting. Along the same lines, Ludovico’s informant praised Botticelli’s paintings for showing the best method (ragione), which recalls Alberti’s insistence on the proper selection and placement (ratio) of elements in a figure or composition. In his 1481 preface to the Divine Comedy, Landino indicated that a painter’s skill included the representation of relief, foreshortening and perspective, so he surely looked for those qualities when evaluating the works of Botticelli, Filippino, Perugino and Ghirlandaio. In his Treatise on Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality (1494), Luca Pacioli included the four painters among the masters of perspective: ‘All of these [painters] accomplish their works admirably in proportion with a plummet line and compass.’15 In the previous chapter,

filippino lippi

76

we saw how Botticelli created complex architectural spaces in his Adoration of the Magi tondo and in the Philadelphia panels, both from the early 1470s, and in his Annunciation fresco from 1481. At that time ‘proportion’ had a more general meaning than it does today. In his preface Landino praised Cimabue, who painted more than a century before the discovery of 27 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child (Strozzi Madonna), c. 1483–4, oil and tempera on wood.

77

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

one-point perspective, for having discovered ‘true proportion, what the Greeks called symmetry’.16 For both Ludovico’s agent and Landino, proportion included the ability to show figures in correct relation to one another. If the conversation in the Palazzo Vecchio turns to Filippino’s display of skill, our two guides might mention the expert rendering of surface texture, such as St Zenobius’s intricate crozier, so reminiscent of Netherlandish painting. The remarkable three-dimensional qualities of the main personages far exceed the representation of relief in Filippino’s earlier works. The composition also shows the artist’s increased sophistication. Rather than arranging the figures close to the foreground, as he did in the Magrini altarpiece (see illus. 12), Filippino places them so that they both recede deep into space and interact with one another. At the left and right, the two bishop saints look intently at the Christ Child, and both bring their hands to their chests in expressive gestures. St Bernard, to the Virgin’s left, has striking similarities in gesture and over­­ all appearance to the same saint in Filippino’s nearly con­ temporary Vision of St Bernard (see illus. 1). In both works, the saint looks at the Virgin, and the books are carefully placed so that the learned observer can read them. In the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece, the volume is open so that we can read a short text, based on a plea for indulgence by the medieval monk Cassiodorus. With a nod to the Medici family, this quotation identifies Mary as the only remedy (medica) for the world’s afflictions.17 Despite this masterly display, Ludovico’s agent wrote that Filippino had less skill than Botticelli. We can imagine him pointing out the perspectival problems in the Palazzo Vecchio

filippino lippi

78

altarpiece. Filippino boldly extended the arched top into a barrel vault, but did not quite follow through on this innovative design. The side walls splay out excessively and do not convey an accurate sense of space. Nevertheless, we can almost hear our guides’ appreciation of an ingenious detail at the bottom of the painting: Filippino expertly painted a step, as he had in the San Gimignano Annunciation. Here, it seems as though a previous visitor had left a covered prayer book, highly foreshortened and balanced somewhat precariously on the edge. With Landino and Ludovico’s agent, we can compare Filippino’s lively painting in the town hall with Ghirlandaio’s staid frescoes in the nearby Sala dei Gigli. Surely with the approval of Lorenzo, the city government had commissioned four artists – Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Pollaiuolo – to fresco the four walls of this audience hall in August 1482. In December, perhaps after Filippino had begun the Brancacci Chapel, government officials decided to substitute Perugino with Filippino, but gave him the wall with the least space for decoration. In the end, only Ghirlandaio carried out his fresco. A decade later he was accurately described in the Milan memo as an ‘expeditious man’ whose works have a ‘good air’, a term that derives from the French débonnaire. When Brunetto Latini, writing in Old French, explained that the emperors who followed Constantine were not ‘debonaires’ as he was, the adjective was translated by one of his contemporaries as ‘di buon aere’.18 In 1493 the rather generic term probably indicated an undefined but positive quality. For contemporaries, one positive feature in Ghirlandaio’s Sala dei Gigli frescoes was the triumph of illusionism. Even for observers today, the

79

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

fictive setting seems to extend the architectural features of the actual room. With the Milan memo in hand, we can visit the nearby church of San Barnaba to see Botticelli’s altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints (illus. 28), painted in about 1487, and consider it a response to the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece.19 Like Filippino, his former teacher also depicted a barrel vault, but here it is shown from a low point of view. Together with the patterned pavement, Botticelli created a convincing display of one-point perspective. The San Barnaba altarpiece also includes two fictive roundels representing Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate, but without the confusing orthogonals found in Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation. For the predella, or base, of the original frame, Botticelli created a series of narrative stories. When admiring the masterful command of perspective and proportion in the San Barnaba altarpiece, we can understand why Ludovico’s agent decided that Botticelli’s paintings displayed more skill than Filippino’s. But what does it mean to say that Botticelli’s paintings have a ‘virile’ air? To unpack that adjective, we must dispense with present-day gender stereotypes and consider those of Renaissance vintage. To describe Botticelli, ‘virile’ strikes us as a singularly inappropriate term, one we associate with brawny and rugged men. But in the first book of the Convivio, a volume owned by Filippino, Dante used the word when he characterized his text as ‘temperate and mature’ (virile; i.i.16), in contrast to the ‘fervent and passionate’ quality of a youthful work, Vita Nuova (The New Life).20 In the fourth book of the Convivio, where Dante analysed a canzone transcribed in Filippino’s self-portrait with Piero del Pugliese (see illus. 5),

filippino lippi

80

he contrasted ‘the sweet style’ used for love poetry with ‘harsh’ rhymes appropriate for a discussion about nobility. When used to describe people, ‘virile’ carried a sense of fully developed. This connotation was consistent with the widespread belief, given authority by Aristotle, that women and children were imperfect. A man, and thus a manly work, was considered rational and logical. Ludovico’s informant indicated that Botticelli’s paintings had features then considered characteristic of adult males. In the memo, the distinction between the ‘virile’ and ‘sweet’ air recalls a celebrated epistle written by Pico della 28 Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child with Saints (San Barnaba altarpiece), c. 1487, oil and tempera on wood.

81

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

Mirandola in 1484, already published in 1496, in which he contrasts the ‘virile and robust’ writing of Lorenzo de’ Medici with the ‘delicate and soft’ works by Petrarch.21 Both analyses were con­ceived in the same period and city, and probably in the same intellectual circle. Although the authors had very different aims, Pico described Lorenzo’s writing with a series of qualities that we can apply to ‘virile’ painting: solid, vigorous, majestic and grave. A generation later, Pietro Bembo argued that most major authors writing in Tuscan can be des­ cribed as predominately ‘grave’ or ‘pleasing’; the former term encompassed dignity, majesty, magnificence and grandeur, and the latter grace, delicacy and sweetness.22 This distinction draws on two of the three main styles of ancient oratory, often discussed by Renaissance humanists. For Quintilian and Cicero, the grand style aimed to persuade and stir emotions, whereas the florid style, in which ornament abounded, endeavoured to please or charm. In his memo, Ludovico’s informant expressed his appreciation of the dignity and solemnity in paintings found in works such as the San Barnaba altarpiece. In contrast to the delicate, decorative and delightful works of his youth and early maturity, Botticelli’s altarpieces from the late 1480s and beyond are often des­ cribed today as harsh. The figures, male and female, old and young, typically have assertive gestures or gazes, and often both. Individually, and especially as a group, they exhibit a strong sense of personality. This bold and measured char­ acter appears in some, but not all, of Filippino’s altarpieces after he returned from Rome in 1493. With our modern sensibilities and associations, we would never call this style ‘virile’. To take a leaf from Bembo’s book, we can describe the

filippino lippi

82

forceful late works by Botticelli and Filippino as grave or expressing gravitas. Among Filippino’s altarpieces from the 1480s, perhaps the most pleasing in the eyes of Ludovico’s informant was the Vision of St Bernard (see illus. 1). The tender depiction of Mary, who delicately touches Bernard’s manuscript, certainly appealed to Perugino and his patron, given that he painted a variation of this work in Florence at the end of the decade.23 With its symmetrical composition and seemingly effortless poses, Perugino’s altarpiece appears even more harmonious than Filippino’s. His figures, often criticized by modern viewers as bland, do not express a bold or measured character. We can compare them to those in Botticelli’s Coronation of the Virgin (illus. 29), painted in about 1490 for the chapel of the powerful Silk Guild in San Marco.24 To describe this tour de force in fifteenth-century terms, the sturdy poses of the four evangelists express virility and the chorus of interlocked angels above show sweetness. In this heavenly zone, the display of skill in creating the illusion of depth on the gold ground may have led the duke’s agent to describe Botticelli as a ‘most excellent painter’. Another pair of altarpieces from the mid-1480s, both in Florentine churches and made for prominent local families, probably contributed to the opinion of Ludovico’s informant that Filippino’s works exhibited a sweeter air than Botticelli’s but less technical skill, in the sense of foreshortening, perspective and composition. In his Virgin and Child with Sts Jerome and Dominic (illus. 30), from the Rucellai Chapel in San Pan­crazio, Filippino breaks with Florentine tradition and, for the first time, sets figures in a broad and richly articulated landscape.25

29 Sandro Botticelli, Coronation of the Virgin with Saints and Angels (San Marco altarpiece), c. 1490, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

84

Once again, we see Filippino’s ingenuity in re­­thinking one of the most traditional subjects in Italian art. The specificity and naturalism of the botanical details indicate Filippino’s indebtedness to the paintings of both Leonardo and Nether­ landish artists. The Rucellai altarpiece probably represents Filippino’s reaction to Botticelli’s Bardi altarpiece from Santo Spirito (illus. 31), which also shows a nursing Virgin in an out­­ door setting with two saints.26 In that work, both John the Baptist and John the Evangelist exhibit great dignity and 30 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Sts Jerome and Dominic (Rucellai altarpiece), mid-1480s, oil and tempera on wood.

85

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

character, but Botticelli shows no interest in representing the interaction between the adult figures. Filippino, however, depicts Jerome looking intently at the Virgin, while Dominic appears fully absorbed in his reading. As in so many of his paintings, the younger artist reveals his fascination with both texts and the very act of looking. The predella, too, shows Filippino rethinking traditional solutions. Instead of presenting narrative scenes in a perspectival setting, as Botticelli did in the San Barnaba altarpiece, Filippino represented figures isolated against a black background. In the main panel of the Bardi altarpiece, Botticelli created a highly ornate

31 Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and John the Evangelist (Bardi altarpiece), 1485, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

86

setting. Behind the figures, the intricately carved marble bench is surmounted by niches created out of trees, painted with a remarkable degree of botanical accuracy, and tiny inscriptions hang from the branches. In the foreground, Botticelli included a small panel painting, a trompe l’œil representation of a Crucifixion, casting a shadow on the marble ledge. We can easily imagine that this illusionism would have impressed a contemporary viewer more than Filippino’s innovations, especially one who was evaluating technical ability. The terms used to describe paintings in fifteenth-century texts can also help us to compare two Annunciation altarpieces made at about the same date, by Filippino and Botticelli. The first adorns the Carafa Chapel in Rome (illus. 32), the subject of the next chapter.27 The pictorial cycle is not mentioned in the Milan memo, presumably because the author had not seen it. The frescoed altarpiece was probably completed in about 1490, a couple of years after Filippino arrived in Rome. Back in Florence, Ludovico’s informant could have easily observed Botticelli’s Annunciation, commissioned for the Guardi Chapel in the Cestello church in 1489 and completed the following year (illus. 33).28 The two artists, we can assume, were given the freedom to determine the setting, draperies and poses. In these details, the stylistic differences between their interpretations stand out most clearly. In Botticelli’s work, the Annunciation takes place in a chamber of utmost simplicity; we see just a hint of Mary’s wooden lectern and, atypically for the artist, a Northern-inspired landscape through the open door. The orthogonal lines in the floor tiles create an uncomplicated but effective perspectival

32 Filippino Lippi, Annunciation, c. 1490, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome.

filippino lippi

88

scheme, leading our eye to the centre of the painting. Here Botticelli focused attention on the gap between the hands of Gabriel and Mary, set before the austere moulding. In their gestures and poses, the figures are bold and forceful. What a difference we find in Filippino’s Annunciation, where ornate elements abound. Here the figures occupy an elaborate architectural setting rendered with complete mastery, especially when compared to the background in the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece. In the Roman altarpiece, the representation of two adjacent spaces echoes the architecture of the chapel itself and the contiguous funerary chamber. An intricately carved and gilded pier supports an arch and a narrower pier, which extends beyond the upper edge of the frame. On the far right,

33 Sandro Botticelli, Annunciation (Guardi altarpiece), 1489–90, oil and tempera on wood.

89

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

the red curtain hanging from a rod is tied back with a braided gold rope to exhibit a wood-panelled chamber. A shelf holds two decorated ceramic jars, an open book (an emblem of the Carafa family) and other volumes. On the left side, a gilded arch defines a vestibule with a barrel vault. The Carafa arms are displayed prominently in the centre of the ceiling, and around them, white mouldings create a series of irregularly shaped coffers. These recall the stucco decorations in the tomb chamber. The more one observes this altarpiece at close range, the more one finds intricately worked ornaments. Tassels hang from the cushion and curtain, and in the lunette at the end of the vestibule, a putto with wings and a coiled tail holds a relief depicting an angel. In the centre, the Virgin rests her knee on a cushion set on a straw chair, pushed back against a desk crowded with books and papers. We find a similar contrast between the austere and ornate settings in the frames (see illus. 37). Naturally, the patron selected the material, and the form of Botticelli’s wooden frame conforms to those of other contemporary altarpieces from Cestello. In his only surviving letter, from 1489, Filippino boasted to Filippo Strozzi that Carafa had paid the extraordinary sum of 250 florins for the gilded marble frame of the altarpiece in his chapel.29 Here, too, ornate details abound and recall those in the Tomb of Fra Filippo Lippi (see illus. 9), designed by Filippino in the same period. The marble acroterion of the Carafa frame consists of highly elaborate scroll elements that end in four grotesque heads, some grinning, others tightlipped. The central heads balance a vase, brimming with fruit, the handles of which support garlands that lead to burning lamps. Filippino’s ingenious crowning elements, derived from

filippino lippi

90

ancient prototypes, even captured the attention of Raphael, who made variations on them in a sheet of sketches, and they surely appealed to many of his contemporaries.30 In both Annunciation altarpieces, Gabriel seems to have just arrived, lily in hand, from an open doorway on the left. Filippino shows the angel as he steps towards the Virgin, his left foot barely touching the ground, his right with only the toes on the marble step. Gabriel wears multicoloured garments fastened with a complex knot as the Holy Dove flies overhead amid a multitude of golden rays. Mary raises her right hand in a delicate and ambiguous gesture. She acknowledges Gabriel, as is typical in Renaissance paintings, and tilts her head towards him. The Virgin also turns her body to face the kneeling donor, Oliviero Carafa, presented by Thomas Aquinas, and seems to offer the cardinal her blessing. The Virgin, angel and dove are all in motion, and even the delicate hand gesture of St Thomas seems transitory. Only the cardinal appears solid and immobile. His hands are drawn close to his chest, and his voluminous drapery cascades on to the floor. As in the Vision of St Bernard, the donor’s features are far more individualized than those of the holy personages; only here do we see shadows below the chin, nose and cheekbone. Filippino integrated Carafa with the sacred figures while showing us that the patron belongs to another level of reality. Unlike Botticelli, Filippino had unusual constraints for his depiction of the Annunciation. He was evidently asked to include representations of both Carafa and Aquinas, given that the chapel has a double dedication to the saint and the Virgin Annunciate. As in the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece, the painter showed far greater interest than Botticelli in

91

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

integrating his figures. Fifteenth- and twenty-first-century observers would agree that the poses, expressions and clothing of the angel and Annunciate in Filippino’s altarpiece are far gentler than in Botticelli’s and, overall, the latter is bolder and more forceful. Filippino’s interest and delight in linking figures through their placement and gazes transformed his next altarpiece. According to the ‘Book of Antonio Billi’, written in the early sixteenth century, Filippino ‘made a panel for Tanai de’ Nerli in Santo Spirito’, the Florentine church of the Augustinian Hermits. This is the earliest reference to Filippino’s only panel painting still in its original location, the Virgin and Child with Sts Martin of Tours, John the Baptist, Catherine of Alexandria and Two Donors (illus. 34).31 The ‘Anonimo Magliabechiano’ informs us that Filippino depicted Nerli together with his wife, ‘Pippa’, that is, Nanna di Gino Capponi. This source also mentions the stained-glass window, now known only from the highly finished drawing St Martin Sharing His Cloak.32 Nerli probably acquired the chapel in 1455, but only in 1493 did he join the Santo Spirito opera (Board of Works). Already in November 1490, he began making yearly donations to the church on the feast of St Martin.33 Perhaps Nerli also made plans for his altarpiece and even contacted Filippino, who was busy on the Carafa Chapel. Conceivably, the artist made some drawings for the window and altarpiece during his Roman sojourn, but Filippino probably began painting it soon after he returned to Florence, in 1493. The delicate female holy figures in the altarpiece show strong similarities to Gabriel and Mary in the Carafa Annunciation. Significantly, the complex pose of the Christ Child, rotating gracefully in his mother’s arms,

filippino lippi

92

and often copied by Filippino’s students, recalls that in the Sforza altarpiece painted for the Duke of Milan by a follower of Leonardo.34 The impact of the older master also resonates in one of Filippino’s sweetest works from this period, his un­­documented Cleveland tondo, also datable to 1493–4 (illus. 35).35 The embracing holy children show striking simi­ larities to those found in many drawings and independent paintings by Leonardo’s students and followers, which must reflect an invention by the master.36 The most likely explan­ ation is that Filippino visited Leonardo’s workshop during an undocumented trip to Milan in 1493. In that year, as we have seen, Filippino received the commission for the Pavia Certosa altarpiece, and his trip could have been necessitated 34 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Sts Martin of Tours, John the Baptist, Catherine of Alexandria and Two Donors (Nerli altarpiece), 1493–4, oil and tempera on wood.

93

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

by that project. When in Milan, Filippino could also have seen Leonardo’s St Jerome and then made his variation on the subject, a ‘virile’ altarpiece discussed in Chapter Six. If Ludovico’s informant ever saw the Nerli altarpiece, we could imagine his praise for the sweet expressions of the Virgin and Catherine, and the charming gesture of the Christ Child who, for the first time in Florentine art, plays with John the Baptist’s cross. In an amusing detail, Filippino gave very similar heads, and the same degree of verisimilitude, to the putti who appear above the saints. In a play between real and fictive, two ‘sculpted’ putti in very lively poses hold the Nerli coat of arms, while the central one struggles to hold the holy dove.

35 Filippino Lippi, Holy Family with Sts Margaret and John the Baptist (Cleveland tondo), c. 1493–4, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

94

This play between naturalism and artifice takes on a central role in the Miracle of St Philip in the Strozzi Chapel, painted in the late 1490s. In the altarpiece, Filippino also included a disconcerting all’antica scene of rape, set into the throne of the Virgin. As in an ancient relief, centaurs attack female figures, another detail that reflects the impact of Filippino’s Roman sojourn. The placement in the altarpiece suggests that Mary, and thus the Church, triumphs over the ancient world. Renaissance visitors to Santo Spirito could compare Filippino’s composition with other altarpieces in the choir from the late Quattrocento, including Botticelli’s Bardi altarpiece. These works, executed by a heterogeneous group of Florentine artists, reveal a notable similarity in size, frames and composition. Church officials probably gave painters some general guidelines, although not, I believe, specific indications about the depiction of scenes or portraits.37 Most of the altarpieces show the Virgin enthroned in the centre, flanked by saints in a symmetrical composition, with a marble parapet behind the figures. Filippino developed Botticelli’s invention of a triple arcade into a loggia. In the Nerli altarpiece, this archi­­tectural feature defines the sacred space in the foreground and, more generally, recalls the arches so prominent in Brunelleschi’s church. As is typical, the male donor has the place of honour, to the liturgical right (or observer’s left) of the main holy figures. Recent technical analyses have revealed that Filippino originally painted Mary as looking towards Tanai, but that this was changed in the final version, where she turns in the direction of Nanna.38 The two donors react differently to the holy figures that seem to appear before them. Tanai flips back his

95

‘Sweet ’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli

left hand in a conventional gesture of awe, and supports a bright red cloth with his right. The turn of his head towards the Virgin creates a series of wrinkles in his neck. These details, together with the raised eyebrow and furrowed forehead, add a note of animation to a highly formalized altarpiece. Tanai expresses his amazement and joy with dramatic gestures that were reserved for male donors in fifteenth-century paintings. Nanna remains perfectly immobile, with her hands joined in prayer, in conformity to period views that women should always appear decorous. The very angle of the heads in the Nerli altarpiece accentuates the different characters of the poses. Although kneeling donors in religious compositions are usually shown in profile, Filippino gives us a glimpse at Tanai’s far eye. The female profile portrait appears more generalized than the man’s by virtue of the lack of wrinkles and other distinguishing features. The work thus presents different modes of religious devotion: the husband reacts actively, and his wife behaves modestly. The portraits represent ideal projections of the roles of the donor and his wife, thus adding to their honour, and presented role models for others. Directly behind Nanna and Catherine, we see an inti­­mate domestic space, a room framed by two curtains. In the background, just to the right of the Virgin, two women appear in a palazzo of modern design, different from the Palazzo Nerli in Florence. Both are modestly dressed and depicted in profile; one rests her hand on the head of a child, and the other looks on from a window. In the street, a servant in the Nerli colours attends to a horse. Nearby stands a dignified gentleman, in three-quarter view, with a wide-brimmed hat and a bright red cloak. The head of the family prepares to ride out

filippino lippi

96

of the city on his waiting horse, or perhaps he has just returned from his travels. He embraces the child tenderly, perhaps to add a personal touch and to show the older figure as a family man. He appears much younger than Tanai and probably serves to convey a general sense of the Nerli family. Beyond these figures, Filippino’s powers of observation come across in the delightful vignettes of city life. Most probably they have no iconographic significance and serve primarily to enrich the painting. Far from the holy figures in the foreground, two dogs examine each other in a sunlit street, a woman walks through the gate balancing a tray on her head as she takes the hand of a small child, and workmen hurry along their mules. In the distant left, Filippino contrasts this picture of a dense urban fabric with a bucolic scene of a grassy hill with trees. The Nerli altarpiece reveals Filippino’s skill in the masterly depiction of landscape and architecture, learned citations from antiquity, and convincing representation of fabrics and threedimensional form. In his highly complex composition, adult men express dignity and majesty, and women embody grace, delicacy and sweetness. Here, and in his subsequent altarpieces, Filippino adopts the appropriate ‘air’ for the gender of his figures and the function of his paintings.

four

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel, 1488–93

I

n 1488 Filippino arrived in Rome for the most prestigious commission of his career, the decoration of the chapel that belonged to a very powerful cardinal, Oliviero Carafa, in one of the city’s most prominent churches, Santa Maria sopra Minerva (illus. 36).1 The experience of spending five years in Rome and working for Carafa made this fresco cycle, completed in 1493, a turning point in Filippino’s career. The paintings exhibit four highly significant qualities – gravitas, ornament, motion and emotion – and each of those is far more pronounced than in Filippino’s earlier works. Many details in the Carafa Chapel, especially in the framing elements, derive from ancient monuments. This led Vasari to make the exaggerated statement that Filippino, after his Roman sojourn, was the first to introduce to Florence the type of decoration known as all’antica, that is, in the style found in ancient reliefs and paintings.2 As was typical in chapel frescoes, Filippino began his cycle in the vault, with the Cumaean, Delphic, Tiburtine and Hellespontine Sybils (illus. 38).3 Next, to judge from the overlapping layers of plaster, he painted the altar wall: first the Annunciation (see illus. 32) and then the Assumption of the Virgin (illus. 37; see also illus. 45).4 At

filippino lippi

98

this point Filippino turned to the side walls, although we cannot establish the sequence. On the right-hand side, he represented the Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix in the lunette and the Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas below (illus. 39). On the opposite wall, below a window, he painted another triumph, that of Virtue over Vice. The fresco was lost in 1566 when the wall 36 Filippino Lippi, frescoes, Carafa Chapel, Rome, 1489–93.

99

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

was destroyed to make room for the tomb of Pope Paul iv, but Vasari described the allegorical scenes in detail.5 Some figural groups appear in surviving drawings, made when Filippino was exploring the subject.6 This wall probably had a door that led to the cardinal’s now damaged burial chamber. Surprisingly, the frescoes on the barrel vault depict Scenes of Pagan Sacrifice, 37 Filippino Lippi, Assumption of the Virgin and Annunciation, c. 1490, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome. overleaf: 38 Filippino Lippi, Cumaean, Delphic, Tiburtine and Hellespontine Sybils, c. 1489, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome.

filippino lippi

102

flanked by two sets of narratives usually found in domestic decorations: the Story of Virginia and the Story of Lucretia.7 These were painted by Filippino’s student Raffaellino del Garbo, most probably based on drawings by the master. Although the Annunciation would have struck many Renais­ sance viewers as ‘sweet’, as we saw in the last chapter, the other wall frescoes reveal a new sense of dignity and grandeur, 39 Filippino Lippi, Miracle of St Thomas and Triumph of St Thomas, c. 1491–3, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome.

103

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

qualities then described as ‘virile’ or grave. By comparing Filippino’s Triumph with the highly finished preparatory drawing (illus. 40 and 41), we can see the change in both style and content; this, in turn, allows us to consider the fundamental role played by his patron. We can establish Cardinal Carafa’s taste when it came to sermons, given that he actively promoted classically inspired epideictic oratory. Significantly, we find a similar style in Filippino’s Triumph fresco, and so the Carafa Chapel provides a case study for Filippino’s relationship with a patron. All too often, no firm evidence indicates who commissioned his major works, such as the Brancacci Chapel, or who saw them through to completion, such as the Strozzi Chapel. In the Carafa Chapel, however, we have an unusually wide range of evidence about the patronage and creative process, both written, in the form of letters and documents, and visual, with nearly thirty drawings related to the frescoes. These permit us to reconstruct a series of key decisions made by (or for) the cardinal. For example, the frescoes are far more ornate than Filippino’s earlier paintings, a quality we can link to the patron’s interests. In Filippino’s only surviving letter, written in 1489 to Filippo Strozzi, the artist promised to return soon to Florence and tried to stimulate his patron’s sense of competition by including some news about Cardinal Carafa: My work pleases him, and he is spending a great deal, without saving on anything. Just now the marble frame for the altar was made, and the labour alone costs 250 large gold florins, then it must be decorated, and this is how he wants everything. The chapel could not be more ornate with a pavement of porphyry and serpentine

filippino lippi

104

marble, all very finely cut, a very ornate marble parapet, and in the end, everything is very rich.8 Filippino probably provided drawings for the highly original stonework he listed: the Cosmati pavement, consisting of coloured stones set in geometric patterns, the marble balustrade for the entrance wall, and the gilded marble frame.9 The crowning element of the frame bears close comparison to the tomb of Filippo Lippi (see illus. 9), designed by his son in about 1490. In his letter, Filippino did not mention the monumental marble arch framing the chapel entrance, probably because it was not his responsibility.10 According to Vasari, the Carafa Chapel was valued at ‘2,000 gold ducats, not including the expense of the blue [pigment] and assistants’.11 More likely, Carafa paid this enormous sum for all materials and labour 40 Filippino Lippi, Triumph of St Thomas, c. 1491–3, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome.

105

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

in his chapel, including the expensive stonework. By way of comparison, the Strozzi family spent about half that amount on their chapel in Santa Maria Novella, which is somewhat smaller and much less ornate. Many of Filippino’s works made after he arrived in Rome convey a much greater sense of motion. This was first noted by Aby Warburg, who more than a century ago transformed our understanding of how fifteenth-century artists borrowed

41 Filippino Lippi, Triumph of St Thomas, c. 1490–91, pen and ink.

filippino lippi

106

from ancient images. Today we often view the art of Greece and Rome through the filter of works created by Michelangelo and Raphael, and especially by neoclassical artists. The last found inspiration in the sentiments expressed by the art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who in the mid-eighteenth century celebrated the ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ of Greek sculpture. Filippino helps us to rediscover the impression made in late fifteenth-century Rome by the countless fragments of paintings, sculptures and architecture, most unclassified and unstudied. One of Warburg’s rare observations about Filippino applies perfectly to the angels flying around the Virgin in the Carafa Assumption, with their fluttering robes and ribbons: ‘the influence of antiquity mani­ fested itself in Quattrocento secular painting – and specifically in that of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi – through a change in the depiction of human figures, an increased mobility of the body and of its draperies inspired by antique visual art and poetry.’12 In a celebrated article on the ‘rebirth of antiquity’, the art historian Erwin Panofsky explored how fifteenthcentury artists expressed a ‘desire for emotional excitement in form and expression’.13 This observation captures yet another new quality found in Filippino’s art after he arrived in Rome: the facial features and overall body language in his figures show much greater emotion, as seen, for example, in the Assumption Apostles or the heretic under Aquinas’s foot in the Triumph. During pauses from his work in the Carafa Chapel, Filippino could have strolled across the street to visit the Pan­ theon and experience at first hand the sense of monumentality and spaciousness in the ancient temple, unlike that in any

107

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

Tuscan building. A short walk would bring him to some holes in the ground, where adventurous antiquarians and artists had created an entrance to the Golden House of Nero, then still buried under the Baths of Trajan. The area was considered a cave, or grotto, and so the images there were known in the Renaissance as grotteschi. The term applies especially to the fanciful (or ‘grotesque’) decorations that mixed animal, human and plant forms on many sheets that Filippino jotted down quickly in pen and ink, perhaps on the spot. A booklet written in the mid-1490s offers us an amusing but believable image of artists bringing their lunch and lowering themselves into the ground to see these remarkable paintings.14 One visitor inscribed the name ‘Filipino’, and perhaps it was the Florentine painter.15 Before returning to the Carafa Chapel, we can briefly consider a few drawings that provide precious clues about how Filippino saw the ancient world. The artist carried out accurate studies as well as free copies and variations, and both types survive on a single sheet now in Florence (illus. 42).16 In the lower part, he made an accurate copy of a harpy, with a child’s face on a bird’s body. This strange creature reappears in the decorative framework of the Strozzi Chapel, and similar beasts adorn the piers of the Carafa Chapel. In many other drawings, Filippino reveals his interest in not only the imaginative combinations found in these grotteschi but the delicacy of the linking elements, often just a thin, twisting vine. In the upper part of the sheet, Filippino made a free study of Hippolytus’ Departure for the Hunt, an ancient painting now nearly effaced in the Golden House and known from an engraving. With a few bold lines made with a lead-tipped stylus on

filippino lippi

108

specially prepared paper, he created a highly dramatic image. Given the difficulty of the metalpoint technique, he must have produced this sheet in his studio. In comparison to his proto­ type, Filippino selected a few figures and exaggerated the gestures. In the sketch, the body language of Phaedra expresses more passion for her stepson Hippolytus; she reaches out with both hands to grab his cape, and the youth withdraws 42 Filippino Lippi, Hippolytus’ Departure for the Hunt and Harpy, 1488–93, lead point.

109

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

with a greater sense of repulsion. The drawing shows far more movement and emotion than the ancient source. A magnificent composition study depicting the Death of Laocoön (illus. 43) must be based on a now lost ancient work, probably a painting in Rome.17 This would explain the striking similarities of the main figure to the priest in the celebrated

43 Filippino Lippi, Death of Laocoön, 1490–93, pen and ink.

filippino lippi

110

marble statue, discovered shortly after the artist’s death. In these works, Laocoön fights off the attacking snakes with his left hand and raises his right dramatically. Filippino made the drawing in preparation for his fresco at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. He received the commission, according to Vasari, from Lorenzo de’ Medici, who died in 1492. Given the dates of Filippino’s Roman sojourn and the construction history of the Tuscan villa, the artist must have begun the painting in 1493–4, when his patron was Lorenzo’s son Piero, and left it unfinished when Piero was banished from Florence in 1494. The related drawings show how Filippino discovered the dramatic force of expression in an antique prototype. For this reason, the sheet was mentioned by Fritz Saxl, the first student of Warburg, when he cited Laocoön’s gesture as an example of his professor’s famous concept of Pathosformeln (emotional formulas).18 Hands rarely rise above the head in nature, wrote Alberti in On Painting, or in fifteenth-century art, but Filippino depicts this gesture repeatedly after arriving in Rome. The only earlier example is the Story of Virginia (see illus. 23), based on Botticelli’s drawings, where the heroine raises both arms in the theatrical scene of her execution. In the Carafa burial chamber, Raffaellino shows Virginia with her arms lowered, but her female attendant bares one breast, like a maenad from a Bacchic sarcophagus, and tears out her hair with both hands overhead. Throughout the Carafa Chapel, the presence of all’antica elements, dramatic emotion, majestic figures and abundant ornamentation indicates how the artist reinvented himself during his extended sojourn. The ease in dating all but a few of Filippino’s paintings as pre- or post-Rome evinces the transformative impact of his stay in the city.19

111

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

While in Rome, Filippino also provided expert opinions on ancient works. Lorenzo de’ Medici, according to a list of his correspondence, wrote on 1 June 1489 to Giovanni Ciam­po­­­lini, who purchased antiquities in Rome for the Florentine leader, instructing him ‘to show the heads and other things to Filippino’.20 On Christmas Eve 1490 Lorenzo wrote directly to ‘Filippino the painter. A reply to one of his.’21 Perhaps these lost letters mentioned some of Filippino’s many projects for Lorenzo during this period: the Death of Laocoön; the tomb of Filippo Lippi; the lost fresco for the villa at Spedaletto, mentioned in the memo of 1493; and, most prob­­ ably, designs for floats used during two Florentine festivals.22 Lorenzo had promoted a new type of celebration, in which richly dressed male youths processed by foot or on horseback, along with floats described by Vasari as ‘full of ornaments and spoils and bizarre fantasies’.23 The Carnival festivities held in Feb­ruary 1490 included seven processional floats dedicated to planets. Lorenzo wrote poems for the occasion, and a contemporary referred to him as the patron. For this project, I propose, Filippino made his drawing of a float that contains an inscription on the base: ‘stories of Venus in painted marble’ (illus. 44).24 These must have been fictive reliefs, perhaps res­embling the one below the Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas. Above the base of the float, Filippino depicts cupids who dance around the enthroned goddess, while others tie up a victim of love or carry the arrows produced by Vulcan at his forge. Lorenzo also organized an extraordinary all’antica procession of the Roman consul Aemilius Paullus with no fewer than fifteen floats for the feast day of St John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence, on 24 June 1491. An

filippino lippi

112

engraving from the 1490s probably reflects this event and, in some details, the Roman soldiers recall those in the Strozzi Chapel.25 Filippino, an expert in antiquities, could have sent a drawing from Rome for the event, much as he did for the competition in 1490 for the facade of Florence Cathedral.26 Soon after his return to Florence, the local government commissioned from Filippino a ‘Triumph of Peace’ for the entry of King Charles viii in November 1494.27 A decade later, upon the artist’s death, he was mourned in particular by Florentine youths, writes Vasari, ‘who, for their public festivals, masques, and other spectacles, turned to Filipp[in]o and were always very satisfied with his ingenuity and invention’.28 To earn such praise, Filippino must have designed the 44 Filippino Lippi, Triumph of Venus, c. 1490, pen and ink.

113

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

decorations for many events, and probably one or two for Lorenzo. The Florentine leader also recommended Filippino for the Carafa Chapel commission, as we learn from not only Vasari but a letter from the patron. In 1488 the cardinal reassured Lorenzo’s intermediary that he had selected Filippino: ‘given that he was sent by the Magnificent Lorenzo, we would not have substituted him for all the painters of ancient Greece.’29 This stock praise indicates not Filippino’s artistic style but, most probably, the political influence of Lorenzo. He followed Filippino’s work in the Carafa Chapel with the assistance of Nofri Tornabuoni, the Medici bank manager in Rome. Accord­ ing to Vasari, Tornabuoni paid Filippino on behalf of Lorenzo for the tomb of Fra Filippo. In 1490 Nofri explained in a letter to Lorenzo that Filippino had promised to work diligently in the chapel, and added, ‘I am certain that the Cardinal will be obliged to you and pleased with him. There is nothing else to do but keep an eye on him and remind him of that which seems necessary.’30 Lorenzo needed to overcome Carafa’s opposition to the appointment as cardinal of Lorenzo’s thirteen-year-old son Giovanni, the future Pope Leo x. No other fifteenthcentury letter reveals quite so clearly the political importance of an artistic recommendation. Filippino had to please not only Carafa and his advisors but Nofri and Lorenzo. Throughout his career, the powerful cardinal of Naples patronized both artists and scholars.31 In the medieval church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the mother church of the Dominicans, Carafa – who became cardinal protector of the order in 1478 – obtained rights to an altar dedicated to the Annunciation at the end of the right transept. By 1486

filippino lippi

114

he had the wall opened to build the Carafa Chapel, which is attached to the nave. A couple of years later, Carafa hired a painter who, with his miraculous brush, seemed to make the end wall disappear behind the Annunciation altarpiece. Beyond the marble arch at the entrance, visitors see the marble altar table, the marble altarpiece frame and a series of architectural elements, seemingly in marble but painted by Filippino with extraordinary illusionism. Fictive piers support a massive arch, identical in size and similar in appearance to the one on the entrance wall. This opens to a vast landscape where the Apostles look up at the ascending Virgin. Perhaps Filippino had proposed the Assumption (illus. 37) because it allowed him to depict a single scene in the spaces flanking and above the altarpiece.32 Standing in two closely packed groups, the Apostles react dramatically to the miracle overhead, speaking and gesticu­ lating excitedly to one another. No fewer than three have their hands over their heads, and St Philip, the most prominent figure on the left, strikes a bold, almost theatrical pose. Pivoting on one foot, he turns towards St Andrew, rests one hand on his arm and reaches up with the other to indicate the ascending Virgin. The intense gazes and body language of the Apostles encourage the viewers to direct their attention to the miracle. Mary looks down towards the portrait of Carafa in the altarpiece as she stands delicately on a cloud carried aloft by angels (illus. 45). Within this ‘cloud putto’, among the first to appear in Italian art, we see an infinite number of cavorting babies; some even hold swinging censers full of incense.33 Ornate details abound in the upper half of the fresco, from the large burning torches planted in the cloud, to the range of musical instruments, some fanciful, others realistically rendered.

115

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

Two of the central angels seem to rest their feet on the rod supporting a vermilion banner, suspended above the altarpiece and behind the marble frame. The red cords attached near the finials of the rod lead back to the fictive marble capitals supporting the arch; here they are wrapped around the legs of adorable putti holding the Carafa coats of arms. This playful touch contributes to the illusion of distance between the arch and altarpiece. In the Renaissance, a real curtain probably covered the Annunciation but was opened for Mass. Worshippers would have seen this fabric, together with the red curtain depicted in the altarpiece, as hanging from a rod above and behind the Virgin, thus creating continuity between real and fictive worlds. Aside from some details, the essential distinction between these realms remains clear, although some scholars emphasize the ambiguity of the space.34 Viewers may have been startled by the illusion of depth in the end wall, but none believed that they were seeing the Assumption take place on a vast landscape in Rome. In contrast, observers in the Strozzi Chapel are often fooled by the illusionism of the altar wall. The setting of the Annunciation relates directly to the actual architecture in the Carafa Chapel. Mary kneels in front of a rectangular space, and a barrel-vaulted passage appears behind Gabriel. The Carafa Chapel is also rectangular, and the contiguous burial chamber has a barrel vault. Filippino integrated the three-dimensional and the illusionistic architecture of the chapel to a degree unprecedented in extant fifteenth-century frescoes, although his approach is indebted to Pinturicchio’s Bufalini Chapel and, most probably, Andrea Mantegna’s lost decorations of Pope Innocent viii’s Vatican Chapel.35 The conceptual unity first of the Carafa Chapel,

filippino lippi

116

and then of the Strozzi Chapel in Florence, provided essential prototypes for Michelangelo’s vault of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura. Carafa’s decision to give his chapel a second dedication, to St Thomas Aquinas, had major consequences for Filippino. The Dominican friar was not only one of the most influential theologians in Church history, but a patron saint of Naples and a distant relation of Carafa. At the entrance to the new chapel, an inscription in the monumental marble arch proclaims the double dedication, and a marble scroll attached to the keystone indicates the name and title of the patron. The unprecedented dedication of a chapel to both the Annunciate 45 Filippino Lippi, detail from Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1490, fresco, Carafa Chapel, Rome.

117

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

and Aquinas led Filippino to integrate the saint and Carafa in his unique representation of the Annunciation (illus. 32). Carafa, or more likely a Dominican theologian in his circle, must have provided Filippino with the specifications for both subjects for the right-hand wall: the Triumph and Miracle (illus. 39). To best appreciate the form, content and setting of these frescoes dedicated to Aquinas, we can move to the high altar. Each year, starting in the mid-fifteenth century, a remarkable celebration here honoured St Thomas.36 Uniquely among feasts for a saint, the entire Sacred College of Cardinals was expected to participate. During the Mass, the Nicene Creed was sung, followed by a sermon and then, once the fresco cycle had been completed, a visit to the Carafa Chapel. Start­ ing in the 1480s, these sermons were commissioned by Carafa in a style based on classical epideictic oratory. The words and images contributed to the fame of the Carafa Chapel and the patron himself. In so doing, they advanced Carafa’s goal of promoting the cult of St Thomas Aquinas.

From the high chapel, cardinals listening to the panegyrics devoted to Thomas could see only the right-hand wall. Before he received permission to paint the Triumph, Filippino must have shown Carafa a detailed composition drawing, perhaps the one now in London (illus. 41).37 No theological assistance was needed to create this sheet. Much of the imagery derives from Andrea di Bonaiuto’s Triumph, a prominent fourteenthcentury fresco in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella. After evaluating Filippino’s drawing, Carafa or his representative must have told the artist to include the many texts that

filippino lippi

118

clarify or magnify the significance of the fresco. The sheet does not even leave space for the inscriptions that are so conspicuous in the painting. In Filippino’s drawing, the Gothic architecture found in previous representations of the scene was replaced by an airy Renaissance building with arched openings; for the fresco, Filippino added a niche to help focus attention on Thomas. Four female figures, identified in the fresco by inscriptions on their robes, sit next to the saint. From right to left, we see Grammar accompanied by a boy who reads; Dialectic with a snake in hand; Philosophy holding a book; and Theology wearing a crown and indicating the heavenly source of Thomas’s inspiration. The inclusion and placement of both Philosophy and Theology represent a learned response to the most famous panegyric to Thomas, delivered in the Minerva in 1457, in which Lorenzo Valla objected strenuously to the intrusion of Philosophy into divine science. In a sermon of 1485 commissioned by Carafa, however, Francesco Maturanzio referred to both Philosophy and Theology.38 Moreover, although Valla conspicuously left unmentioned the miracle of the speaking Crucifix, and even ridiculed it in another text, Maturanzio included it in his panegyric, and just a few years later Filippino displayed it prominently in the lunette.39 In the right foreground of the Triumph drawing stand several heretics with bowed heads. A figure of great import­ ance, surely Carafa himself, enters with his entourage to witness the triumph. For the fresco, however, the patron had Filippino include his portrait only once in the chapel, in the altarpiece. The artist then adapted his composition for the Triumph by adding many more heretics, organized into two distinct groups,

119

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

with the most prominent figures close to the centre. On the right stands Sabellius, a bald man wearing a red mantle, and on the left is Arius, with white hair and beard, in his yellow robe. Open books nearby identify them and summarize their sins. Filippino’s advisor evidently indicated which heretics and inscriptions to include. Thomas refuted the views of Arius and Sabellius in his Summa contra gentiles, the opening line of which appears in the medallion above the saint. In this text, Thomas also discussed four other heretics, who are each identified in the fresco by the inscriptions on their robes.40 To best illustrate the contrast between the saint’s truthful words and the heretics’ impiety, Carafa approved a programme that follows Thomas’s Summa contra gentiles far more closely than previous representations of the Triumph. The cardinal, known for his support of Church reform, also had Filippino include a representation of the Church Militant in the man left of centre. Count Niccolò Orsini, appointed General of Papal Arms in 1489, holds a ceremonial mace and leads Arius to be judged. On the opposite side, the other heretics are introduced by Gioacchino Torriani, then Master General of the Dominicans. Most probably, Carafa and his circle recognized some of the bystanders as portraits of their contemporaries.41 In the fresco, as compared to the drawing, Filippino focused more attention on worthy figures, such as Orsini, Torriani and especially Thomas, and distinguished them from unrighteous ones. The heretics are far more numerous and prominent in this Triumph than in the many earlier represen­ tations of the subject. The emphasis on praise and blame in Filippino’s Minerva frescoes corresponds precisely to the new

filippino lippi

120

style of panegyrics delivered in the Minerva on Thomas’s feast day. In 1485, just a few years before giving his own sermon, Aurelio Brandolini wrote a handbook in Rome on rhetoric, complete with formal instructions on how to write about saints. 42 He applied to sermons the principles of epideictic oratory, also known as praise-and-blame rhetoric. In antiquity, this style was used on ceremonial occasions not to teach listeners, but to evoke feelings of appreciation or disgust. In the late fifteenth century, and especially in the circle of Carafa, it was adapted for panegyrics delivered in churches. There was no need to explain the ancient rules of praise and blame to Filippino, only to ask him to give more importance to those figures that should be celebrated or condemned. Brandolini organized his sermon according to the basic categories of Thomas’s learning and his virtue, a model followed by most other orators. We find a direct visual parallel to this approach in the iconography of Filippino’s frescoes dedicated to Thomas. A comparison between the drawn and painted versions of the Triumph suggests that Carafa had an impact on not only the content of Filippino’s work but the style. The drawing is far more ornate and graceful, as seen in the area above the saint. In a variation on the upper part of the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece (see illus. 26), one angel holds a baldachin from which two strips of cloth descend, each held by a flying angel. At the base of the throne, a couple on the left chat casually, and a man on the right looks up with curiosity at Thomas. Nearby, Filippino included a pile of scattered books in the very centre, and two dogs nearby study each other. None of these potentially distracting elements survives in the final version.

121

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

We find instead what the Milan memo called the ‘virile’ air in Botticelli’s works, characterized by the dignity of the figures and the gravity of their expressions. We also see a newfound monumentality in the architectural settings, which reflect Filippino’s careful study of ancient buildings in Rome. The panegyrics pronounced in the Minerva often evinced the same virtues of order, clarity and simplicity of expression that they celebrated in the writing of Thomas. In his handbook, Brandolini stressed the need to be clear and intelligible. Carafa seems to have sought these very qualities in Filippino’s depictions of the principal figures and in the explanatory inscriptions that abound in the Triumph. Surely it is no coincidence that Filippino developed this style for Carafa, an inspired patron who admired clarity of thought. The cardinal who rejected the most confusing details in Filippino’s presentation drawing sponsored sermons indebted to epideictic oratory. He also revised Filippino’s original proposal for the architectural setting. In the drawing, the platform in the foreground is interrupted in the centre by a flight of steps. On the right, we see a series of simple piers and on the left a marble balustrade that would have continued the marble parapet at the entrance to the chapel. Carafa probably found both these ingenious options too distracting. In the end, Filippino omitted the stairs and brought the actors closer to the viewer. Although the Triumph expresses order and clarity, both the scene and the framing elements also include the ornaments that the cardinal, according to Filippino’s letter, so appreciated in his chapel. We find an extraordinary richness in the decoration of the throne, and a vast array of poses, draperies and facial types. A plethora of details delights the

filippino lippi

122

eye, from the observers in the upper part to the illusionism of the lowest level (illus. 39). In the framing element above the Triumph, Filippino created a fictive frieze that includes many implements used in the celebration of Mass. He carefully arranged these and other objects of varying shapes and textures – most prominently, a roundel depicting Christ as the Man of Sorrows with the Veil of Veronica below – into an eyecatching still-life, set convincingly on a ledge before a simulated golden mosaic. In epideictic oratory, as in Filippino’s frescoes, the use of ornaments complemented the simplicity of expression. Praise-and-blame rhetoric was associated by ancient and Renais­­sance authors with poetry and considered a form of ‘display’ oratory. The humanist preachers in the Minerva expected the College of Cardinals to recognize their ancient sources when they quoted or paraphrased Cicero and Seneca. Based on ancient models, these panegyrics aimed to arouse wonder and amazement. Orators used praise and blame to engage with their listeners in the most persuasive way possible. Similarly, Filippino embellished his clear depiction of the scene with details that would capture the attention of learned viewers. In the left background, all could identify the Marcus Aurelius, the only surviving equestrian statue in central Italy from the ancient world. Other details were familiar to those with antiquarian interests, such as the reliefs flanking the niche in Thomas’s throne. These derive from the tomb of Marco Antonio Lupo, then on the road to Ostia, and were copied by several Renaissance artists.43 Both the frescoes and the sermons exhibit a powerful, persuasive style indebted to ancient models and rich with learned citations.

123

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

This characterization also applies to Filippino’s represen­ tation of the heretics. The bearded Arius, his eyes downcast and hands crossed before him, recalls in a general way the captive Dacians on the Arch of Constantine, who provided many Renaissance artists with models of dignified submission. The clearest example of pathos is the supine heretic under Thomas’s foot in the fresco, but not included in Filippino’s London draw­­ing.44 The dramatic gesture and pose in the very centre of Filippino’s painting – two details that add much to its persuasive power – must represent changes made after he discussed the work with his patron. This does not imply that Carafa himself proposed such artistic solutions, but rather that Filippino found them when searching for the most appropriate expressive form for the fresco.

The attempt to persuade, fundamental to the new style of Renaissance panegyrics, helps us to understand how Filippino’s learned contemporaries would have perceived the forceful gestures and facial expressions in his paintings. In the Triumph drawing, the movements of the hands are far less dramatic than those in the fresco. In the Assumption, too, the Apostles are more emphatic and joyful in the painting than in the preparatory drawings. 45 This recalls another distinctive aspect of epideictic oratory, the exclamations of joy and wonder. The painter understood that Carafa would appreciate a visual equivalent of these expressions in his chapel frescoes, and included them in the Miracle scene. Vasari described the lunette on the right-hand wall as ‘the scene when, as St Thomas is praying, the Crucifix says to him,

filippino lippi

124

“You have written well of me, Thomas”, while a companion of the Saint, hearing that Crucifix thus speaking, is standing amazed and almost beside himself’.46 Filippino expressed this amazement through the companion’s dramatic hand gestures and his back-turned head. To convey a sense of rapid motion, the artist shows the friar’s right foot suspended in mid-air and amplified the impact of the gesture through an unusual echo effect. In the centre background, another figure runs forwards, and in the foreground a boy moves quickly to the left; both figures extend one arm. In this fresco, Filippino also alluded to the rarely depicted miracle of chastity, when Thomas’s brothers, in their attempt to make him break his vows, brought a prostitute into his room. After Thomas prayed for divine assistance, two angels presented him with a girdle of perpetual chastity. This story was included in the book of prayers that Dominican friars recited on Aquinas’s feast day, which specifies that the saint ‘prayed near the miraculous cross and angelic hands gird his loins’.47 Filippino’s angels hold lilies and reveal a striped sash below the saint’s mantle. The unique conflation of two miracles indicates another constraint given to Filippino. Carafa wanted his fresco to express both Thomas’s virtue and his learned writings. In the lunette, the two female figures right of centre also refer to the theme of proper behaviour. A young woman, her head modestly covered, rosary beads in her belt, is accompanied by an elderly matron. They probably reminded original visitors of the young maidens who, duly chaperoned to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, received the dowries each year on the feast of the Annunciation. On the right-hand side of the Miracle lunette, the two men arguing allude to Thomas’s refutation of heretics, the subject

125

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

of the Triumph below. A young man indicates Thomas with his left hand and points angrily at an older man with his right. The latter figure wears a turban and a large earring, both unmistakable signs of the ‘infidel’. Most probably, he represents the famous heretic Averroes, but his headgear also brings to mind Carafa’s leading role in the naval expedition against the Turks in 1472.48 The lunette unites the condemnation of an Eastern thinker, whose views were attacked in a treatise by Thomas, with the celebration of the saint, whose writings received divine approval. The unusual composition, with St Thomas placed on the far left, reveals how Filippino planned for privileged viewers to observe the chapel from the high altar when they listened to the yearly panegyric to Aquinas. From this vantage point, the right-hand side of the fresco is blocked by the marble pier, but the cardinals could see Thomas before the talking Crucifix. This miracle was included in most of the sermons commissioned by Carafa. One of the St Thomas panegyrics, presented in the Minerva on 7 March 1500, refers to Carafa’s frescoes themselves. Tommaso ‘Fedra’ Inghirami explained that for the Church it was essential to celebrate feast days, ‘so that their memory, which like a magnificent painting has begun to fade over time, might be renewed each year, as if with new colours’.49 His listeners could have made the association between these words and Filippino’s brightly coloured fresco cycle, completed just a few years earlier. This ‘magnificent painting’, like the feast days, helped to keep alive the memory and teaching of Thomas. As was typical of epideictic oratory, Inghirami made frequent references to the importance of seeing. Shortly after the passage just quoted, he observed that painters teach not by

filippino lippi

126

explaining rules to their students but by presenting them with the most excellent images. When listening to this sermon, Carafa could have looked over to Filippino’s frescoes and reflected on how these images could stimulate viewers to virtuous behaviour. Certainly, this was the observation made by one of the cardinal’s learned contemporaries. As Apostolic Protonotary, Paolo Cortesi understood the value of paintings that facilitate contemplation. He expressed this opinion in De Cardinalatu, a guide for ‘Princes of the Church’, written in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Cortesi made specific reference to the frescoes on the side walls of two sacred spaces: the more erudite are the paintings in a cardinal’s chapel, the more easily the soul can be excited by the admonishment of the eyes to the imitation of acts, by looking at them. The truth of this can be judged by the histories painted in the votive chapel built by the most illustrious Sixtus iv in the Vatican or seen in the ingenious subjects [ingeniosa argumentorum] represented in the paintings of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa’s Chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva.50 The erudition praised by Cortesi probably refers to the skilful combination of images and Latin inscriptions found in the frescoes on the side walls of the Sistine Chapel and in the Carafa Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas. In both cycles, the painted texts do not identify the subject; rather, they encouraged learned viewers to contemplate specific subjects. One of the ingenious subjects that delighted Cortesi must have been the

127

Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel

Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix. Not only does Filippino’s fresco include allusions to two different events, united for the first time, but the figures within argue about the miracles. For his comments on the impact of observing these scenes, Cortesi developed Aquinas’s threefold justification of the value of devotional images: they can serve to instruct ‘simple people’, to make events ‘more active in our memory’ and to ‘excite feelings of devotion’.51 For Cortesi, the display of erudi­tion and ingenious subjects excites the soul of observers. This sounds counterintuitive to present-day ears, but the association between erudition and devotion recalls comments written in 1475–80 by another Dominican scholar, Fra Giovanni Caroli, then prior of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. He praised Bonaiuto’s Triumph of St Thomas because ‘not only is the eye feasted by its beauty and accomplishment, but also the mind is most forcibly set afire by its most holy meaning, to the fervour of devotion.’52 Many Dominicans in the late fifteenth century did not agree. As we will see in the next chapter, Savonarola instructed preachers to avoid subtle, learned allusions and to strive to be comprehensible to all listeners. The combination of erudition, provided by Cardinal Carafa, and a powerful mode of expression, created in Rome by Filippino, established the Carafa Chapel as one of the most important chapels in Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a point of reference for scholars and artists alike.

five

‘Appearances are often deceiving’ in the Strozzi Chapel, 1487–1502

T

he Strozzi Chapel fresco cycle (illus. 46) in the church of Santa Maria Novella is Filippino’s most ambitious and influential work in Florence.1 His depictions of the stories of the Apostles Philip and John could be used to illustrate a proverb popular in Renaissance Florence: ‘Appearances are often deceiving.’2 The frescoes exhibit a type of complexity that Savonarola condemned when he found it in sermons, music and paintings. From his Florentine pulpit in 1494 the Dominican friar lamented, ‘nowadays they make images in churches with so much artifice . . . that one does not consider God, but only the artifice in the figures.’3 For Savonarola, this represented the epitome of ‘exterior’ forms of worship, which included ornate priestly vestments, erudite discourse and extravagant church decorations.4 Although paintings have the power to excite the soul, as we saw in the last chapter when Paolo Cortesi praised the Carafa Chapel decorations for their erudition, these images can also mislead, like the false idol of Mars in Filippino’s Strozzi Chapel Miracle of St Philip (illus. 51). Especially in this scene and on the window wall, Filippino delights the observer with his illusionism, but, like a magician pulling back the curtain, he 46 Filippino Lippi, Strozzi Chapel, Florence, frescoes, 1494–1502.

filippino lippi

130

reveals a series of ‘metapictorial’ devices.5 The fictiveness in the Strozzi Chapel evinces not only Filippino’s delight in the bizarre and interest in surprising the viewer, but the value of art in the service of religion. If we recognize the artifice in statues and paintings, we can distinguish these man-made objects from truly miraculous icons, such as the Veil of Veronica depicted in the chapel. When Filippino painted these frescoes, most Florentines believed that miracle-working images played an active role in their city. In the church of the ss Annunziata, the miraculous fresco of the Annunciation – reproduced with variations in a small panel by Filippino6 – was surrounded by votive donations, much like the seemingly living figure of Mars in the Strozzi Chapel. In late Quattrocento Florence, theologians warned against false idols and investigated the veracity of reputedly miraculous images, while humanists discussed ancient accounts about pagan statues that seemed alive. This tension about the nature of religious imagery is central to Filippino’s Strozzi cycle. The antique-inspired details and figures plunge us into the debate over the value of ancient art, which simmered for centuries in Christian Europe and raged in the late fifteenth century. Savonarola was only the most famous preacher to rail against the pagan images that Florentines kept in their homes. Although Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and many learned contemporaries in the city struggled to reconcile Christian and ancient beliefs – a theme suggested by the Latin inscription in Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard (see illus. 1) – their views were generally accessible only to those who read erudite texts. The Strozzi Chapel, however, had a very visible position in one of the most prominent Florentine churches.

131

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

Many viewers were seduced by the magnificent re-creation of the ancient world, as we see from Vasari’s Life of Filippino in 1550: the frescoes show ‘armed men, temples, vases, helmet crests, armour, trophies, poles, banners, garments, footwear, headdresses, sacerdotal vestments and other things, executed in such a beautiful way that they deserve the highest praise’.7 The Strozzi Chapel uses pagan images and texts to create a highly – and, for some, overly – sophisticated celebration of Christian beliefs. Filippino’s pictorial intelligence and use of ancient forms are most apparent in the window wall (1495–7; illus. 47).

47 Filippino Lippi, detail of window wall, 1495–7, frescoes, Strozzi Chapel, Florence.

filippino lippi

132

A bizarre architectural fantasy visually extends the stone tomb upward so that it encompasses the entire wall. Modern obser­ vers, if they view the frescoes in natural light, often assume that the projecting columns are made of marble until they spot the colourful angels perched on the entablature. This exhibits a type of illusionism often discussed but rarely seen in the Renaissance in which artists convince viewers that represented objects are real and not just realistically painted. The window wall meets Leonardo da Vinci’s criteria for successful painting: it appears ‘detached from the wall . . . and deceives subtle judges’.8 On the side walls, Filippino established two optimal points of observation. The four scenes exhibit traditional perspective, best appreciated by the viewer when standing in front of the altar: on the right wall, the Crucifixion and Miracle of St Philip (late 1490s; illus. 50 and 51), and on the left, the Torture of St John and Raising of Drusiana (early 1500s; illus. 52 and 53). The flaking piers, however, were painted to be seen at an angle, as they appear to viewers standing outside the chapel threshold. Filippino created this impression by making the inner faces wider on the piers and capitals closest to the window wall and foreshortened on those closer to the entrance. The use of two perspectival systems indicates different levels of reality. The frames exist in our world, but the holy figures move in a space regulated by a separate set of rules. This framing system, like the fictive architecture above the tomb, introduces an unprecedented degree of visual instability.9 In contrast, the solid and traditional framing elements clarify the spatial organization in the adjacent high chapel, decorated by Domenico Ghirlandaio for Giovanni Tornabuoni (1485–90).

133

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

Extensive documentation allows us to establish the history of the decorations. Filippo Strozzi, an extremely wealthy banker, made a formal agreement in 1487 to pay Filippino 300 florins to complete the frescoes within three years, with everything to be painted by the master’s hand, ‘especially the figures’.10 The patron selected the artist before settling on the iconography. The vault was to have ‘four doctors or evangelists or others’, and each of the side walls ‘two stories’, in all cases to be decided by Strozzi. The patron may have hoped, in vain, to change the original dedication of the chapel from St John to Philip, his name saint. At least the Philip narratives enjoy greater prominence on the right-hand wall, which is visible from the high altar and parts of the nave. Before he began painting, Filippino must have obtained permission to leave for Rome, where he carried out the Carafa Chapel, and Strozzi died in May 1491 without seeing any of the fresco decorations he had commissioned. In 1494, soon after Filippino returned to Florence, he began painting the vault, as was typical for frescoed chapels (illus. 48). Rather than adopting the standard solution, with a self-contained image in each segment, Filippino created a continuous circle of clouds and angels. As seen from the altar, this seems to float above the thin architectural ribs and establishes a platform for the four figures. In a variation from the contract, Filippino represented Adam, Noah, Abraham and Jacob, each identified with his name and the title ‘Patriarch’. Strozzi’s heirs – his widow, Selvaggia, and his eldest son, Alfonso – may have requested this change to emphasize the importance of family lineage. On 2 May 1489 Filippino sent a letter to Filippo Strozzi in which he promised to return to Florence by the feast day

filippino lippi

134

of St John the Baptist (24 June). The painter remained for the summer and early autumn. We can reconstruct the decisions Strozzi made during this period about a far more expensive Florentine commission, the family palazzo. Together with his chapel, Strozzi’s home served to reaffirm the status of his family after decades of exile. In September 1489 the architect Giuliano da Sangallo received payment for his wooden model, which, with its moveable parts, represents a ‘build conversation’ between architect and patron.11 Discus­ sions led to two major changes that increased the grandeur of the Palazzo Strozzi: a considerable increase in height, and the addition of a large all’antica cornice. These elements help 48 Filippino Lippi, Adam, Noah, Abraham and Jacob, 1494, fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Florence.

135

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

to distinguish the new palazzo from one across the street belonging to Giovanni Tornabuoni, whose family was less wealthy but more influential. A similar competition played out simultaneously in the nearby church of Santa Maria Novella. Strozzi’s chapel was smaller and less prestigious than Tornabuoni’s contiguous high chapel, but Filippino’s patron used ingenuity and wealth to outshine his neighbour. Only the Strozzi Chapel contains extensive and expensive stonework, which was rarely used in Florentine churches. The Strozzi paid far more for the tomb, altar and pavement, all by Benedetto da Maiano, than for the frescoes. Filippino’s contract stated that the latter were to be ‘adorned with blue and gold, as richly as possible’, and even stipulated the quality of the blue pigment. The best was found in Venice, and that explains why Filippino was required to travel there when he received 100 florins, which he did in 1489. For the unusual window wall, Strozzi must have received advice from the painter and sculptor then in his employ. Florentine chapels typically included a painted altarpiece and often a grave slab; the Tornabuoni Chapel had both. Stone caskets appeared only rarely for unsanctified people and were always set into the side walls.12 In his will in 1491, however, Strozzi made reference to a unique solution for a layman: ‘the tomb is to be placed under the window, in the wall behind the said altar.’13 Benedetto’s basanite sarcophagus is surmounted by a lunette with a marble Virgin and Child.14 A cloth altarfrontal, purchased in 1488, and now lost, probably concealed the lower part,15 but the Marian decorations above, when seen from outside the chapel, take on the appearance of a sculpted altarpiece.16 Here and throughout the chapel, but not in

filippino lippi

136

Benedetto’s other works, appearances are deceiving. This suggests that Filippino proposed the novel arrangement of the tomb, which forms an integral part of his fresco, as well as the idea of extending the tomb with fictive columns and reliefs so that it encompasses the entire wall. The basic decisions were made by 1487, given that Filippino’s contract mentions the window wall but no stories, nor is there any reference to an altarpiece. The style of the fresco indicates that Filippino planned the window wall after his sojourns in Venice (1489) and Rome (1488–93). His solution recalls the wall tombs for doges but was updated by his study of Roman antiquities. To augment the perceived relief in the Strozzi Chapel frescoes, Filippino exploited the different levels in the wall decorations: on the one hand, the recession of the tomb niche and window embrasure, and on the other, the projection of the marble relief and lunette frame. The columns and painted frame around the window must have originally been the same shade of white as the marble elements below, thus creating further confusion between the real and painted. Flanking the window are two projecting columns, standing on very tall dadoes and supporting a richly decorated entablature. (Perhaps projecting columns also appeared in Filippino’s lost drawing for the competition for the facade of the Florentine cathedral in 1491, when Filippo Strozzi served on the evaluating committee.17)When Filippino created his fantastic structures in the Strozzi Chapel he followed some basic rules about ancient architecture. Here, in contrast to the Carafa Chapel, arches rest on piers and entablatures on columns. This reflects a simplified understanding of Alberti’s treatise

137

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

on architecture, then very popular in Florence. This new rigour in supporting elements first appears in Filippino’s Death of Laocoön (see illus. 43). The unfinished fresco decorates the right wall of a loggia designed by Giuliano da Sangallo, the vault of which includes decorative details very similar to those by Filippino. We can imagine the two discussing their common interest in re-creating the ancient world, especially since the antiquarianism and architectonic logic found in Filippino’s frescoes in the Medici villa and Strozzi Chapel recall Giuliano’s drawn reconstructions of Roman ruins. The architecture depicted in Filippino’s Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (1501; see illus. 60) also reflects the impact of Giuliano, as discussed in the next chapter. Filippino created ancient structures more magnificent than anything he had seen in Rome or Venice, showcasing his skill in both perspective and architectural design. As the painter could have explained to Filippo Strozzi in 1489, the frescoed columns add prominence to his sarcophagus, much like the cornice does to his palazzo, so that the Strozzi tomb far surpasses in magnificence and visibility the Tornabuoni grave slabs. This innovation was not lost on Savonarola. In a sermon delivered in November 1494, the friar contrasted the merely external beauty of tombs for ‘rich gentlemen’ with the modest sepulchres of saints. ‘How many great masters and lords of this world are in hell, though they left behind beautiful tombs decorated with such pomp . . . but even worse are those great masters who have themselves buried under the altar.’18 The last phrase was probably inspired by the unprecedented position of Strozzi’s sarcophagus, probably carved in 1491–2. Benedetto received final payment for the tomb in 1495, and

filippino lippi

138

Filippino could begin his frescoes only after the lunette was installed.19 At this date payments were made by the 28-yearold Alfonso Strozzi, who had also taken over the family business and was most probably responsible for completing the chapel. Filippino was contracted to be paid in instalments, ‘bit by bit, according to his work’. By the end of 1495 he had already received nearly 200 florins out of the total agreed compensation of 300, so he must have completed not only the vault but at least one of the walls. Another disbursement helps to identify this as the window wall. For his drawing for the stained-glass window, depicting the Virgin and Child with Sts John and Philip, Filippino was paid in 1497, although the glass was not installed until 1503. Alfonso evidently decided that to honour his father, the wall decorations should begin above the tomb and behind the altar; in the Carafa Chapel, too, Filippino had started with the altar wall. Strozzi’s decision is reflected in the inscription painted between the marble arch and window: ‘If you do not scorn [despexeris] this, you will live.’20 The first part recalls the line in Ecclesiasticus (38:16), where a son is told not to neglect (despicias) the burial of his father.21 All Florence could see how Alfonso followed this precept. Flanking the inscription are ancient-inspired geniuses that Filippino painted as winged figures who hold and gesture towards skulls. The two trample on bones, but true Christians should not scorn death. Despite the ambiguity and complexity of the frescoes on the window wall, the basic message is traditional. The inscriptions and fictive statues glorify God and express the patron’s hope in the afterlife. Adjacent to the geniuses, exquisite ‘sculpted’ figures on the dadoes represent Charity and Faith,

139

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

as identified by inscriptions. These two theological virtues are always accompanied by Hope, but Filippino forces viewers to search for the missing figure. An allegorical expression of hope appears at the top of the window embrasure: the Strozzi impresa, consisting of a moulting falcon with the motto Expecto (I await). When the family first created this image, it expressed the longing to return to Florence from exile, but in the burial chapel it takes on new meaning. Just above the window is a crescent moon; this element is part of the Strozzi arms, but here (and only here) it appears with wings. When the moon is considered in conjunction with the falcon, the motto refers to the hopeful last line from the Nicene Creed: ‘I look forward to [expect] the resurrection of the dead.’ With incomparable ingenuity, Filippino shows that an impresa can allude to both resurrection and a theological virtue. At the same height as the impresa, and above standing angels bearing shields adorned with the Strozzi arms, two roundels contain the largest inscriptions in the chapel: ‘If you knew’ and ‘the gift of God’.22 Christ used these words to admonish the woman of Samaria, who replied, ‘Give me this water’ (John 4:10–15). This gift was often interpreted as the revelation of Christ’s wisdom, which seems most appropriate for the Strozzi Chapel given that the annual reading from Ecclesiasticus (15:3), on the feast of John the Evangelist, specifically mentions the water of knowledge. Other passages from Ecclesiasticus (chapters 44 and 45) appear in a book held by Philip in the stained glass. Filippino depicted the two saints reading, as Jacob and Noah do in the vault frescoes but not in other Renaissance paintings. The unusually bookish iconography in the chapel presupposes that the viewers could

filippino lippi

140

follow recondite clues, both textual and visual. The various inscriptions are linked by large colourful ribbons. These connect the two large roundels to the two ornate rectangular cartouches, suspended on both sides of the window. Filippino embellished these with elaborately ‘carved’ grotteschi and even hanging oil lamps. All this would add to the considerable weight of the marble slabs, but winged female creatures below help to carry them. Both Latin inscriptions are enigmatic and have musical themes. At first glance, the one on the left seems to address pagans: ‘To the sacred [beings] above, the initiated sing.’23 The identity of the ‘initiated’ is unclear but, given the chapel setting, the term must refer to the baptised. Blessed with the water of knowledge, they sing their praise to God. The right-hand cartouche maintains the same ambiguity: ‘Formerly to the departed spirits, we now sing to the best and greatest God.’24 In both inscriptions, ‘sing’ refers more generally to musicmaking as embodied by the figures below. On the left, a female lyre player celebrates the divine, accompanied by two putti with wind instruments.25 Seated in front of a gilded palm tree, she must have reminded Florentines of the triumphal float in the main square of Florence that Filippino had made in November 1494 for the entry of the French king Charles viii; as described by one contemporary, this ‘Triumph of Peace’ included a ‘crown of silvered palms’ and ‘some young men with various instruments’.26 In the Strozzi Chapel the musician represents the liberal art of Music, but confusingly the inscription reads parthenice. Only the learned would have recognized this Latinized Greek term for ‘virgin’ as the title of a poem about Mary written in 1481 by Battista Spagnoli.

141

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

By extension, Music practises her art to honour Mary. A few years later Filippino adapted her pose for his painting of Erato, the muse of music.27 Erato appears on the window wall below the right-hand cartouche, where she plays an enormous lyre in the company of a meditative Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. These two figures had a special appeal for Filippino’s contemporaries; in the early sixteenth century they reappear in an engraving by Cristofano Robetta and a painting by Filippino’s workshop (illus. 49).28 An inscription in the frescoed base, deo max[imo], refers to the object of their devotion: the greatest God. Formerly, in the pagan world, the muses had given praise to departed spirits, but here in the Strozzi Chapel they honour Christ. Filippino based his frescoed Erato on an ancient figure he had carefully studied, presumably in Rome, in the Sarcophagus of Nine Muses.29 Filippino added two masks, a standard symbol of artifice, and this easily overlooked detail provides a clue to interpreting his fresco. Melpomene’s mask has cords, showing us that it is ready for use. Erato, unlike any other ancient or Renaissance muse, has her attribute underfoot, a sign of scorn. Filippino’s novel depiction of the masks shows that artifice, like images, can be both positive and negative. In the Sarcophagus of Nine Muses, Erato plucks a small lyre with her fingers, but Filippino’s frescoed musician uses a bone for a plectrum, a playing technique indicated in ancient texts. This erudite detail was praised in 1581 by the music theorist Vincenzo Galilei, who suggested that the painter was ‘helped by some scholar of the rank of a Poliziano’, but that humanist died in 1494 and had no known ties with the Strozzi.30 Although Filippo Strozzi was a cultured man with a small

filippino lippi

142

library, he did not read classical Latin or collect antiquities, and he certainly did not provide Filippino with inscrip­­tions and antiquarian facts. Specialists often assume that the iconographic programme was made before Filippo’s death and, if so, the patron could have been assisted by Marco Parenti, his learned brother-in-law, who died in 1497.31 Nevertheless, the 49 Workshop of Filippino (Master of Memphis), Erato and Melpomene, early 1500s, oil and tempera on panel.

143

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

arcane iconography has no parallel in other works commissioned by Filippo, and seems completely out of character. I suspect that Alfonso, Filippo’s eldest son and heir, created the iconography, especially since the little we know about him indicates that he had the necessary knowledge, interests and motivation. As a youth, he was given numerous Latin texts of classical and Christian authors.32 In 1493 Alfonso ordered a manuscript copy of Consolatio ad Liviam as a gift for Bishop Marino Tomacelli.33 The condolence poem addressed to Empress Livia, then attributed to Ovid, has no direct connection with the Strozzi Chapel decorations, but these contemporary commissions, both designed for an educated Christian audience and financed by Alfonso, evince the patron’s interest in both antiquity and funerary rites. In about 1494 he commissioned a richly illuminated missal as a gift for King Ferdinand ii.34 Alfonso’s appreciation for spectacle and mythology emerges in the diary of his cousin Piero di Marco Parenti. There we read that after the execution of Savonarola in 1498, the Carnival celebration organized by Alfonso ‘was excessive both in its lavish banquets and in the farces that were included. He represented among other things the Judg­­ ment of Paris on the three Goddesses.’35 Perhaps Alfonso was one of the many young men who, according to Vasari, asked Filippino to design their masques.36 Alfonso was among the most prominent opponents of Savonarola, and even helped to interrogate him. The Strozzi Chapel represents the flip side of this antagonism: a powerful affirmation of the ornate, erudite, enigmatic and classically inspired art that Savonarola opposed. In a sermon of January 1495, the friar even declared that the Devil had ‘introduced figural [polyphonic] music and

filippino lippi

144

organs that please only the senses’, and the following year he announced, ‘I will not listen to the songs of your lyre.’37 In the Strozzi Chapel decorations, directly above the tomb criticized by Savonarola, abstruse inscriptions and musicians with lyres invite viewers to sing God’s praise. Cultured initiates constitute the ideal audience for Filippino’s antiquarianism, illusionism and complex imagery. Vasari wrote that the Strozzi Chapel caused ‘all who see it to marvel over the novelty and variety of the bizarre things that are in it’, adding with a bit of exaggeration that Filippino was the first artist to show ‘grotteschi that resemble the antique’.38 Ancient Roman murals provided a source of inspiration for not only the wealth of decoration in this tomb wall but the overall arrangement. The lack of narrative recalls the bewildering positioning of vignettes and framing elements in Third Style Roman paintings. The Golden House of Nero, where Filippino copied many ancient grotteschi, may once have had paintings with suspended cartouches and projecting columns, as known today from other ancient examples.39 During the years when he worked on the Carafa Chapel, Filippino explored not only monumental buildings in Rome but paintings with a whimsical treatment of architecture. These showed him an alternative to the illusionistic systems he had learned in Tuscany. Although his fictive arch in the Strozzi Chapel has often been compared to triumphal arches, and these marble structures provided prototypes for projecting columns on high bases, Filippino undermined the monumentality of the ancient architecture. This painting has neither the overall appearance nor the gravitas of the Roman arches made to cele­ brate emperors. The ancient works convey a sense of order,

145

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

one that also permeates the Carafa and Tornabuoni chapels, whereas the fictive architecture in the Strozzi Chapel communicates uncertainty. The projecting columns employ a different syntax from the nearby piers, dissimilar in size, type and coloration. Far from constructing an integrated architectural structure, the individual elements create an unreal and unstable visionary world imbued with antiquarianism.40 After completing the end wall and the design for the window, Filippino seems to have stopped work and demanded higher compensation, which led the Strozzi heirs to file a case against him in 1497. The Painters’ Guild decided that Filippino should receive an additional 100 florins for the remaining work, presumably for the two side walls. The Philip wall must date to the very late 1490s, given that some of the headgear of the figures in the Miracle reflects the 1497 Mamluk embassy to Florence. 41 Finally, Filippino turned to the John wall, and in 1502 he signed and dated the Raising of Drusiana.42 He depicted the only two stories about Philip mentioned in the standard source for holy images, The Golden Legend. These were rarely rep­resented in Florence, and the lack of iconographic trad­ ition allowed Filippino to create new imagery. These are paired with comparable scenes from the chapter dedicated to John the Evangelist. The lunette on the right wall represents the crucifixion of Philip (illus. 50), and the lunette on the left shows Emperor Domitian’s torture of St John in a pot of boiling oil (illus. 52). Below the Crucifixion, Filippino depicted the Miracle of St Philip, when the saint was forced to pray before a statue of Mars. From under the idol, a dragon came forth and killed three people, including the priest’s son; the figures holding their noses indicate the deadly stench. Philip told the

50 Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion of St Philip, late 1490s, fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Florence. 51 Filippino Lippi, Miracle of St Philip, late 1490s, fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Florence.

147

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

pagans that if they ‘break this idol and set in his place the cross of Jesus Christ’ and worship it, he would resurrect the dead; once they had agreed, he ‘commanded the dragon that he should go into the desert’, then ‘raised the three that were dead’. This resurrection theme is echoed on the opposite wall, which shows John when he stopped a funeral procession and brought Drusiana back to life. On the side walls, Filippino continued the exploration of artifice and ambiguity already found on the window wall. Three oil lamps hanging from the right-hand lintel seem to form an integral part of the Miracle of St Philip (illus. 51), given that they fit in perfectly between the two fictive statues adorning the altar of Mars, but this is an illusion. To judge from the position of the bystanders and the steps before the pagan altar, this structure is set much further back than the framing elements. Visitors to the chapel must look and think carefully to 52 Filippino Lippi, Torture of St John, 1500–1502, fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Florence.

filippino lippi

148

establish just what the lamps illuminate. Above them and below a gilded chalice and paten, two putti hold the sudarium with Christ’s face (illus. 50). 43 Filippino had already depicted this Roman relic, in a similar location in the Carafa Chapel. It was known as the Veil of Veronica, the saint whose name derives from the Latin vera (true) and the Greek icon (image). In his copy of the Divine Comedy (Paradiso, xxxi.103–8), Filippino read about the pilgrim who gazed at the veil and asked if Jesus looked like this image. The relic led observers to reflect on the truth of appearances. Previous artists depicted folds only on the sides of the cloth, as we see in a Flemish painting owned by another patron of Filippino, Francesco del Pugliese (see illus. 67).44 In the Strozzi and Carafa chapels, Filippino depicted the veil with folds continuing into the central area imprinted with Christ’s face. Filippino emphasized the materiality of the icon; it is both a physical object and a sacred image. The same holds true for the large cross depicted directly across from the veil, in the centre of the left-hand lintel (illus. 52). Two angels hold it above a book open to the inscription ‘in hoc signo vinces’ (In this sign thou shalt conquer). These words appeared in a vision to Emperor Constantine, who then learned from a dream that the Christian cross would bring him victory. Instead of showing that visionary cross, Filippino created what appears to be a three-dimensional object, covered in real gold leaf. As on the opposite wall, the sacred object relates to the main narrative scene. Directly below the gilded cross, in the Raising of Drusiana (illus. 53), golden rays in the centre of black clouds indicate the divine origin of St John’s power. As with the veil, the unexpected representation and placement of the cross

149

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

allow multiple readings and encourage viewers to reflect on the meaning of Constantine’s vision. The side walls show Filippino’s incessant search for unexpected ways to depict narratives. In the Crucifixion, echoing his Crucifixion of St Peter (see illus. 3) in the Brancacci Chapel, Filippino showed the final preparations for the execution. Vasari wrote that Filippino was ‘highly praised for the invention of the story’, then described in detail how two men prop up Philip’s cross with ladders, two more help to position it with ropes, while another uses a pole to push the base into place. 45 Observers know that in the next moment, the cross will slip into the hole and with this painful jerk, the saint’s martyrdom will begin. Scholars have suggested that the bystander wearing a red mantle depicts the patron, but this seems most unlikely for both iconographic and stylistic reasons. On the one hand, the figure is embraced by a man wearing a turban, which indicates that he is not Christian. On the other hand, none of the figures in the chapel has the highly individualized features or Renaissance attire that characterize Filippino’s portraits in the Brancacci and Carafa chapels, and altarpieces from the 1490s. This, too, distinguishes the Strozzi frescoes from those in the Tornabuoni Chapel, where portraits abound. Vasari, always attentive to portraits in works by Filippino and Ghirlandaio, mentioned none in the Strozzi Chapel and focused instead on the depiction of the ancient world. The fantastic all’antica attire of the soldiers enriches this lunette fresco and the one on the opposite wall. In the Torture of St John, Domitian rises from his throne and points angrily at the saint, who prays without suffering. Filippino also included a statue of Mercury, which was not required by the story or included in earlier depictions.

filippino lippi

150

This gilded work makes a clear contrast with the living god of Mars in the Miracle of St Philip. The only extant composition drawing for the chapel decorations reveals Filippino’s unexpected path to the depiction of the Raising of Drusiana (illus. 53 and 54). 46 With quick pen strokes, probably made years before Filippino began painting this scene, the artist indicated an overall scheme with significant similarities to the Triumph of St Thomas. Bystanders in the left and right foreground look inwards, and an arched structure in the centre frames the saint. In the sketch, John’s powerful gesture remains isolated in front of the city gate, but in the fresco, his upraised arm is almost lost 53 Filippino Lippi, Raising of Drusiana, 1500–1502, fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Florence.

151

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

against the cityscape. Once again, Filippino avoids clarity. In another major change, the artist added motion. Three figures on the far left of the fresco – the elderly priest, his acolyte and a pallbearer – advance towards viewers standing outside the chapel. The Golden Legend indicates that Drusiana, a follower of John, was to receive a Christian burial, but Filippino, in contrast to previous representations, depicted a pagan procession. The scene takes place in Ephesus, identified by the round Temple of Diana in the background. Filippino adorned this with a crescent moon in the lantern and a mysterious inscription on the altar: ‘orgia’. In his published gloss on Aeneid (iv.302), Cristoforo Landino stated erroneously that Herodotus used this term for the sacred rites of Diana.47 Whoever requested this inscription – presumably Alfonso Strozzi – might have found inspiration in another ancient text for Filippino’s unexpected depiction of a pagan procession. In Natural History

54 Filippino Lippi, Raising of Drusiana, c. 1500, pen and ink.

filippino lippi

152

(35.93), Pliny stated that Apelles painted the ‘Procession of the Megabyzus, the priest of Diana at Ephesus’. This display of erudition, with a reference to a celebrated ancient painting, offered Filippino an opportunity to re-create an extraordinary all’antica staff. Gilded and towering over the figures, it holds a banner inscribed ‘[co]nclamatum’, a reference to funerary laments. The bizarre detail of a wolf’s head and paws within an ouroboros, based loosely on Macrobius (Saturnalia i, 20, 13–14), represents an image used in pagan rituals. 48 Visitors to the Strozzi Chapel can contrast this useless, man-made object with the Cross of Constantine, indicated by the golden rays above John’s miracle-working hand. Overpowered by this Christian miracle, the frightened priest exits the scene and enters an ambiguous space between the fictive and stone piers. Directly across from this pagan priest, on the opposite wall, a Black man stands in front of the painted pier framing the right-hand side of the Miracle of St Philip (illus. 55).49 Filippino gave him more prominence than in any previous depiction of an African in Florentine art. This tall, stately man looks on with noble reserve while the other bystanders gesticulate and grimace, to express their fear of the dragon and horror over the youth he has killed. Although many figures in the scene wear exotic headgear to indicate the setting of the scene in the Central Eurasian region of Scythia, only the African wears a šämma, the white shawl used in Christian Ethiopia, and a zamt., the red woollen hat worn by Mamluk elites. The handsome figure signals another notable event in Philip’s life, recounted in Acts (8:26–40), when the saint baptised the eunuch of the Ethiopian queen Candace. Given that the African was the

153

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

royal treasurer, Filippino gave him a gold and pearl earring as well as jewels on his hat and sash. The Ethiopian eunuch had not been represented in Italian art for centuries, but the biblical account, which formed part of the liturgical cycle, was well known to Florentines. The fig­­ure featured in many sermons delivered by Savonarola and in various accounts of visits to the Holy Land. It seems un­­­­ likely that Filippino’s patron asked him to include the eunuch. If that had been Strozzi’s interest, he could have asked the painter to depict the baptism itself. Most probably, he commissioned the two scenes about Philip in The Golden Legend, and Filippino decided to add the eunuch. A few years before he completed the fresco, in his Adoration of the Magi (1496), Filippino had included a prominent image of a Black Christian, as discussed in the next chapter, and this may have inspired the addition of a comparable figure in the Miracle. 55 Filippino Lippi, Ethiopian eunuch, detail from Miracle of St Philip (illus. 51).

filippino lippi

154

The painter must have known about the celebrated encounter between his name saint and the African. During his Roman sojourn, Filippino had ample opportunity to see both the Ethiopians living in the city and those painted by Botticelli in his Sistine Chapel Youth of Moses fresco. Although Filippino’s fresco reflects the impact of Ethiopian Christians, it hardly celebrates these African co-religionists. Rather, the artist used the Black court treasurer to enrich his portrayal of a rarely depicted story. As one of the ‘initiated’ indicated in the tomb wall inscription, the baptised African was the only Christian witness in any of the Strozzi Chapel scenes, and he offered a striking contrast to the cringing Megabyzus on the opposite wall. Nevertheless, the original observers surely saw the Black man as quite different from themselves. The Bible presents the eunuch as both an insider, given his religion, and an outsider, given his race and origins, and thus he embodied the global reach of Christianity. In much the same way, Filippino depicted the Ethiopian eunuch as a figure on the border, both literally and symbolically: he stands at the edge of the miracle scene, in a liminal space between viewer and saint. The altar of Mars in the Miracle of St Philip, a riot of colour, texture and material, appears more magnificent than any of the all’antica buildings created by Filippino or his Florentine contemporaries. Freestanding columns of coloured marble, perhaps inspired by Filippino’s Venetian visit, flank a massive aedicula, filled with trophies and covered with relief sculpture. This refers to a passage in Statius (Thebaid 7.55–9), repeated by Boccaccio in his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (9.3–4), about the votive images left at the altar of Mars.50 No ancient or modern

155

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

text, however, described the effigy of Mars as alive, nor does the god appear in this way in any previous painting. Filippino’s idol, together with the wolf and bird – two attributes of Mars also mentioned by Boccaccio – exhibit the same degree of verisimilitude as the saint and bystanders. Renaissance artists typically depicted pagan statues as gilded figures, clearly manmade, as Filippino himself did in the Torture of St John and the Brancacci Chapel Disputation. The decision to show a living statue of Mars may have reminded viewers of the actors who appeared as gods in festival decorations, such as the Triumph of Venus (see illus. 44) designed by Filippino in 1490.51 In this chapel setting, however, the appearance of a living statue on an altar was probably sug­ gested by Alfonso Strozzi as a visual commentary on a highly controversial view recently expressed by Ficino. Best known as a philosopher, Ficino used his astrological knowledge to help Filippo Strozzi to select an auspicious day on which to begin the construction of his palace in 1489.52 In the same year Ficino published one of his most popular books, the third volume of On Life. In a key passage for our understanding of the fresco (iii, xxvi.89–93), he discussed the ancient view that the wise men of Egypt invented a magical art through which they could attract daemons into statues, thus making them appear to be gods.53 Although Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had condemned such ideas as idolatry, the notion of pagan statues with supernatural powers remained alive in Florence. In the Inferno (xiii.143–50), Dante seems to accept the belief, expressed by the writer Giovanni Villani, that damage to an ancient statue of Mars in Florence had caused great danger in the city. When educated Florentines saw the

filippino lippi

156

god’s broken lance in the Strozzi Chapel, they may have thought back to Dante. In his extended gloss on this passage, published in 1481, Landino added his view that ‘it is not contrary to our religion to make, according to astrological teaching, a statue under such a constellation that it has some movement and power in it,’ and even provided an ancient example, the sitar-playing statue in the Temple of Serapis.54 Further evidence of this interest in powerful pagan idols emerges in the Adoration of the Golden Calf (illus. 56), part of a series of paintings executed by Filippino and his workshop in the early 1500s.55 Rebellious Israelites dance wildly below a living bull, and – most unexpectedly for a story set in the desert – the animal flies above a body of water. This corresponds precisely to the description of the Egyptian god Apis, by the twelfth-century theologian Petrus Comestor, as ‘a bull who used to rise suddenly out of a river. Upon his right shoulder, he has a white mark of the shape of the crescent moon. When the Egyptians gathered round him with music 56 Workshop of Filippino (Master of Memphis), Adoration of the Golden Calf, c. 1500, oil and tempera on wood.

157

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

and chanting, he rose into the air and moved above their heads.’56 The link between the flying Apis and the Golden Calf was developed by Yohanan Alemanno, the Jewish philosopher who lived in Florence from 1488 until at least 1494. He taught Hebrew to Pico, who accepted Alemanno’s view that the Kabbalah expressed the secret teachings of Moses. Alemanno wrote that the Golden Calf was created as ‘a figure of Aquarius in mid-sky and Taurus rising’, and clarified that the statue was made ‘to cause the spiritual forces to descend by means of a physical body’.57 Similar views inform both Ficino’s writings and Filippino’s interpretation, the only known painting to show the golden statue as a living pagan god. His depiction of idolatry contrasts with the representation of true miracles in the other panels from the series, Moses Strikes the Rock (illus. 57) and the Submersion of Pharoah. In the Miracle of St Philip (illus. 51), Filippino represented a similar opposition but within the same scene. By depicting Mars as alive, he shows us the powerful illusion created by a 57 Filippino and workshop (Master of Memphis), Moses Strikes the Rock, c. 1500, oil and tempera on canvas (transferred from wood).

filippino lippi

158

false idol. Filippino could have indicated the demonic nature of the statue by adding bat wings, as Antonio Vivarini did in his St Peter Martyr Exorcizing the Devil Disguised as the Madonna, a painting from about 1450 that Filippino might even have seen in Venice.58 Instead, many visitors to the Strozzi Chapel make the same error as the pagan Scythians did and see the figure of Mars as alive. In its colours and the apparent texture of skin and clothing, this figure looks as convincing as Philip, whom the god seems to acknowledge with his threatening gaze and gesture. But we should not believe all we see, as Filippino sug­ gests, and we must not be seduced by deceptive demonstrations of strength. By representing a dragon near the base of the statue, the artist indicates that the Devil was the source of the pagan god’s power. In this way, his image aligns with Ficino’s Epitome (1484) of Plato’s Apology, where the philosopher explained, ‘If you ask why in our day demons do not work their once wonted wonders, the answer will be that Christ deprived evil demons of their power.’59 After exorcizing the statue, Philip banished the demonic dragon to the desert. His dramatic pointing gesture had special significance for observers in Florence, given that one of the most revered relics in the city was the saint’s arm. As we saw with his placement of the Ethiopian eunuch, Filippino uses novel imagery here to focus the attention of his Florentine viewers on Philip’s sanctity. The raised arm appears directly in front of the false idol, who is positioned below the ‘true icon’, depicted in the lintel.60 Filippino gave the viewer an active role to search for the source of Philip’s power. With some difficulty, we find a very small image of Christ in the upper right corner, only 20 centi­ metres (8 in.) high and painted in pale colours. Dressed in a

159

‘A ppearances are often deceiving ’ in the Strozzi Chapel

humble robe with only a simple wooden cross, Christ defeated the mighty god of war. Perhaps Filippino had seen Donato Bramante’s Ruined Temple, an engraving from 1481 that also depicts a tiny, hard-to-find cross in a scene celebrating the richness of ancient architecture.61 Using different means, both works reflect the canonical belief that the faithful should wor­ ship Christ’s image and cross not as objects, but rather for what they represent, in contrast to pagan idols. The simplicity of Christian faith prevails over the riches of the ancients. The contest in the Strozzi Chapel recalls Alberti’s Apologue (21) about the golden candlesticks, covered with gems, that do not understand why they receive less attention than an effigy made of rotten wood. ‘We represent the person of God,’ the image explained.62 In the Strozzi Chapel, the humble wooden cross triumphs, but Filippino, like Ficino, clearly reveals his fascination with the mysteries of the pagan world. Ambivalence also underlies the obscure and highly abbreviated two-part inscription on the altar of Mars: ‘ex. h. tri.’ and ‘d. m. vic.’ Modern scholars disagree over how to expand it, and we can imagine that Renaissance visitors found the text challenging, especially since it does not derive from a known source. The first part, ‘From this triumph’, is straightforward enough, but the second, like the cartouches on the window wall, allows for two interpretations: ‘Victory to the God Mars’, for the ancient pagans who build the altar; and ‘Victory to the Greatest God’, for the Christians in Santa Maria Novella. As with an antanaclasis, the rhetorical device of repeating the same word with different meanings within a text, the significance of ‘d. m.’ changes according to where it appears in the chapel.63 In the cartouche above the two muses,

filippino lippi

160

it should be expanded as diis manibus (departed spirits), and likewise in two inscriptions in the Raising of Drusiana, on the cinerary urn held by the priest and the gravestone altar in the round temple, but the abbreviation has a different meaning on the altar in the Triumph of St Philip. This display of artifice and erudition would surely earn the condemnation of Savonarola. The difficulty of interpreting inscriptions had a positive value for those who shared Cortesi’s views. The effort necessary to understand the texts, together with the plethora of erudite details, stimulated the interest of learned observers. This process is complemented and magnified by Filippino’s equally enigmatic imagery. To a degree not found in other paintings, the frescoes repeatedly surprise viewers and challenge them to follow the artist’s visual logic. We find a similar mechanism at play in Bramante’s engraving and a handful of other works from the period. Perhaps Filippino and some contemporaries would have shared the view expressed centuries later by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger when they acknowledged and embraced the difficulty of Cubist paintings: ‘A man will enjoy today what exasperated him yesterday.’64 The very effort needed to understand the painted framing system in the Strozzi Chapel or to find the image of Christ in the Miracle of St Philip stimulates the viewer to look longer, harder and repeatedly at the fresco cycle. Most importantly, perhaps, this leads to reflection on the very nature of pictorial representations.

six

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion, 1494–1504

F

ilippino’s paintings from his last decade, ending with his death in Florence in 1504, show a remarkable stylistic range. We find striking differences in the compositions, use of ornament and emotional charge in works that were certainly made in the same period, such as the Adoration of the Magi (dated 1496; illus. 58) and Double Intercession (c. 1495; illus. 63), or the Miracle of St Philip (see illus. 51) and the Valori altarpiece (illus. 65 and 66), both from the late 1490s. It is very difficult to firmly establish this type of vers­ a­tility in most fifteenth-century painters, although Vasari astutely observed that Piero di Cosimo ‘changed his manner almost from one thing to the next, according to what he was doing’.1 The dearth of firmly dated and attributed works by Piero frustrates attempts to confirm Vasari’s assessment, but Renaissance sources mention all eleven altarpieces by Filippino discussed in this chapter, and documents or inscriptions establish the dates of six. Already in the early 1480s, in the Brancacci Chapel frescoes and the Vision of St Bernard, Filippino used different modes for depicting figures within the same cycle or painting. Not surprisingly, some of his later works exhibit what the Duke of Milan’s agent, in his memo of 1493, had described as the ‘sweet’ air of paintings by Filippino and

filippino lippi

162

Perugino, but in others the ‘virile’ air he found in Botticelli’s works prevails.2 The adjectives used by the agent derive from two types of ancient rhetoric. ‘Florid’ speeches strove to charm and give pleasure – often through the abundant use of ornament, much as we found in the Strozzi Chapel – whereas the ‘grand’ style of oratory aimed to persuade and move listeners through forceful prose, comparable to Filippino’s approach in the Carafa Chapel. These were not exclusive options, at least when used in the Renaissance. Pietro Bembo sought literature 58 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, 1495–6, oil and tempera on wood.

163

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

with both ‘pleasing’ and ‘grave’ qualities, although he noted that one or the other was usually dominant, and the same holds for Filippino’s late altarpieces. An awareness of two fundamental clusters of associations can help us to appreciate Filippino’s divergent approaches. The Adoration of the Magi and other ‘florid’ paintings overflow with charming details, some rich with symbolic meaning. Grave altarpieces stir the emotions of visitors, as we see in two works that once decorated the chapels of Savonarola’s followers: the Crucifixion with Saints for Francesco Valori and a triptych for Francesco del Pugliese (illus. 67). After considering these altarpieces for pleasure and persuasion, we turn to the Deposition, which Filippino left unfinished at his death. The clothing depicted by Filippino often signals the goals of his works. In the richly decorated Strozzi Chapel, Vasari singled out for praise the ‘garments, footwear, headdresses [and] sacerdotal vestments’.3 Similarly ornate dress flags the florid tendency found in many of the artist’s later altarpieces. None of his contemporaries could compete with the ingenuity displayed in the range of sandals seen in the Adoration of the Magi and the Meeting at the Golden Gate (illus. 59). In these works and the Strozzi Chapel, many of the men wear extravagant tur­­bans and hats, and the women have elaborately knotted headpieces. In the Adoration and the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (1501; illus. 60), female figures wear diaphanous veils, an expensive article of clothing also found in two other works datable to the 1490s, the Nerli altarpiece (see illus. 34) and the Cleveland tondo (see illus. 35). This sartorial embellishment, delightful or distracting according to one’s perspective, does not appear in Filippino’s ‘Savonarolan’ altarpieces. In

filippino lippi

164

these and other grave works, such as the St Jerome (illus. 64) and the Double Intercession (illus. 63), women dress modestly, and never with the thin veils that Savonarola railed against in his Florentine sermons.4 Feet are usually bare, simply shod or concealed by drapery. Clothing, often tattered, carries little or no adornment. If ‘clothes make the man’, as Erasmus noted (Adagia 3.1.60) in the early sixteenth century, then the clothes invented by Filippino make the altarpieces. Fabrics take on much greater prominence in Filippino’s later works, especially the more florid ones. He dramatically increased the concentration and depth of drapery folds, as we can see from a comparison of the sleeves in the Corsini tondo (see illus. 16), from the early 1480s, and the Cleveland tondo, from the mid-1490s (illus. 35). In the latter, the garments of Joseph and Margaret have a swollen, rounded appearance, similar to those in the Mystic Marriage (illus. 60) and most of Filippino’s more pleasing works from this period. Typically, figures wear additional pieces of drapery that include still more folds. In these florid paintings, Filippino uses highlights or colours to pick up the zigzag patterns in folds. The frequent directional shifts do not correspond to the poses or motion of the figure, and they add to the agitated appearance so typical of Filippino’s later works. These stylistic choices recall an observation from Landino’s commentary of 1482 on Horace’s Art of Poetry: ‘by variety, we delight the soul of the listener, and render him attentive, and remove him from all boredom.’5 Filippino is never boring, and surely agreed with the view expressed by Quintilian (viii.iii.52) and Alberti (On Painting, ii) that the lack of variety indicated the lack of art. Especially in his late and pleasing works, Filippino keeps his

165

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

paintings lively with a range of fabrics, colours, figure types and poses. He arranges them in a way that corresponds to the guidelines written a few years later by Leonardo da Vinci, that painters ‘should closely intermingle direct opposites because they offer a great contrast to each other and the more so the more they are adjacent . . . in this way, there is as much variety, as closely juxtaposed as possible.’6 Perhaps the best example among Filippino’s late altarpieces is the Adoration of the Magi (illus. 58).7 Filippino received the commission from the Augustinian canons of San Donato a Scopeto in about 1494, a dozen years after Leonardo, the first artist asked to paint the altarpiece, had abandoned the project and left his panel unfinished.8 The selection of Medici family members portrayed in the lower left indicates that Filippino began painting his altarpiece in 1495, and he signed and dated it the following year. In front of the Christ Child kneels the eldest king, with his flowing white beard, flanked by two younger, beardless magi, both in red robes. Filippino used a series of visual tools to lead our attention to the astronomer kneeling in the left foreground. He holds a gilded planispheric astrolabe, the first accurate representation of this astronomical instrument in Italian painting.9 Wearing a magnificent yellow robe, he serves as an anchor for the powerful diagonal sequence of the eldest king, Christ, Mary and Joseph. The astronomer and youngest king standing nearby are the only figures with fur-trimmed robes, and additional riches appear in this corner of the altarpiece. A page removes the younger king’s crown as another one hands him a bejewelled chalice. Vasari explained that Filippino ‘portrayed the elder Pier Francesco Vecchio de’

filippino lippi

166

Medici, son of Lorenzo di Bicci, in the figure of an astrologer holding a quadrant, and likewise Giovanni, father of Signor Giovanni de’ Medici [that is, Pierfrancesco di Lorenzo’s son Giovanni] and another Pier Francesco, brother of that Signor Giovanni’. This last identification is an error for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, Giovanni’s older brother.10 Fortunately, the identity of Pierfrancesco and his two sons can be confirmed by other paintings and medals. On this basis, and following a Renaissance sense of decorum, Giovanni must be the page standing behind his father. He gives the chalice to the youn­ gest king, who represents his older brother Lorenzo. For the first time in the long tradition of Florentine Adorations, one of the magi portrays a prominent figure who was very much alive when the work was painted. This bold visual statement reflects the dramatic political events in Florence. When Charles viii of France made his tri­­umphal entry into the city in November 1494, one eyewitness reported that the king was preceded by ‘200 pairs of young Florentines . . . in very ornate attire with very large sleeves. Leading them all was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.’11 Many chroniclers called the entry the most magnificent in memory.12 Soon after this royal visit, a revolution in Florence led to the banishment of Piero de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, an event that greatly increased the status of his cousins and rivals, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco. The newly established Republic immediately exempted Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco from the age limit on government officials, and he appeared in the list of eminent Florentines compiled by Francesco Guicciardini in 1495. This very high public profile explains why Lorenzo, his brother and father

167

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

appear in Filippino’s altarpiece, although they did not make any financial contribution to the convent. We find a parallel about twenty years earlier with the portraits of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano as bystanders in Botticelli’s Del Lama Adoration, and their deceased father, Piero, and grandfather Cosimo as magi. The patrons of both altarpieces wanted to ingratiate themselves with different branches of the same powerful family. Especially in an altarpiece painted soon after a violent change in government, an artist would not decide on his own to depict a major political figure, much less as one of the magi. The tumultuous events during the winter of 1494–5 provided the canons of San Donato with an opportunity to curry favour with Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco by resur­recting the commission for the high altarpiece. The funds left from the original bequest were still available, the donor had died and Leonardo had abandoned the commission. The decision to re-order the altarpiece from Filippino was probably a reaction to both the revolution of 1494 and the excommunication of the canons in 1483, which was quickly revoked.13 Those events indicated the importance of having powerful protectors. Given the long association in Florence between the Medici and the magi, and the tradition of including portraits among the laypeople in altarpieces, the canons must have asked Filippino to include depictions of Pier­fran­cesco and his sons. No portraits appear in Leonardo’s unfinished work, and this new request to include the Medici presented Filippino with a delicate problem: how and where to depict the deceased Pierfrancesco with the decorum appropriate for a father but without overpowering his living sons?

filippino lippi

168

The artist’s brilliant solution was to represent Pierfrancesco in the foreground and closer to the viewer than Giovanni and Lorenzo, but further away from the Christ Child. To help guide the kings, Filippino showed Pierfrancesco as an astrologer. The Medici portraits in the altarpiece reflect the patron’s hopes that Lorenzo de’ Pierfrancesco would soon become the leader of Florence and provide protection for the Augustinian canons. Moreover, the patrons had Filippino include a predella, now divided between various collections, that depicted Augustine and other saints who held particular importance for the canons. Filippino’s patrons must have requested not only the portraits but some unusual details in the altarpiece, given that these elements reflect important and recurring themes in Augustine’s Epiphany sermons.14 The man behind Joseph with a dom­­e-shaped cap, who looks to the side and wears a money bag on his belt, probably refers to Augustine’s condemnation of the Jews. They were blind to divine revelation, according to the saint, and he repeatedly contrasted them with the ‘pagans’ who adored the Christ Child. Augustine specified that these early Christians came ‘from the ends of the earth’, a phrase often used for Ethiopia, ‘from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south’.15 Filippino depicted most of these pious pagans at the far right, where a man with a blue turban joins his hands in prayer. Closer to the viewer stands a quietly attentive figure, whose dark skin sets off his golden hoop earring and a large pearl at his neck.16 Variety abounds in this group, where Filippino juxtaposed old men with young, full faces with profiles, and bare heads with those in turbans. Vasari must have referred to these figures when

169

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

he praised the strange attire of the ‘Indians and Moors’ in the altarpiece;17 in his writings, he often used this phrase to indicate people from an imprecisely defined area south of Europe. In Filippino’s altarpiece, this group provides more than an appealing range of exotic types and costumes. Although many Florentine Adorations include Black African attendants, the dark-skinned figure here does not belong to the retinue of any king. Filippino’s patrons probably associated him with Augustine’s gloss on Psalm 73, where the saint asked, ‘How do I understand “Ethiopian” peoples? How else than by them, all nations? And properly by Black men, for Ethiopians are Black.’18 Filippino’s ‘Ethiopian’ figure and the other men from distant lands represent the good Gentiles who gave homage to Christ. The altarpiece depicts them in a positive light, but as marginal figures who need the guidance of the prominent European in the right foreground. Though we do not know his name, the canons must have recognized this individual, who also appears in Filippino’s Brancacci Chapel fresco. In the altarpiece, he indicates to the foreigners the right path to salvation. The inclusion of ‘Indians and Moors’ and especially the Medici portraits led Filippino to rethink the overall composition of the altarpiece, although he studied Leonardo’s unfinished work carefully. The hand gestures of two men in Filippino’s altarpiece – one standing in the foreground and another with a topknot – reflect similarly placed figures in Leonardo’s panel. The latter also includes an impressive archi­­tectural display, complete with a series of arches, and Botticelli did much the same in his Del Lama Adoration. Filippino, however, devoted the upper centre of his altarpiece

filippino lippi

170

to a detailed representation of a rustic hut. Vasari described this as ‘very bizarre’, and perhaps Filippino aimed to confound the expectations of contemporary viewers by returning to the bib­­lical narrative. After all, it is easier to imagine the manger looking like this hut than a structure with fragments of ancient temples. The conspicuous absence of all’antica architecture in Filippino’s altarpiece does not indicate his stylistic development, given that ancient buildings play important roles in his contemporary works, such as the Strozzi Chapel and Meeting at the Golden Gate (illus. 59).19 In paintings of the latter scene, nearly all fifteenth-century artists depicted the encounter of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, in front of a prominent city gate, usually medieval in appearance. Only Filippino showed the meeting with a detail of a triumphal arch, where a column supports an entablature decorated with gilded reliefs. The uppermost image of a reclining female nude with three putti faithfully copies a cameo from the collection of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, although Filippino adjusted the drapery to cover the hermaphrodite’s disconcerting male genitalia. As suggested by The Golden Legend, Joachim appears as an energetic traveller, still in motion with one heel raised. With his lips parted, he turns to comfort and embrace his worried wife, who modestly keeps her eyes downcast. Filippino’s interest in variety extends to the flanking figures. A rustic shepherd seen in profile marches in from the right with a canteen dangling from his walking stick. At the left, an elegant young woman looks out boldly at the viewer. The artist also addresses us with the inscription visible behind her and below the column: ‘Filippino of Florence’.20

171

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

Alas, we have no information about the origins of this enchanting painting, but Filippino also included ‘Florence’ in his inscriptions on two other altarpieces made for export, both rich with eye-pleasing all’antica details, and which have remained in their intended cities. The first, the Mystic Marriage (illus. 60), is still in the church of San Domenico, Bologna, although not in the original chapel.21 It once adorned the Casali Chapel and may have been commissioned by Giovanni Battista Casali.22 The second, St Sebastian between Sts John the Baptist and Francis (dated 1503; illus. 61), includes an inscription on the back indicating that Filippino sent it from Florence in February 59 Filippino Lippi, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1497, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

172

1504; it was then installed in the Lomellini Chapel in the church of San Teodoro, Genoa.23 In a variation on the altar of Mars in the Strozzi Chapel, Sebastian stands on an elaborate altar seemingly carved for an ancient god. When the Lomellini altarpiece is seen slightly from below, as it appeared to original viewers, Sebastian’s unusual pose makes him appear to hang forward from the column. Sebastian, John and the Christ Child strongly recall the same figures painted three

60 Filippino Lippi, Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, 1501, oil and tempera on wood.

61 Filippino Lippi, St Sebastian between Sts John the Baptist and Francis, 1503, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

174

years earlier in the Mystic Marriage, whereas Francis represents a variation of the Valori Crucifixion, a work that was destroyed in the Second World War and is now visible only in old photographs. Although Filippino recycled figures from recent paintings, presumably by using cartoons, both the quality and style of the Lomellini altarpiece indicate that he painted the work largely in his own hand. The same holds true for the Mystic Marriage, which was praised highly by Vasari and copied by local artists in Bologna. That painting exhibits Filippino’s florid tendencies not only in the swollen draperies and delicate veils but in the elaborate and sophisticated architecture. At left, the Tuscanizing capitals resemble those designed by Giuliano da Sangallo for the loggia at Poggio a Caiano, and the paired pilasters in the background of the painting recall those used by Sangallo at the church of Santa Maria delle Carceri at Prato.24 The foreground platform cuts back at surprising angles to create a zigzag pattern. Filippino uses this to draw the viewer’s attention to a piece of St Catherine’s broken wheel at the far right. On a marble fragment nearby, the artist once again addresses us by including his name in an inscription. Filippino exhibited a comparable interest in both a dramatic foreground cropping and a highly charged background in his Pietà (illus. 62), where the angels closely resemble those bearing candlesticks in the upper part of the Mystic Marriage.25 Given that the small panel was purchased in Bologna and reflected in a Renaissance sculpture there, the Pietà may have originally formed part of an undocumented predella to the Mystic Marriage; less probably, it could have belonged to the lost documented predella of the Lomellini altarpiece. This

175

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

powerful representation of Christ in his sepulchre shows that Filippino did not limit the depiction of intense emotion to his grave altarpieces. He added immediacy by cutting off the lower edge abruptly, a striking change from his highly finished composition drawing. The sharply pointed edges of the slabs in the background, strongly lit from the right, jut out aggressively to create a rather menacing atmosphere. Nicodemus, looking directly at the viewer, props up the body of Christ, whose head rolls to one side. An angel with a meditative gaze holds the crown of thorns; another, open-mouthed with an anguished expression conveying pathos, grasps three nails. The depictions of extreme agony and grief in ancient art led to the transformation in the expressive vocabulary in Filippino’s later works. This exploration also informs the series of drawings of the Pietà with Sts Anthony Abbot, Paul the Hermit and Angels (see illus. 25), made in preparation for an altarpiece for the Certosa di Pavia, left unfinished and now lost. Filippino received the commission in 1495, a decision presumably based on the memo of 1493 for the Duke of Milan. The project forced Filippino 62 Filippino Lippi, Pietà, c. 1500, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

176

to think through the problem of how to place a grown man in the lap of his mother. Nearly all his contemporaries depicted Christ as rigid and fully extended, but Filippino shows the waist and knees bent, as they are in Botticelli’s Milan Pietà from the same period.26 Only the Certosa drawings include three additional details also found in Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà: Christ’s head leans back, his hand dangles, and Mary rests him on her knees, holding his torso under his right arm­pit. In theory, Filippino might have seen the sculpture in progress by the famously secretive Michelangelo during an otherwise unknown trip to Rome. Nevertheless, it seems far more likely that the sculptor observed the painter’s ingenious solution in Florence, then adapted it for his marble work. Just a few years later, when he designed the Sistine Chapel vault, Michelangelo looked closely at the integration of fictive architecture and statuary in the window wall of the Strozzi Chapel. Later, in his initial plans for a Last Judgement that incorporated Perugino’s altarpiece, Michelangelo revealed his appreciation of Filippino’s ingenious solution for the Carafa Chapel altar wall.27 The Certosa Pietà undoubtedly aimed to move the viewer, but Filippino included several details to please the eye. The background architecture, for example, recalls that in the Mystic Marriage. In another group of late altarpieces, the em­­phasis shifts away from juxtaposed contrasts and all’antica ornament towards clear and powerful imagery. These more austere works have attracted less interest ever since Vasari’s day, but they show how Filippino adapted his style to suit different patrons. An examination of the circumstances sur­­­ rounding the Double Intercession (illus. 63), painted for the Franciscan convent Il Palco, just outside the city walls of

177

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

Prato, helps us to understand the unusual characteristics of the altarpiece.28 Numerous Tuscan paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries depict the Double Intercession, another subject found in The Golden Legend. Mary reveals her breast to her son while Christ bares his wounded side to God the Father. 63 Filippino Lippi, Double Intercession (Palco altarpiece), c. 1495, oil and tempera on wood.

64 Filippino Lippi, St Jerome, 1493–4, oil and tempera on wood.

179

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

With these allusions to their own sacrifices, the paintings suggest that their intercessions on behalf of the faithful cannot be refused. In representations prior to Filippino’s, communication between the holy figures takes on primary importance. Artists used glances, gestures or inscriptions to establish links between the Virgin, Christ and God the Father. In contrast, the Virgin in the Palco altarpiece does not speak to or look at her son. This interpretation accentuates the iconic value of hand gestures over the narrative. Filippino also emphasizes the parallel suffering of Christ and his mother by giving them analogous positions. Both kneel, extend their right arms and raise their left hands. Christ’s emphatic pose recalls St Jerome (illus. 64), an altarpiece that, according to Vasari, was made for the Badia in Florence.29 Both paintings show the holy figure with his head tilted back and his eyes dramatically upturned, with one bent knee pointing in a slightly different direction from the torso. This combination of impassioned features and torsion creates an impression of intense devotion. The very same description applies to Leonardo’s St Jerome, a panel from the mid-1480s whose composition has strong similarities with Filippino’s.30 These parallels provide further evidence that Filippino travelled to Milan in about 1493, presumably in connection with the Certosa Pietà. In Chapter Three, we saw how in the Nerli altarpiece and Cleveland tondo Filippino adopted the charming poses of the Christ Child and John with inventions known today from paintings by Leonardo’s followers. St Jerome shows how Filippino also turned to the older master for a pose that expressed pathos, then reused it for the Double Intercession.

filippino lippi

180

Most depictions of the Double Intercession give prominence to the people under the Virgin’s protection; often they kneel in the foreground and have identifying features or dress. In Filippino’s painting, however, the area between Christ and the Virgin remains oddly empty. On a smaller scale and relegated to the middle ground, several kneeling figures look up at Mary. None of the depictions appears to be a portrait, and the figures do not wear distinctive clothing. No one distracts the viewer from the solemnity of the main figures. In another break from Double Intercession paintings, Filippino avoided the display of the Virgin’s bare breasts and depicts her as much older than she usually appears. These details contribute to the extreme gravity of Filippino’s interpretation, which also lacks the decorative ribbons, ruins, statues and animals found in so many of his works from the 1490s. Rich decoration is limited to the upper section of the Double Intercession, where an Annunciation and God the Father appear beyond innumerable tiers of gilt-edged clouds and concentric rings. When observed in person, this extensive use of gold highlights creates an unusual and extraordinary sense of tunnel-like space, and the effect must have been even stronger by candlelight. It is surprising to find this expensive material in a painting made for an impoverished convent by a major artist. In 1491 the local government of Prato even had to assist the Franciscan friars when they could not raise sufficient funds for an inexpensive altarpiece by Domenico and David Ghirlandaio.31 Dramatic events in Prato probably motivated the subsequent commission from Filippino. When King Charles viii invaded Tuscany in November 1494 and brutally sacked several cities, the people of Prato felt a special

181

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

need for the religious services provided by the Franciscans. The commune gave the friars bread and wine, ‘to placate divine rage, and so that the French army . . . does not harm the people of Florence and Prato’.32 In 1495, when the king and his troops prepared to leave Naples for France, fear returned in Tuscany and the commune of Prato renewed its donation. The govern­ment had every reason to be grateful when the French did not sack the city. Perhaps the altarpiece was commissioned as an ex-voto and the donor’s coat of arms adorned the original frame. To best represent the severe subject matter in the Double Intercession, Filippino adopted a grave

65 Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion with Virgin and St Francis (central panel, Valori altarpiece), 1498–1500, oil and tempera on wood (now destroyed).

66 Filippino Lippi, St John the Baptist and St Mary Magdalene (wings of Valori altarpiece), 1498–1500, oil and tempera on wood.

183

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

style. Although this style was not limited to supporters of Savonarola, it reappeared a few years later in a work for one of the preacher’s main followers, the Valori altarpiece. Filippino’s austere Crucifixion with Virgin and St Francis (illus. 65) originally adorned the Valori Chapel in the Florentine church of San Procolo, together with two side panels, now highly abraded, depicting Sts John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (illus. 66).33 Given the prominence of St Francis, scholars long assumed that the patron was Francesco Valori, who by 1497 had become the most powerful political supporter of Savona­rola and his followers, the piagnoni. Unpublished documents establish that Valori even left provisions for a chapel dedicated to his name saint in San Procolo, but also that he had severe financial difficulties. When he was murdered in 1498 by the same mob that attacked Savonarola, he left his nephew and heir Niccolò with substantial debts. Also a piagnone, Niccolò Valori became responsible for the upkeep of the Valori Chapel, and so it was probably Francesco’s heir who commissioned the altarpiece. Based on comparison with Filippino’s other works, it must date from between 1498 and 1500. Both the style and iconography of this altarpiece have direct correspondences with beliefs expressed by Savonarola. As we saw in the last chapter, the friar criticized art and sermons for their artifice, which abounds in the Strozzi Chapel. Ornaments and variety enrich those frescoes and Filippino’s more florid altarpieces, but not the Valori Crucifixion. In this central panel, destroyed in the Second World War but known from photographs, Christ appears with his eyes closed and past suffering, flanked by the kneeling Virgin and St Francis. Three angels collect the blood that pours from the wounds in his hands

filippino lippi

184

and side. The gold background has no decoration or geometric patterns, and the altarpiece provides virtually no indication of the setting or the moment of Christ’s death; neither soldiers nor crowds interrupt its meditative simplicity. The work contains no ‘superfluousness’, the term that Savona­rola used repeatedly to condemn unnecessary actions and luxuries in all aspects of life. He instructed preachers to avoid learned allusions and be comprehensible to all listeners, and he delivered clear and powerful sermons in simple Italian filled with examples from everyday life. The theme of the Simplicity of the Christian Life, to take the title of his treatise of 1496, recurs constantly in his writings. Numerous texts were published during Savonarola’s lifetime with woodcut illustra­tions that evidently met his approval.34 Nearly all the images have simple compositions with few figures, and the many rep­resentations of the Crucifixion lack the narrative details dear to most Florentine artists. The woodcuts also include naturalistic details and contemporary architectural elements, undermining the often-repeated claim that Savonarola preferred ‘medieval’ art. The simplicity and gold ground in the Valori altarpiece cannot be explained as a nostalgic return to the past. These features, rarely found in late Quattrocento Florence, are reused in a modern context to further the pious purpose of art. The haggard, desert saints in the side panels look as if they were painted wooden sculptures in unadorned niches. They recall two works by Donatello from the early 1450s – Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist – but in comparison with these three-dimensional models, Filippino accentuated the sense of fragility and pathos.

185

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

The most identifiable ‘Savonarolan’ feature is Filippino’s depiction of the Virgin. Most contemporary representations of the Crucifixion show Mary crying out in sorrow or fainting in the arms of her female companions, as she does in Filippino’s Deposition. In the Quattrocento, many preachers recommended that artists depict the pain and passion of Christ’s mother. Savonarola, however, told Florentines, ‘don’t think that she went down the street screaming . . . she followed right behind her son but meekly, and with great modesty, shedding a few tears.’35 The Savonarolan woodcuts of the Crucifixion all show Mary standing unsupported and quietly composed, just as she appears in the Valori altarpiece. On another occasion, the friar railed against the attire depicted in such works as the Nerli altarpiece: ‘Do you believe the Virgin Mary went dressed this way, as you paint her? . . . You make the Virgin Mary appear dressed like a whore.’36 The Valori altarpiece, in contrast, could illustrate Savonarola’s con­ception of Mary, expressed in the same sermon: ‘I tell you she went dressed as a poor woman, simply, and so covered that her face could hardly be seen.’ The emaciated saints in the side panels, standing barefoot in tattered clothing and with unkempt hair, also express a defiant rejection of earthly pleasures and finery. Here, as in Savonarola’s sermons, the Magdalene conveys the essential message of repentance. For the figure of Christ, Filippino avoided the muscular physique employed in the Double Intercession. Instead, Christ appears ‘tender and delicate’, as he was described by Savonarola in his Treatise on the Love of Jesus Christ (1492).37 Filippino’s repre­ sentation proved popular, presumably with piagnoni, to judge from several reduced versions.38 Christ’s blood receives far

filippino lippi

186

more attention in the Valori altarpiece than in other Tuscan paintings, but it plays a central role in Savonarola’s vision of the Mystic Crucifixion. Here the followers of Christ bathe in his blood, a detail that is reflected in a late fifteenth-century woodcut.39 Savonarola gave special emphasis to the fundamental Christian belief that life on Earth must be a preparation for death and the afterlife. The friar advised his followers to watch burials and decorate their homes with illustrations of the triumph of death. The piagnoni must have noted with appreciation that Filippino included four skulls with scattered bones and several rock slabs, presumably tombs, at the base of the cross in the Valori altarpiece, especially since such details were very unusual in depictions of the Crucifixion at the time. The most striking difference between this altarpiece and contemporary works is the gold ground, an expensive feature that the patron probably requested and certainly approved. This might seem to be in direct conflict with the destruction of luxury goods instigated by Savonarola, but the friar believed that precious materials conveyed respect to holy figures. En route to the Bonfire of the Vanities of 1497, for example, his youthful followers processed with Desiderio da Settignano’s marble sculpture of the Christ Child set on a gilded base. 40 During the Palm Sunday procession in 1496, piagnoni carried a rich and ornate tabernacle with a double-sided panel painting. One side depicted Savonarola’s most famous vision, of the Virgin’s bejewelled gold crown, which was also illustrated in a woodcut and an engraving.41 Savonarola’s mysticism could have encouraged Valori to commission a painting on gold ground to help evoke a direct, spiritual experience. The friar looked with great suspicion on most intellectual activity and

187

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

beseeched his listeners to accept the Christian way on pure faith. Gold adds a mysterious aura to Filippino’s severe image of Christ’s sacrifice. Set in a small chapel, the panel reflected the flickering candles, transforming the altarpiece into a type of icon. The triptych for Francesco del Pugliese, another prom­ inent piagnone and nephew of Filippino’s patron Piero, also conveys an appeal to pure faith (illus. 67).42 In his will of 1503, Francesco left five works of art in his chapel, including a ‘picture on which is painted a head of Christ made in Flanders, with two side wings, painted by the hand of Filippo di Fra Filippo’. 43 In about 1500 Filippino painted the panels that frame the Flemish Veil of Veronica. To complement this frontal image of Christ, the wings show him in right and left profile, and with ‘tender and delicate’ features like those found in the Valori altarpiece. Filippino arranged the side panels carefully

67 Filippino Lippi (wings) and Master of the St Ursula Legend, Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Veil of Veronica, Noli Me Tangere (Pugliese triptych), 1498–1500, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

188

so that each one depicts a female sinner who looks directly into the face of Christ. In the Flemish painting we, too, gaze into his eyes but contemplate a reproduction of the holy veil.44 As with the Strozzi Chapel, observation itself becomes the subject of Filippino’s painting. The patron must have selected the subjects of the side panels. In the right panel, Christ appears to the distraught Mary Magdalene and allows her to look at him, but without physical contact. The plaque below includes her respectful address in the form of a dialogue: ‘Master’ and Christ’s warning: ‘Do not touch me’ (Noli me tangere; John 20:16–17). The left panel depicts Christ standing beside a well as he teaches the woman of Samaria about the living water that leads to everlasting life. The inscription juxtaposes his admonition, also found in the Strozzi Chapel, ‘If you knew the gift of God’, but here we also find her reply, ‘Give me this water’ (John 4:10, 15). In two sermons given in 1496, Savonarola explained that the woman of Samaria had transgressed the laws of God, but corporeal sins are easier to remove than intellectual ones. Christ manifested himself to her ‘because of the simplicity of her faith’.45 This theme informs the style and mes­­sage of both painted wings. Filippino displayed his mastery of perspective with the putti who carefully position the cartouche on a ledge, designed to be seen from above, but he avoided the confusing display of artifice seen in the Strozzi Chapel. The Pugliese trip­­­­tych shows how the artist, working in collaboration with a piagnone, adapted his mode of expression to produce a work that reflects Savonarola’s views in both form and content. Patrons sought out Filippino not for his stylistic versatility but because he created pleasing and skilful works that met their

189

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

needs. In so doing, he became the most popular painter in Florence at the turn of the sixteenth century. In 1502 he was too busy to accept a commission from no less a patron than Isabella d’Este. The agent of the Marchesa of Mantua wrote that Filippino could not furnish a painting ‘because he is busy with other work for the next six months’, but that Botticelli was available. 46 (She turned instead to Perugino, the other artist whose works were described as ‘sweet’ in the memo of 1493.) One of Filippino’s last projects was a modest altarpiece 68 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Stephen (Prato altarpiece), 1503, oil and tempera on wood.

69 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Sts Anthony Abbot and Margaret, Stephen and Catherine (Prato tabernacle), 1498, fresco, Palazzo Pretorio, Prato.

70 Filippino Lippi and Pietro Perugino, Deposition, 1503–7, oil and tempera on wood.

filippino lippi

192

for the town hall of his native Prato, Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Stephen (illus. 68).47 Extensive documentation provides a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of this civic commission. In 1502 funds were stipulated for an altarpiece because ‘it was indecorous that in the . . . Audience Hall there 71 Workshop of Filippino (Master of Memphis), Deposition, early 1500s, oil and tempera on wood.

193

Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion

is no image of God or his Saints.’ Another official noted, ‘if the said work is not excellent . . . it will bring more dishonour than honour, and, even if obtained with a low cost, it will be completely useless.’ For that reason, they ordered the altarpiece from Filippino, the respected painter from Florence, also ‘considering that he was raised in the city of Prato’. By that date Filippino had completed the Double Intercession for Prato as well as his Prato tabernacle of 1498 (illus. 69). 48 The figures in the latter work provided the prototypes for Filippino’s altarpiece, now sadly damaged but still in its ornate frame. The artist from Prato charged the government officials much less than his standard rate. His grateful patrons expected this painting to persuade viewers, as we see from the inscription that gives voice to the Virgin: ‘As my son is just, you must assiduously observe justice and be charitable towards the poor.’49 The monumentality of the figures, who occupy most of the picture plane, conveyed this message to civic authorities in the town hall. In 1503 Filippino signed a contract for a highly prestigious commission for the church of the ss Annunziata in Florence.50 When the eight panels were finally installed in 1510, this constituted the largest altarpiece in Florence, but Filippino painted only the upper half of the Deposition before his death in 1504 (illus. 70). This work and the other panels were completed by Perugino, and so we can best evaluate Filippino’s original conception through the small versions painted by his workshop (illus. 71), presumably based on a lost drawing by the master. The florid qualities of the copies and the altarpiece itself stand in stark contrast to the Valori Crucifixion, but the attention to the mechanics of lowering Christ has clear

filippino lippi

194

precedents in the Brancacci and Strozzi chapels. A plethora of gesticulating and highly emotional figures appear in the upper half of the Deposition. A strong wind seems to blow the draperies, which have deep folds, as well as the brightly coloured ‘sashes’. Only Filippino would see the need to tie the ladders to the cross with strips of cloth decorated with tassels and fluttering in the wind. The pose of Mary Magdalene represents the major change between the interpretations of the Deposition by Filippino and Perugino. In the reduced version the saint cries out and embraces the cross, expressing an intense emotional state often found in Filippino’s late works. Technical examination of the altarpiece has revealed that Filippino painted the outline of the Magdalene in the same pose. In the final version, however, the saint kneels serenely with hands joined in prayer, similar in mood to the female figures in Perugino’s religious works. The Umbrian artist changed the original conception to one that fit his aesthetic sensibilities. From Vasari’s extended account of the ss Annunziata altarpiece, we learn that Florentine artists criticized Perugino because he recycled several figures found in earlier paintings. In short, he was guilty of a lack of imagination.51 By contrast, Filippino showed great inventiveness. This work had a major impact on representations of the Deposition in the sixteenth century, most obviously those by Rosso Fiorentino and Vasari himself.52 Vasari’s appreciation of this work and many others, especially the Strozzi Chapel, led him to praise Filippino, in the Life published in 1550, for the ‘ingenuity [ingegno]’ and ‘invention’ in his paintings.53

EPILOGUE

Filippino Rediscovered

I

n Filippino, Giorgio Vasari found an artist with interests similar to his own. Vasari always went forward with ‘new inventions and imaginings [fantasie], searching out the difficulties and obstacles of art’, as the painter-biographer explained in an autobiographical passage of the Lives.1 Although Filippino’s inventions impressed many of his contemporaries and Vasari’s, the painter and his works were then forgotten for centuries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when writers began to turn their attention to the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as part of a more general re-evaluation of the Italian Renaissance, many included discussions of Filippino but none expressed interest in how he overcame the obstacles of art. Readers today might be sur­ prised that the painter was often presented as equal or superior to Botticelli in texts written before Walter Pater’s bestselling Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), which transformed the way the Italian Renaissance was understood in the Englishspeaking world. It included his famous essay on Botticelli, originally published in 1870, which elevated Sandro into a superstar but did not even mention Filippino.2 A generation earlier, we find a very different view in the two most consulted and authoritative studies of Italian art, both written by

filippino lippi

196

German scholars and translated into many languages. The English edition from 1855 of Franz Kugler’s Handbook explained that the ‘occasionally mannered forms’ of Botticelli ‘were per­ petuated in the scholar [Filippino], but the incomparably higher gifts of the latter enabled him to attain a freedom and ease in which all resemblance to Sandro is frequently forgotten’.3 In his Cicerone, published the same year, Jacob Burckhardt described Filippino as a ‘pupil of Sandro, whom he much excels in spirit, fancy and feeling for beauty’.4 In their history of Italian art in 1864, Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle included the most detailed and important analysis of Filippino to appear before Alfred Scharf’s fundamental monograph of 1935.5 Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s analysis of Filippino’s ‘great and important creations’ contains much praise of his figures but considerably less of his compositions, and concludes that his late works revealed ‘a riot of tasteless fancies’.6 Although the EnglishItalian collaborators did not share the enthusiasm of their older German colleagues for Filippino’s freedom and fancy, this became the dominant theme in Algernon Charles Swinburne’s ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’ (1868).7 The extended discussions of both Filippino and Botticelli in this remarkable but overlooked essay, written by one of the most important Decadent authors, had a significant impact on Pater’s Botticelli essay, published two years later. Swinburne wrote of Filippino, ‘From his teacher we may derive the ambition after new things, the desire of various and liberal invention, the love of soft hints and veiled meanings.’ The poet was inspired by the large body of drawings in the Uffizi then attributed to Filippino, often depicting not religious

197

Filippino Rediscovered

scenes but rather models or pagan subjects. He compared the artist favourably to the more famous Fra Filippo. Filippino ‘had less gift of reproducing physical beauty, less lyrical loveliness of work . . . than his father, but far more of variety, of flexible emotion, of inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy’. Swinburne presented a portrait of Filippino as an artist who held the same values as the author himself, from a ‘boundless energy of delight’ to a ‘hunger after heathen liberty’. Filippino’s originality was admitted begrudgingly a few decades later by Bernard Berenson, by then the leading auth­ ority on Italian Renaissance art, who wrote in his Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903), ‘while we still see in Filippino some­­ thing of an innovator, we give scant admiration to the first adept of anarchy in art.’8 The first Italian monograph dedicated to Filippino appeared only in 1957, and in it Luciano Berti lamented the absence of an exhibition to celebrate the fourth centenary of the artist’s birth, and the lack of illumination in the Strozzi Chapel.9 In recent decades, however, many scholars have been seduced by the prose of Berenson’s rival and younger contemporary, Roberto Longhi, who in 1934 defined Filippino as ‘the most restless and lawless Florentine in the last decades of the Quattrocento’.10 The preceding chapters present Filippino as anything but a lawless anarchist. His first major work, the Brancacci Chapel frescoes, shows that the artist painted like Masaccio when he completed the older master’s works, and in his own Botti­cell­esque style when he added new sections. Another early masterpiece, the Vision of St Bernard, demonstrates Filippino’s total command of different modes of representation to de­­pict an ethereal vision, an inspired saint and a decidedly

filippino lippi

198

earthbound donor. An awareness of the rules of art allowed Filippino in his last years to create both florid paintings, filled with details that pleased the eye, and grave works designed to stir the emotions of visitors. In his analysis of the interest in overcoming obstacles found in earlier artists such as Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti, and later ones such as Vasari, Ernst Gombrich wrote, ‘the rules of the game called art had been revised in Florence to include the demand for a “contribution”, a problem-solution.’11 Filippino excelled in this type of problem-solving. If Cardinal Oliviero Carafa appreciated a style comparable to classically inspired, epideictic oratory, or if Alfonso Strozzi wanted to dazzle observers with his antiquarian interests, Filippino had the sensitivity to understand these diverse needs and the pictorial intelligence to express them with highly original solutions. Like the Florentine youths who, according to Vasari, turned to Filippino to design their festivals and spectacles, we, too, can find great satisfaction in his ‘ingenuity and invention’.

chronology

1461

1469

1472

1478 1482

On 8 May an anonymous source accuses Fra Filippo Lippi of having a son, referring to Filippino as ‘big’. Filippino was probably born in 1457 Fra Filippo Lippi dies in Spoleto. Between 1467 and 1469, Filippino receives various payments for assisting in the decoration of the apse of Spoleto Cathedral The register book of the Compagnia di San Luca, an association of painters in Florence, lists Filippino as ‘with Sandro di Botticello’. Filippino pays dues in 1472 and is mentioned in records for 1473, 1475, 1482, 1499 and 1504 Filippino receives a commission for an altarpiece, now lost, in Pistoia In June Filippino receives payment from the banker Filippo Strozzi for the design of a wall decoration with a floral motif, now lost. In October Filippino receives a commission from the Commune of Florence – originally given to Perugino, and never completed – to fresco one wall of the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio. A document of 11 December suggests that Filippino had completed the Magrini altarpiece, still in San Michele, Lucca. In the early to mid-1480s, it seems, Filippino painted his Brancacci Chapel frescoes, mentioned in Antonio Manetti’s Huomini singulari in Firenze, a study of famous Florentines written between 1494 and 1497. Manetti also refers to Filippo Lippi’s honourable burial in Spoleto, an allusion to the tomb designed by Filippino circa 1490

filippino lippi

1483

1484

1485

1487

1488

200

In September Filippino completes and receives final payment for the Bernardi altarpiece in the church of Santa Maria del Corso, Lucca; the contract from May 1482 required him to complete the work within a year In May the Commune of San Gimignano decides how to install Filippino’s Annunciation; they had established the compensation in February 1483. In 1484 Alessandro Braccesi probably writes two epigrams (certainly completed by 1487) celebrating the Double Portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino Lippi. The same year Ugolino Verino sends Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, a book of epigrams, now lost but known from a version of 1491. Two refer to lost works by Filippino: a Last Supper for the king and a portrait of Piero del Pugliese. In a third epigram, ‘Florentine Painters and Sculptors Worthy of Being Compared to the Ancient Greeks’, Verino refers to Filippino as the first among artists The Florentine diplomat Giovanni Salviati pays Filippino for a Virgin with Child, now lost or unidentified. The account book for the church of Santa Maria delle Campora, Florence, records that Piero del Pugliese made an undated payment, preceding another in 1486, for an altarpiece by Filippino, identifiable with the Vision of St Bernard. In September Lorenzo de’ Medici establishes the compensation for Filippino’s Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece and the artist receives his first payment; others continue until November 1486. The altarpiece is dated 20 February 1485 (1486 by the modern calendar) In April Filippino signs a contract for the Strozzi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, stipulating that the decoration be finished before March 1490, for 300 florins. He receives an advance for materials. A letter of 2 September by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa mentions that on that day Filippino signed the contract for the Carafa Chapel in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. On 21 September Filippino dictates his

201

1489

1490

1491

1493

1494

1494

Chronology

first testament. Francesco del Pugliese is entrusted to send two completed paintings, now lost, representing the Virgin with saints to King Matthias Corvinus On 2 May Filippino sends a letter from Rome to Filippo Strozzi, in which he promises to return to Florence by 24 June so that he can start work in the Strozzi Chapel. He adds that Cardinal Carafa is satisfied with his work on the Carafa Chapel. In August and September Filippino receives payments for the Strozzi Chapel, probably for drawings he made in Florence In February Carnival festivities in Florence include processional floats dedicated to planets. For this event, most probably, Filippino sent his Triumph of Venus drawing. On 7 May Nofri Tornabuoni writes from Rome to Lorenzo de’ Medici about Filippino’s progress in the Carafa Chapel, reassuring him that ‘the Cardinal will remain obliged to you and content with him’ By 5 January Filippino submits a project drawing, now lost, for the competition to complete the facade of Florence Cathedral An anonymous writer sends a letter to the Duke of Milan with his appraisal of the four leading painters in Florence: Botticelli, Filippino, Perugino and Ghirlandaio. The letter mentions their work, now lost, for Lorenzo de’ Medici’s villa at Spedaletto. Filippino’s Death of Meleager drawings might be for this project or the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, where in 1493–4 Filippino paints his Death of Laocoön fresco. On 25 March 1493 Pope Alexander vii visits the ‘new’ Carafa Chapel in Rome Filippino is included with other artists among the ‘masters of perspective’ in Luca Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità In August Filippino receives payments for the Strozzi Chapel, probably for work on the vault. On 17–18 November a Triumph of Peace designed by Filippino is exhibited in the Piazza della Signoria for the triumphal entry of Charles viii into Florence

filippino lippi

1495

1496 1497

1498

1500

1501 1502

1503

202

In this year and 1496, Filippino receives various payments for the decoration of the Strozzi Chapel, probably for the altar wall. In March 1495 he receives the commission for an altarpiece depicting the Pietà with Sts Anthony Abbot and Paul the Hermit for the Certosa di Pavia, left unfinished at his death but known from drawings. The commission is alluded to in a letter of 1499 On 29 March Filippino signs and dates the Adoration of the Magi Filippino signs and dates the Meeting at the Golden Gate. In January and March he receives payments for the Strozzi Chapel, but on 9 May the heirs of Filippo Strozzi declare that they have started a lawsuit against Filippino for noncompletion of the project. The Painters’ Guild decides that the Strozzi should pay Filippino an additional 100 florins, which suggests that the artist still had to paint the side walls. Filippino receives payments in January and December 1498, November 1500 and July 1501 Filippino dates his Prato tabernacle. On 18 May he receives a commission to paint the altarpiece for the Great Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio. He receives payment in June 1500 but never completes the altarpiece, which is known only from composition drawings In June the board of works of Florence Cathedral pays Filippino for two designs for silver candlesticks to be placed on the high altar Filippino signs and dates the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, and sends it to the church of San Domenico, Bologna Filippino signs and dates the fresco of the Raising of Drusiana in the Strozzi Chapel. In February he receives a commission from the Commune of Prato for an altarpiece in the town hall, Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Stephen, dated 1503. On 23 September an agent of Isabella d’Este informs his patron that Filippino considers himself too busy for the next six months to paint a work for her Filippino dates the St Sebastian between Sts John the Baptist and Francis, which is sent from Florence to the church of

203

1504

Chronology

San Teodoro, Genoa, in February 1504. In his will of 28 January 1503, Francesco del Pugliese mentions several paintings, including two by Filippino: a large Adoration of the Magi, unidentified, and the wings to a Head of Christ, now in Venice. On 15 September Filippino receives a commission for a double-sided altarpiece, with eight panels, for the high altar of the church of the ss Annunziata in Florence. He paints only the upper half of the Deposition before his death, and the altarpiece is completed by Perugino On 20 April Filippino dies of sprimanzia (angina) after a short illness. The next day he is buried in the church of San Michele Visdomini. Vasari mentions that ‘all the shops on Via de’ Servi closed up as he was carried by to be buried, as they used to do for the funerals of great men.’ The inventory of his house and workshop includes references to many paintings, now lost or untraced, as well as clothes, medals, musical instruments, furniture and other objects

references

1 Design as Problem-Solving 1 To keep notes to a minimum, references to Filippino’s paintings and documents are generally limited to Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), with earlier bibliography, plus subsequent studies of particular importance; these are also listed in the Select Bibliography. For essential dates and bibliography, and a sensitive analysis, see Enrico Parlato, ‘Filippino Lippi’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. lxv (Rome, 2005), pp. 189–98. 2 Carl Frey, ed., Il Codice Magliabechiano, cl. xvii. 17, contenente Notizie sopra l’arte degli antichi e quella de’ Fiorentini da Cimabue a Michelangelo Buonarroti, scritte da Anonimo Fiorentino (Berlin, 1892), p. 128. Various recent attempts to identify the author remain unconvincing. 3 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–7), vol. iii, p. 559. For the importance of this passage, and for Filippino’s interest in texts, see Patricia Lee Rubin, ‘Filippino Lippi “pittore di vaghissima invenzione”: Christian Poetry and the Significance of Style in Late Fifteenth-Century Altarpiece Design’, in Programme et invention dans l’art de la Renaissance, ed. Michel Hochmann (Paris, 2008), pp. 227–46. 4 For a discussion of the ‘ingenuity’ of an older contemporary of Filippino, see Christina Neilson, Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Verrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 35–73.

205

References

5 Vasari, Le vite, p. 560. 6 See Maddalena Spagnolo, ‘Vasari e le “difficultà dell’arte”’, in Percorsi vasariani tra le arti e le lettere, ed. Maddalena Spagnolo and Paolo Torriti (Montepulciano, 2004), p. 90. 7 Ugolino Verino, Epigrammi, ed. Francesco Bausi (Messina, 1998), p. 135. For this passage, and others in praise of Filippino, see also Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 55–6. 8 Max Underwood, ‘Inside the Office of Charles and Ray Eames’, Ptah, 2 (2005), p. 51. 9 For Filippino as draughtsman, an important topic that is largely overlooked in this volume, see George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, eds, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997). 10 Spagnolo, ‘Vasari’, p. 91. 11. Quoted in Norman E. Land, The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art (University Park, pa, 1994), pp. 106–7. 12. Martin Kemp, ‘From Mimesis to Fantasia: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Invention, Imagination, and Creation in the Visual Arts’, Viator, viii (1977), pp. 360, 370. 13 James Jackson Jarves, Art Studies: The ‘Old Masters’ of Italy (New York and London, 1861), p. 284; Alexis-François Rio, De la Poésie Chrétienne dans son principe, dans sa matière et dans ses formes (Paris, 1836), pp. 138–41, 152–3. 14 Marcel Proust, Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essays, trans. John Sturrock (London, 1988), p. 12. 15 The monthly records of the brotherhood often allow us to establish Filippino’s presence in Florence or Rome. For these and more details about his ‘civic existence’, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 40–52. 16 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Ospedale di San Giovanni Battista detto Bonifazio, 180, c. 1. I thank Louise Bourdua for this reference. On Roberto Lippi, sometimes identified with the Maestro di Serumido, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 68 nn. 23, 28, and 69 n. 47. 17 Ibid., pp. 626–7 doc. 24, and discussion on pp. 52–5. 18 For Dante’s Convivio, first published in 1490 but available earlier in manuscript, see Simon A. Gilson, ‘Reading the Convivio from

filippino lippi

206

Trecento Florence to Dante’s Cinquecento Commentators’, Italian Studies, lxiv (2009), pp. 266–95. 19 Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 540. 20 Ibid., p. 581. 21 Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”? How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop’, in Sandro Botticelli and Herbert Horne: New Research, ed. Rab Hatfield (Florence, 2009), pp. 137–50. 22 Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 622 doc. 12, ‘tutto di suo mano, e massime le figure’. 23 Michelle O’Malley, The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, ct, 2005), pp. 90–96. 24 Vasari, Le vite, p. 563. 25 This work (Memphis, Brooks Museum of Art) may be identifiable with (or related to) a Filippino altarpiece mentioned by Vasari as being in the Florentine church of San Salvatore, for Tanai de’ Nerli; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 468–9, 610–11, cat. R32. For the ‘Master of Memphis’, see Jonathan K. Nelson and Louis A. Waldman, ‘La questione dei dipinti postumi di Filippino Lippi: Fra Girolamo da Brescia, il Maestro di Memphis e la pala d’altar a Fabbrica di Peccioli’, in Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino: La deposizione della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro, ed. Franca Falletti and Jonathan K. Nelson (Livorno, 2004), pp. 120–47. He is most probably identifiable with Bernardo di Leonardo; see Louis A. Waldman, ‘L’Incoronazione della Vergine per San Girolamo alla Costa, nel passaggio fra Rinascimento e “maniera”’, in Norma e capriccio: Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della maniera moderna, ed. Tommaso Mozzati and Antonio Natali, exh. cat., Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (2013), pp. 86–99, on an altarpiece which Vasari described as begun by Filippino. 26 For the drawing (Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, inv. 130452), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 468–9, 610–11, cat. r32.d.1; Bambach in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino Lippi, p. 264, cat. 78; and Lorenza Melli in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, exh. cat., Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2011), p. 214, cat. 49.

207

References

27 See Alessandro Cecchi, ‘Sfortuna di Raffaellino del Garbo’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 346–60. 28 For this painting and the Adoration of the Golden Calf (National Gallery, London), and the related drawings and paintings discussed in this paragraph, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 502–11, 602–4, cat. 61. 29 For the panel (Château de Montrésor), see Matteo Gianeselli, ‘“The Crossing of the Red Sea”, in the Collection of Cardinal Fesch’, Burlington Magazine, clxiii (2021), pp. 15–21. 30 Nicoletta Pons, ‘Importanti opere perdute di pittori fiorentini a Pistoia e una aggiunta al Maestro di Apollo e Dafne’, in Fra Paolino e la pittura a Pistoia nel primo ’500, ed. Chiara d’Afflitto, Franca Falletti and Andrea Muzzi, exh. cat., Palazzo Comunale, Pistoia (Venice, 1996), pp. 50–53. 31 On the Rucellai altarpiece, see Chapter Three; for the version by Filippino and Raffaellino, Virgin and Child with Sts Florentius of Foligno and Bartholomew (Museo Diocesano, Spoleto), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 588, cat. 41; and Jonathan K. Nelson in Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, ed. Daniel Arasse, Pierluigi De Vecchi and Jonathan K. Nelson, exh. cat., Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Milan, 2004), pp. 142–4, cat. 13. 32 For the painting (Denver Art Museum), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 262–70, 334–5, cat. 22; Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park, pa, 2004), pp. 85–94; Patrizia Zambrano, ‘“. . . Di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola”: Filippino Lippi pittore di ritratti’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 176–80; and Tommaso Salvatore, ‘Un manoscritto dantesco “nascosto” in un dipinto di Filippino Lippi’, Medioevo e Rinascimento, xxix (2015), pp. 43–60. 33 See ibid. On the basis of a few legible words, Salvatore reconstructed lines 93–105 from Dante’s canzone 4, ‘Le dolci rime d’amor’.

filippino lippi

208

34 For Piero del Pugliese see Burke, Changing Patrons, pp. 89–90. 35 For the painting (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 342–3, cat. 29; Jonathan K. Nelson in Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, p. 136, cat. 21; and Zambrano, ‘Di naturale tanto bene’, pp. 173–4. 36 Petrarch, canzone 264: ‘e ’l cominciar non fia per tempo omai’. 37 Blake Wilson, Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy: Memory, Performance, and Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 236–44. 38 The epigram was completed before 1491, and perhaps written by 1484; see Verino, Epigrammi, pp. 569–71. 39 On the painting and story, see Ana Debenedetti, Botticelli: Artist and Designer (London, 2021), pp. 81–7. 40 Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 58–62. 41 ‘conditvs hic ego sum pictvre fama philippvs/ nvlli ignota mee gratia mira manvs’. 42 For the painting (Florence, Badia) and related drawing (Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. n. 129 E), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 256–61, 346–7, cat. 32; Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 136–40, cat. 11–12; Burke, Changing Patrons, pp. 139–41, 146–9; and Philippe Morel, ‘Introduction à la contemplation spirituelle: La Vision de saint Bernard de Filippino Lippi à Fra Bartolomeo’, in Voir l’au-delà: l’expérience visionnaire et sa représentation dans l’art italien de la Renaissance, ed. Andreas Beyer, Philippe Morel and Alessandro Nova (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 113–34. 43 O’Malley, Business of Art, p. 133. 44 See David L. Clark, ‘Filippino Lippi’s “The Virgin Inspiring St Bernard” and Florentine Humanism’, Studies in Iconography, vii–viii (1981–2), p. 177, and for discussion and identification of all inscriptions. 45 The Eyckian background is clearly reflected in an early collaboration between Botticelli and Filippino, the Adoration of the Magi (National Gallery, London); for these citations, see Paula Nuttall, ‘From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 188–92.

209

References

46 Vasari, Le vite, p. 515. See discussion in Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives on Botticelli: Paolo Cortesi, Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, Francesco Sansovino, and Leonardo da Vinci’, in Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary M. Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, ed. Molly Bourne and Arnold Victor Coonin (Ramsey, nj, 2016), p. 105. 47 For the painting (Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 440, 592, cat. 50. 48 The centaur appears in the fictive porphyry relief in the upper right; for the fresco, see ibid., pp. 423–37, 589–90, cat. 44, and discussion in Chapter Four. 49 Hugh Lloyd-Jones, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Wounded Centaur’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxii (1969), p. 390. 50 The centaur family does not appear in an otherwise faithful copy of the panel (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry) by the Master of Memphis; see Matteo Gianeselli, ‘“L’un des plus grands maîtres de l’école florentine”: Filippino Lippi and His Workshop in French Collections’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, p. 334 n. 41. 51 Lucian, trans. K. Kilburn (Cambridge, ma, 1953), p. 157. 52 Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven, ct, 2004), p. 153. 53 Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, nj, 1992), p. 27, on an anonymous painting in the 1492 inventory of Lorenzo de’ Medici. 54 Vasari, Le vite, p. 564; in 1550 he referred to Christian poems. For this change, see Rubin, ‘Filippino Lippi’, p. 239. 55 Boccaccio, Genealogie Deorum Gentilium (14.7), as translated and discussed ibid., p. 240. On a Renaissance painting as a favola, to express invention, see also Dempsey, Portrayal, pp. 27–9. 56 Cited from commentary on Inferno (1.103) by Cristoforo Landino (Florence, 1481), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, https://dante.dartmouth.edu. 57 For discussion, see Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives’, pp. 104–5.

filippino lippi

210

2 Inventing a Personal Style, Late 1470s to Early 1480s 1 See discussion in Martin Kemp, ‘From “Mimesis” to “Fantasia”: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration, and Genesis in the Visual Arts’, Viator, viii (1977), p. 390. 2 See discussion in Joost Keizer, ‘Style and Authorship in Early Italian Renaissance Art’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, lxxviii (2015), pp. 370–85. 3 For documented payments to Filippino at Spoleto, and proposals for his contribution to the frescoes, see Patrizia Zambrano in Zambrano and Jonathan K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), pp. 90–91, 305, cat. 1, 618–19 doc. 2. 4 For the letter, see Keizer, ‘Style’, p. 374. 5 For the document, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 619 doc. 3. 6 For Filippino as Botticelli’s student and collaborator, see Zambrano ibid., pp. 103–40; for different interpretations, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Filippino Lippi as Student, Collaborator, and Competitor of Botticelli’, in Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, ed. Daniel Arasse, Pierluigi De Vecchi and Jonathan K. Nelson, exh. cat., Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Milan, 2004), pp. 85–99; and Michelle O’Malley, ‘Filippino in Botticelli’s Workshop’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 38–62. 7 For the Virgin and Child with Sts Anthony, Peter, Paul and John the Baptist (formerly in ss Annunziata, Pistoia), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 19. 8 For the Magrini altarpiece, still in situ, and related documents, see ibid., pp. 229–32, 335–7, cat. 23, 619 doc. 4; and Geoffrey Nuttall, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Lucchese Patrons’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttal, Nuttal and Kwakkelstein, pp. 94–103. On pp. 97–100, Nuttall makes the plausible suggestion that a very damaged St Eustace (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara) is identifiable with a panel of that saint which, together with a lost St Julian, once formed part of the altarpiece.

211

References

9 For the Bernardi altarpiece panels (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena), central statue (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca) and related documents, see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 229, 338–40, cat. 26, 619–20 doc. 6; and Geoffrey Nuttall, ‘Lucchese Patrons’, esp. pp. 103–14. Christopher Daly (‘Reconsidering Lucchese Painting after Filippino’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 313–16) discusses the lost Annunciation lunette and its possible (though improbable) connection to a damaged but autograph Filippino fragment: Old Man (private collection). 10 For the painting, see Ana Debenedetti, Botticelli: Artist and Designer (London, 2021), pp. 153–6. 11 For the altarpieces, see ibid., pp. 111, 76–7. 12 For a perceptive discussion on the impact of Netherlandish landscapes on Filippino, see Paula Nuttall, ‘From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 186–207. 13 For the Annunciation (Pinacoteca, San Gimignano), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 225–6, 344–5, cat. 30; Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 160–61, cat. 17–18; and Joost Joustra, ‘The Virgin at the Well in Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 120–51 (with new observations about the original location and iconography). 14 Geoffrey Nuttall, ‘Lucchese Patrons’, pp. 112–13. 15 Paula Nuttall, ‘From Reiteration to Dialogue’, pp. 192–5. 16 For the Strozzi Madonna (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 227, 348–9, cat. 33; Amanda Lillie, Florentine Villas in the Fifteenth Century: An Architectural and Social History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 140–43, 312 n. 28 (for the document and villa); and Keith Christiansen’s entry on the painting in www.metmuseum.org, including discussion of enslaved servants in the Strozzi household. 17 For payment for the lost work, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 620 doc. 7.

filippino lippi

212

18 For the altarpiece and document (Galleria Sabauda, Turin), see ibid., pp. 166–9, 325–6, cat. 19; and Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 172–6, cat. 21. 19 For the painting (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 164–6, 318–19, cat. 112. 20 For quotations and discussion, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives on Botticelli: Paolo Cortesi, Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, Francesco Sansovino, and Leonardo da Vinci’, in Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary M. Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, ed. Molly Bourne and Arnold Victor Coonin (Ramsey, nj, 2016), pp. 108–10. 21 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–7), vol. iii, pp. 560–61. For the Brancacci Chapel, see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 181–223, 327–34, cat. 21. 22 Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, trans. Patrick Creagh (Cambridge, 1988), p. 16. 23 For these frescoes, see Debenedetti, Botticelli, pp. 145–50. 24 See Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives’, p. 111 n. 36. 25 On the painting (National Gallery, London, inv. 1124), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 169–78, 323–34, cat. 17. 26 On the drawing (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. n. 210 E), see ibid., p. 324, cat. 17.d.1; and Jonathan K. Nelson in Sandro Botticelli: Pittore della Divina Commedia, ed. Sebastiano Gentile, exh. cat., Scuderie Papali al Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2000), vol. i, pp. 198–9, cat. 5.20. 27 See Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge, ‘Appendix: A Note on the Identification of the Saints in the Background of the London Adoration of the Magi’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 362–5; and Paul Hills, ‘Visible Rays in Filippino’s London Adoration of the Magi’, ibid., pp. 64–82. 28 For the Corsini tondo (Florence, Fondazione cr, formerly Florence, Corsini collection), see Zambrano in Zambrano and

213

29

30

31

32 33 34

35

36

References

Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 251, 276–8, 341–2, cat. 28; and Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 164–6, cat. 19. For Filippino’s probable contribution to Fra Diamante’s Adoration of the Magi (Museo Civico, Prato), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 91–6, 305–6, cat. 2b. For the Story of Esther (Musée Condé, Chantilly; Museo Horne, Florence; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Galleria Pallavicini, Rome), see the differing analyses in Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 141–55, 313–17, cat. 10; Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”? How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop’, in Sandro Botticelli and Herbert Horne: New Research, ed. Rab Hatfield (Florence, 2009), pp. 137–50; and Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Le rivoluzionarie composizioni di Botticelli e Filippino Lippi per i dipinti da cassone e da spalliera’, in Virtù d’amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, ed. Claudio Paolini, Daniela Parenti and Ludovica Sebregondi, exh. cat, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (2010), pp. 139–48, 204–8, cat. 16. Nerida Newbigin, ed. and trans., ‘The Play of Queen Esther: Translation of La rappresentazione della Reina Ester’, https://italianrenaissance-theatre.sydney.edu.au, accessed 19 December 2020. For this cycle, in various collections, see Debenedetti, Botticelli, pp. 78–90. For a recent exception, see ibid., pp. 78–90. For the Story of Lucretia (Galleria Palatina, Florence) and Story of Virginia (Musée du Louvre, Paris), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 155–63, 320–22, cat. 15; Nelson, ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”’, pp. 143–7; and Nelson, ‘Rivoluzionarie composizioni’, pp. 146, 198–200, cat. 14. For Botticelli’s Stories of Lucretia and Story of Virginia, see Nelson in Paolini, Parenti and Sebregondi, Virtù d’amore, pp. 194–200, cat. 13; and Debenedetti, Botticelli, pp. 74–5. M[ary] C[ostelloe], ‘Review of Hermann Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli’, The Studio, iii/17 (1894), p. 32. For the context of this review, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘An Unpublished Essay by Mary Berenson, “Botticelli and His Critics” (1894–95)’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in

filippino lippi

37 38

39

40 41

214

the Long Nineteenth Century, xxviii (2019), http://doi.org/10.16995/ ntn.837. Bernard Berenson, ‘Review of Le Gallerie Nazionali Italiane’, Revue Internationale des Archives des Bibliothèques et des Musées, i/1 (1895), p. 63. Bernard Berenson, ‘Review of F.-A. Gruyer, La peinture au Château de Chantilly: Écoles étrangères’, Revue Internationale des Archives des Bibliothèques et des Musées, i/6–7 (1896), pp. 136–7. Bernard Berenson, ‘Amico di Sandro’, Gazette des beaux-arts, xi (1899), pp. 459–71 and xxii (1899), pp. 21–36, and later published in the original English. For recent analyses of Berenson’s creation, but without mention of these earlier reviews, see Patrizia Zambrano, ed., Bernard Berenson. Amico di Sandro (Milan, 2006); and Jeremy Melius, ‘Connoisseurship, Painting, and Personhood’, Art History, xxxiv (2011) pp. 288–309. Alfred Scharf, Filippino Lippi (Vienna, 1935); Katharine B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi (Cambridge, ma, 1938). Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters [1903], 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 1938), vol. i, p. 335.

3 ‘Sweet’ and ‘Virile’ Altarpieces by Filippino and Botticelli, 1484–94 1 For the Italian text and discussion, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Botticelli’s “Virile Air”: Reconsidering the Milan Memo of 1493’, in Sandro Botticelli: Artist and Entrepreneur in Renaissance Florence, ed. Gert Jan van der Sman and Irene Mariani (Florence, 2015), pp. 166–81. 2 For the Meleager drawings (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. WA1951.162; Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 9862; British Museum, London, inv. 1946.7.13.6), see Jonathan K. Nelson in Patrizia Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), pp. 434–7; George R. Goldner in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, ed. George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997), pp. 196–201, cat. 45–7; and Nicoletta Pons in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, exh. cat., Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2011), p. 190, cat. 38; for the Poggio a Caiano fresco, see Chapter Four.

215

References

3 For the drawing (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, inv. 1932.129 recto) and related sheets, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 380, 401; Goldner in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino, pp. 282–7, cat. 86–8; and discussion in Chapter Six. 4 For the letter of 1 May 1499, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 625 doc. 21. 5 For the letter of 14 May 1504, with reference to the ‘dolcezza et suavità de aiere’, see Edoardo Villata, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: I documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee (Milan, 1999), p. 170 doc. 191. 6 For the letter of 23 September 1502, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 625 doc. 22. 7 For the altarpiece (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence) and related works, see Zambrano ibid., pp. 270–80, 351–3, cat. 35. The painted date of 1485 reflects the Florentine calendar, where the first day of the year was 25 March. 8 Carl Frey, ed., Il Codice Magliabechiano, cl. xvii. 17, contenente Notizie sopra l’arte degli antichi e quella de’ Fiorentini da Cimabue a Michelangelo Buonarroti, scritte da Anonimo Fiorentino (Berlin, 1892), p. 116. 9 On these works and connections, see Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo: Una carriera di pittore (Milan, 2003), pp. 78–9. 10 Joost Keizer, ‘Style and Authorship in Early Italian Renaissance Art’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, lxxviii (2015), p. 378. 11 Paola Barocchi, ed., Scritti d’Arte del Cinquecento (Milan and Naples, 1971), vol. i, p. 746. 12 Cited from commentary on Purgatorio (1.13) by Cristoforo Landino (Florence, 1481), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, https://dante.dartmouth.edu. 13 For the Strozzi Madonna (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), see discussion in Chapter Two; for the motif, see Paula Nuttall, ‘From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), p. 200. 14 See discussion of this passage in Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1988), p. 131.

filippino lippi

216

15 Quoted in R. E. Taylor, No Royal Road: Luca Pacioli and His Times (Chapel Hill, nc, 1981), p. 191. 16 Cited from the introduction to the Commedia by Cristoforo Landino (Florence, 1481), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, https://dante.dartmouth.edu. 17 Patricia Lee Rubin, ‘Filippino Lippi “pittore di vaghissima invenzione”: Christian Poetry and the Significance of Style in Late Fifteenth-Century Altarpiece Design’, in Programme et invention dans l’art de la Renaissance, ed. Michel Hochmann (Paris, 2008), p. 234. 18 Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou tresor par Mestre Brunetto Latin de Florence, ed. Francis J. Carmody (Geneva, 1975), pp. 70–71 (i.lxix); Il Tesoro di Brunetto Latini volgarizzato da Bono Giamboni (Venice, 1839), pp. 98–9 (ii.xxvii). 19 For the altarpiece (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), see Ana Debenedetti, Botticelli: Artist and Designer (London, 2021), pp. 117, 162. 20 Nelson, ‘Virile Air’, p. 176. 21 Francesco Bausi, ‘L’epistola di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a Lorenzo de’ Medici: Testo, traduzione e commento’, Interpres, xvii (1998), pp. 7–57, which contrasts ‘masculus et torosus’ with ‘tener et mollis’. 22 Pietro Bembo, Le Prose della volgar lingua [1525], in Prose e rime, ed. Carlo Dionisotti (Turin, 1960), p. 146 (Book ii, chap. ix), on ‘gravità’ and ‘piacevolezza’. 23 For Perugino’s altarpiece (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), from the Nasi Chapel in Santo Spirito, in comparison with Filippino’s, see Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park, pa, 2004), pp. 142–3, 149–50. 24 For the altarpiece (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), see Debenedetti, Botticelli, p. 128. 25 For the altarpiece (National Gallery, London), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 239–42, 349–50, cat. 34. 26 For the altarpiece (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), see Debenedetti, Botticelli, pp. 111–17. 27 On this altarpiece, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 453–9, 579–82, cat. 39E. 28 For the altarpiece (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), see Alessandro Cecchi, Botticelli (Milan, 2005), pp. 254–8.

217

References

29 For the recently rediscovered letter, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 623 doc. 16 (as lost); and Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, p. 226 doc. 7 (with correct location). 30 For Raphael’s drawing (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 503 verso), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 529, 574 n. 50. 31 For the Nerli altarpiece and related sources, see ibid., pp. 459–68, 590–91, cat. 45; Daniele Rapino, ed., La Pala Nerli di Filippino Lippi in Santo Spirito. Studi e restauro (Florence, 2013); and the sensitive analysis in Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, ct, and London, 2007), pp. 218–25, 356–8. 32 For the drawing (Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 1169 E), see Alessandro Cecchi in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino Lippi, p. 247, cat. 70, and Nelson in Nelson and Zambrano, Filippino Lippi, pp. 460, 590–91, cat. n. 45.d.2 33 See Rocky Ruggiero, Brunelleschi’s Basilica: The Building of Santo Spirito in Florence (Rome, 2020), pp. 109, 153 n. 95. The masses are discussed by Daniele Rapino, ‘La Pala Nerli: Una proposta di lettura’, in La Pala Nerli, ed. Rapino, pp. 18, 41 n. 54, who argues that Filippino had completed the panel before 1490. 34 Giovanni Romano, Il Maestro della Pala Sforzesca (Florence, 1978). 35 For the tondo (Cleveland Museum of Art) and related drawings, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 388, 499, 588–9, cat. 42. 36 Laura Traversi, ‘Il tema dei “due fanciulli che si baciano e abbracciano” tra “leonardismo italiano” e “leonardismo fiammingo”’, Raccolta Vinciana, xxvii (1997), pp. 373–427. 37 For a counterargument, with careful observations of the Nerli altarpiece but an unconvincing iconographic analysis, see Antonia Fondaras, Augustinian Art and Meditation in Renaissance Florence: The Choir Altarpieces of Santo Spirito, 1480–1510 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 215–68. 38 Anna Pelagotti, ‘Risultati delle indagini scientifiche’, in La Pala Nerli, ed. Rapino, pp. 69–74.

filippino lippi

218

4 Ancient Rome and a New Style: The Carafa Chapel, 1488–93 1 For the fresco cycle and related drawings, see Nelson in Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), pp. 513–55, 579–84, cat. 39; and Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘La Cappella Carafa: Un nuovo linguaggio figurativo per la Roma del Rinascimento’, in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, exh. cat., Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2011), pp. 41–50. 2 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–7), vol. iii, p. 560. 3 The Hellespontine Sybil was damaged then completely repainted in the seventeenth century. A drawing by Filippino (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, Pl. 633) often thought to indicate her original appearance is probably a preliminary study of the Cumaean Sybil; see Nelson in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, ed. Cecchi, p. 172, cat. 32. 4 For the Annunciation, see discussion in Chapter Three. The frescoed altarpiece is recessed about 10 centimetres from the rest of the wall. When Rossano Pizzinelli restored the chapel (1489–93), he suggested to me that after Filippino painted the altarpiece, the artist discovered problems with excessive humidity. Thus, he had a narrow chamber constructed between the exterior masonry and the rest of the surface, then frescoed the Assumption. 5 Vasari, Le vite, p. 564. For the lost frescoes, see Gail L. Geiger, Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel: Renaissance Art in Rome (Kirksville, mo, 1986), pp. 114–19. 6 For the drawings (Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 167 Orn recto and verso), see Michele Grasso, ‘Ipotesi per un disegno di Filippino Lippi per la Cappella Carafa’, Figure (University of Bologna), i (2013), pp. 121–9; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 546, 583–4, cat. 39.d.26. 7 On the frescoes, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 546–7, 579–84, cat. 39J–39L; and Geiger, Carafa Chapel, pp. 121–30.

219

References

8 Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, p. 226 doc. 7. 9 For the pavement and balustrade see Silvia Catitti, ‘L’architettura della Cappella Carafa in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Roma’, Annali di architettura, xvi (2004), pp. 25–43. For the attribution of the altar frame to Andrea Ferrucci, see Paolo Parmiggiani, ‘Sulla giovinezza di Andrea di Pietro Ferrucci: Jacopo d’Andrea del Mazza e il monumento di Marco Albertoni in Santa Maria del Popolo a Roma’, Prospettiva, 141–2 (2011), p. 85 n. 21. 10 The arch and two putti are attributed to a Florentine sculptor, perhaps Michele Marini da Fiesole, and dated circa 1487 in an entry by Francesco Caglioti in Le storie di Botticelli: Tra Boston e Bergamo, ed. M. Cristina Rodeschini and Patrizia Zambrano, exh. cat., Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (Milan, 2018), p. 83. 11 Vasari, Le vite, p. 565. 12 Aby Warburg, ‘Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara’ [1912], in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contribution to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. David Britt (Los Angeles, CA, 1999), p. 563. 13 Erwin Panofsky, ‘Rinascimento dell’antichità: The Fifteenth Century’, in Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (London, 1960), p. 201, without reference to Filippino. 14 For a translation of the passage at the end of the Antiquarie prospectiche romane, see Creighton E. Gilbert, Italian Art, 1400–1500: Sources and Documents, 2nd edn (Evanston, il, 1992), pp. 101–3. 15 See Nicole Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance (London and Leiden, 1969), p. 140. 16 For the drawing (Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 1255 E verso), see Carmen C. Bambach in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, ed. George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997), pp. 234–7, cat. 65; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 444–5, 565 n. 190, 586, cat. 40.d.6. 17 For the drawing (Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 169 F) and related fresco at the Medici villa in Poggio a Caiano, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 423–37, 589–90, cat. 44.

filippino lippi

220

18 Fritz Saxl, ‘“Rinascimento dell’antichità”: Studien zu den Arbeiten A. Warburgs’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, xliii (1922), p. 226. 19 A few scholars argue that Filippino painted the Nerli altarpiece and St Jerome before he went to Rome; for a later dating, see Chapters Three and Six, respectively. 20 Marcello Del Piazzo, ed., Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico per gli anni 1473–74, 1477–92 (Florence, 1956), p. 394. 21 Ibid., p. 438. 22 For the tomb, see Chapter One; for the memo, see Chapter Three. 23 For the Vasari quote and discussion, see Michel Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. and trans. Nicole Carew-Reid (Toronto, 2008), pp. 22–5. 24 On the drawing (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. wa 1995.213), inscribed ‘istorie di Venere di marmo e dipinte’, see Goldner in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino Lippi, p. 218, cat. 56; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 374, 557 n. 6. 25 See Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 377, 557 nn. 16–17; and Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, pp. 24–5. 26 The competition drawings, now lost, were evaluated on 5 January 1491 by a committee that included Lorenzo de’ Medici and Filippo Strozzi; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 376, 557 n. 13. 27 See discussion in Chapter Five, and Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, pp. 41–53. 28 Vasari, Le vite, p. 568. 29 For the document and discussion, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 35, 67 n. 117, 531, 622 doc. 14. 30 For the letter of 7 May 1490 and discussion, see ibid., pp. 531, 575 n. 82. 31 For the patron, see Diana Norman, ‘In Imitation of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Art, Patronage and Liturgy within a Renaissance Chapel’, Renaissance Studies, vii (1993), pp. 1–27; and Geiger, Carafa Chapel, pp. 30–44. 32 Johannes Grave suggests instead that a passing reference to the Assumption by Aquinas might have led Carafa to select this scene. Grave, ‘Annunciation and Assumption: Notes on a Particular

221

References

Constellation in the Carafa Chapel’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 218–19. 33 On the cloud putto see Christian K. Kleinbub, Vision and the Visionary in Raphael (University Park, pa, 2011), p. 29. 34 Grave, ‘Annunciation’, pp. 220–24; David Ganz, ‘Bild und Buch als Pforten des Auges: Exklusive Sichtbarkeit in Filippino Lippis Cappella Carafa’, in Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren: Bildtheorie und Bildpraxis in der Vormoderne, ed. David Ganz and Thomas Lentes (Berlin, 2004), pp. 261–90. 35 Fumika Araki, Le cappelle Bufalini e Carafa. Dall’odio dottrinale e culturale tra domenicani e francescani alle rivalità artistiche (Rome, 2019). 36 John W. O’Malley, ‘The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A Neglected Document and Its Import’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, xxxv (1981), pp. 1–27. 37 For the drawing (British Museum, London, inv. 1860.6.16.75), see Goldner in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino Lippi, p. 216, cat. 55, and all studies of the chapel. 38 See discussion in Adriano Oliva, ‘Theologa depicta. La rappresentazione e l’esaltazione della teologia di san Tommaso in una lunette della cappella Carafe alla Minerva: Nuove proposte interpretative sulla base di alcune fonti letterarie’, Memorie domenicane, xlii (2011), pp. 223–42. 39 A painting of the Crucifixion that allegedly spoke to Thomas has been in the Carafa Chapel in Naples since at least 1560, but there is no evidence that it was there in the late Quattrocento. 40 On debates about these heretics in the late fifteenth century, see Lorenzo Mainini, ‘Eresia e cultura umanistica, idee per una rilettura degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, Storia dell’arte, cxxxi (2012), pp. 9–26. 41 For unconvincing identifications of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Ficino and Poliziano, see ibid.; for earlier proposals, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 580. 42 John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, nc, 1979), esp. pp. 36–76.

filippino lippi

222

43 Geiger, Carafa Chapel, pp. 105–6. 44 The heretic appears in a rarely considered workshop drawing (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. KdZ 4552). Given the differences from the fresco in the positions of the Liberal Arts and the heretics, this sheet probably copies a lost drawing, made by Filippino subsequent to the London sheet; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 583, cat. 39.d.19. 45 For the drawings related to the Assumption, including copies after lost originals, see ibid., pp. 582–3, cat. 39.d.6–39.d.14. 46 Vasari, Le vite, p. 563. The quotation does not appear in the chapel but is included in an engraving attributed to Robetta, clearly indebted to Filippino’s composition, and probably based on a lost drawing; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 583, cat. 39.d.25. 47 Norman, ‘In Imitation’, p. 10. 48 Ibid., pp. 20–21. 49 O’Malley, Praise and Blame, pp. 64–5. 50 For discussion of this passage, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives on Botticelli: Paolo Cortesi, Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, Francesco Sansovino, and Leonardo da Vinci’, in Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary M. Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, ed. Molly Bourne and Arnold Victor Coonin (Ramsey, nj, 2016), pp. 106–7. 51 Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, ct, and London, 2007), p. 178. 52 Gilbert, Italian Art, p. 153; Nelson, ‘Renaissance Perspectives’, p. 107.

5 ‘Appearances are often deceiving’ in the Strozzi Chapel, 1487–1502 1 For the fresco cycle and related drawings, see Jonathan K. Nelson in Patrizia Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), pp. 513–55, 584–8, cat. 40; Andrea De Marchi, ‘“. . . ella fa maravigliare chiunche la vede per la novità e varietà delle bizzarrie che vi sono”: Filippino Lippi e Benedetto da Maiano nella cappella Strozzi’, in Santa Maria Novella: La basilica e il convento, vol. II: Dalle Trinità di Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, ed. Andrea De Marchi

223

2

3 4 5

6

7

8

9

10 11

References

(Florence, 2016), pp. 207–38; and Alessandra Popple and Cristiana Conti, ‘Gli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi a Santa Maria Novella a Firenze: Il restauro e la tecnica’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 260–75. For ‘L’apparenza spesso inganna’, in Francesco Serdonati’s sixteenth-century collection of proverbs, see www.proverbiitaliani.org, accessed 19 December 2020. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra i Salmi, ed. Vincenzo Romano (Rome, 1969), vol. i, p. 189. David Friedman, ‘The Burial Chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in Florence’, L’Arte, ix (1970), pp. 122–6. For the term, see Lorenzo Pericolo, ‘What Is Metapainting? The Self-Aware Image Twenty Years Later’, in Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Metapainting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen, 2nd edn (London, 2015), pp. 1–31. For the painting (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 409, 456, 483, 592, cat. 49. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–97), vol. iii, p. 565. Claire Farago, Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone: A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Leiden, 1992), p. 281. For this instability, see Johannes Grave, ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur: Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in Das Auge der Architektur: Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, ed. Andreas Beyer, Matteo Burioni and Johannes Grave (Munich, 2011), pp. 221–49; and Alison Wright, ‘The Temporary and the Temporal: Suspense in the Strozzi Chapel’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein, pp. 228–58, although we come to different conclusions about the iconography. For this phrase, see discussion in Chapter One. Amanda Lillie and Mauro Mussolin, ‘The Wooden Models of Palazzo Strozzi as Flexible Instruments in the Design Process’,

filippino lippi

12

13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20

21

22

224

in Giuliano da Sangallo, ed. Amadeo Belluzzi, Caroline Elam and Francesco Paolo Fiore (Milan, 2017), pp. 210–28. For chapel norms, and the possibility that an older Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella served as a prototype for Filippo Strozzi, see Takuma Ito, ‘A Private Chapel as Burial Space: Filippo Strozzi with Filippino Lippi and Benedetto da Maiano in Santa Maria Novella, Florence’, Bulletin of Death and Life Studies, vii (2011), pp. 215–42. For the will, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 622 doc. 12. The tomb probably dates from 1491 to 1492; for discussion and an earlier dating, based in part on a misreading of the term pilastri in Filippino’s contract, see Doris Carl, Benedetto da Maiano: A Florentine Sculptor at the Threshold of the High Renaissance (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 314–24. John Russell Sale, ‘The Strozzi Chapel by Filippino Lippi in Santa Maria Novella’, PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976, p. 304. Friedman, ‘Burial Chapel’, pp. 109–12. See discussion in Chapter Four. Friedman, ‘Burial Chapel’, pp. 123, 130 n. 34 (translation revised). The installation of the pavement, in 1497, must have followed that of the tomb and altar. For documents and a different interpretation, see Carl, Benedetto da Maiano, p. 319. Though Savonarola probably refers to the placement of Filippo Strozzi’s tomb, he might allude to Cosimo de’ Medici’s tomb in San Lorenzo. ‘ni hanc despexeris vives’. My transcriptions, translations and (in most cases) interpretations of the chapel inscriptions follow those in Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’. Ibid., p. 318, with discussion of a different interpretation by Emanuel Winternitz in ‘Muses and Music in a Burial Chapel: An Interpretation of Filippino Lippi’s Window Wall in the Cappella Strozzi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, xi (1965), p. 266; see also Wright, ‘The Temporary and the Temporal’, p. 237. ‘si scires’; ‘donum dei’; Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’, p. 322. This inscription reappears in Filippino’s Venice triptych, discussed below and in Chapter Six.

225

References

23 ‘sacris svperis/ initiati canvnt’; ibid., p. 322. 24 ‘d.m qvondam nvnc d.o.m. canimvs’ (based on a drawn copy of the fresco); ibid., p. 322. 25 For the preliminary drawing (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. 2367.327-1881), with Filippino’s prayer to Job written on the verso, see Carmen C. Bambach in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, ed. George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997), pp. 308–11, cat. 96; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 48, 443, 552, 586, cat. 40.d.8. 26 Eve Borsook, ‘Decor in Florence for the Entry of Charles viii of France’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, x (1961), pp. 111 n. 32, 113. 27 For the painting (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), perhaps made for the marriage in 1500 between Giovanni Vespucci, a patron of Filippino, and Namicina di Benedetto Nerli, see Jonathan K. Nelson in Virtù d’amore: Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, ed. Claudio Paolini, Daniela Parenti and Ludovica Sebregondi, exh. cat., Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (2010), p. 226, cat. 21. 28 For the engraving, and the identity of Robetta as the sculptor and goldsmith ‘Cristoforus olim Ieronimi del Ruchetta, vocato el Robetta’, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 558 n. 35, 587, cat. 40.d.11; for the painting (Minneapolis Institute of Art), see ibid., p. 588, cat. 40.1. 29 For the drawing (British Museum, London, inv. 1946.7.13.1258) and related sarcophagus, see ibid., pp. 439, 586, cat. 40.d.9. 30 Winternitz, ‘Muses’, p. 275, with extensive discussion of instruments. 31 Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’, pp. 34–6, 424. 32 Filippo purchased texts for Alfonso by Ovid, Terence, Lorenzo Valla, Valerius Maximus and Virgil, among others; see ibid., p. 43. 33 M. D. Reeve, ‘The Tradition of Consolatio ad Liviam’, Revue d’histoire des textes, vi (1978), p. 82 n. 2. 34 Gennaro Toscano, ‘Pour Nardo Rapicano enlumineur: Le Missel d’Alfonso Strozzi de la Bibliothèque universitaire de Leipzig’, in Quand la peintures était dans les livres: Mélanges offerts à François Avril, ed. Maria Hofmann, Eberhard König and Caroline Zöhl (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 352–65.

filippino lippi

226

35 Friedman, ‘Burial Chapel’, p. 130 n. 39. 36 For the quote, see Vasari, Le vite, p. 568; see also Chapter Four. A Filippino drawing (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1991.190.1.d), probably from the late 1490s, shows a seated figure posed like Paris and conceivably it was made for this masque; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 448, 565 n. 202. 37 Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998), pp. 94 n. 10, 97. 38 Vasari, Le vite, p. 560. 39 For ancient paintings possibly known to Filippino, see Nicole Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance (London and Leiden, 1969). 40 Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante architetto (Bari, 1969), pp. 27–8. 41 See Antonia Gatward Cevizli, ‘Turbans in the Strozzi Chapel: Filippino Lippi and the Mamluk Embassies to Florence’, Burlington Magazine, clxii (2020), pp. 860–64; and Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Ethiopian Christians on the Margins: Symbolic Blackness in Filippino Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi and Miracle of St Philip’, Renaissance Studies, xxxv (2021), p. 874. 42 a. s./ m/ ccc/ cc/ ii; philip/ pinvs/ de lippis/ facie/ bat. 43 For this detail, and the Miracle of St Philip, see Philine Helas and Gerhard Wolf, ‘The Shadow of the Wolf: The Survival of an Ancient God in the Frescoes of the Strozzi Chapel (S. Maria Novella, Florence), or Filippino Lippi’s Reflection on Image, Idol and Art’, in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotion, and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Farnham, 2009), pp. 133–58. 44 The patron had Filippino add side panels to the painting; see discussion in Chapter Six. 45 Vasari, Le vite, p. 566. 46 For the drawing (Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 186 E), see Goldner in Goldner and Bambach, Drawings of Filippino Lippi, p. 316, cat. 99; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 527, 545, 574 n. 39, 587, cat. 40.d.12. 47 Virgil, Opera cum tribus comment, ed. Cristoforo Landino (Florence, 1488), c. 92, ‘Nam apud Herodotus orgya de sacris

227

References

Diane invenies’. In reality, Herodotus, Histories (v, 61), refers to Demeter. 48 Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’, p. 263. 49 This paragraph and the next summarize some points discussed in Nelson, ‘Ethiopian Christians’. 50 Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’, p. 238. 51 For this tradition, see Helas and Wolf, ‘Shadow of the Wolf’, pp. 146–7. 52 Sale, ‘Strozzi Chapel’, p. 535. 53 For a summary of Ficino’s views, see Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago, IL, 2011), pp. 121–3. 54 For text, discussion and translation, see Simon A. Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, 2005), p. 221. 55 For the Moses paintings and related drawings and paintings, see discussion in Chapter One, focusing on the attribution; and Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 502–11, 602–4, cat. 61, where the Golden Calf is interpreted as an attack on Pope Alexander vi. For an unpersuasive association with Muhammad, see Roberta Morosini, Dante, il Profeta e il Libro: La leggenda del toro dalla Commedia a Filippino Lippi. Tra sussurri di colomba ed echi di Bisanzio (Rome, 2018), pp. 257–305. 56 For the gloss on Exodus, in Historia Scholastica, see Otto Kurz, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Worship of the Apis’, Burlington Magazine, lxxxix (1947), p. 146. 57 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510: A Survey (New Haven, ct, 2011), p. 186; for Ficino’s suggestion that the Golden Calf reflects the knowledge of Egyptian astrologers, see Nagel, Controversy, p. 163. 58 For the painting (Alana Collection, Newark) and related works, see Mattia Vinco, Antonio Vivarini in San Zanipolo a Venezia. Iconografia e nuovi documenti (Florence, 2018), pp. 17–47. 59 Brian P. Copenhaver, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici, Marsilio Ficino, and the Domesticated Hermes’, in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence, 1994), p. 250. 60 For Filippino’s allusion to the relic, see Nagel, Controversy, p. 119. 61 Christian K. Kleinbub, ‘Bramante’s Ruined Temple and the Dialectics of the Image’, Renaissance Quarterly, lxiii (2010), p. 427.

filippino lippi

228

62 Leon Battista Alberti, Apologhi, ed. and trans. Marcello Ciccuto (Milan, 1989), p. 76. 63 On antanaclasis in the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, see Roland Barthes, ‘Arcimboldo, or Magician and Rhétoriqueur’ [1978], in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1985), p. 136. 64 Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, ‘Cubism’, in Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1968), p. 210.

6 Altarpieces for Pleasure and Persuasion, 1494–1504 1 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1966–97), vol. iv, p. 62. 2 For the memo, and references to Bembo’s categories, see discussion in Chapter Three. 3 Vasari, Le vite, vol. iii, p. 565. 4 Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Amos e Zaccaria, ed. Paolo Ghiglieri (Rome, 1971–2), vol. iii, p. 120. 5 See discussion in Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, IL, 1961), vol. i, p. 81. 6 Martin Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings (New Haven, ct, and London, 1989), p. 220. 7 For the altarpiece (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), inscribed on the back, ‘Filippus me pinsit de Lipis florentinus addi xxix di marzo mcccclxxxxvi’, and related drawings and predella panels, see Jonathan K. Nelson in Patrizia Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004), pp. 469–79, 594–6, cat. 52; and Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘L’astrologo e il suo astrolabio: L’Adorazione dei Magi di Filippino Lippi del 1496’, in Il cosmo magico di Leonardo da Vinci nell’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, ed. Eike Schmidt, Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini, exh. cat., Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (2017), pp. 74–91. 8 Alessandro Cecchi, ‘L’Adorazione dei Magi di San Donato a Scopeto e le altre commissioni non soddisfatte da Leonardo’, ibid., pp. 27–33. 9 On this detail, and on the portraits, see Nelson, ‘L’astrologo’.

229

References

10 Vasari, Le vite, p. 567. Given that Vasari worked for Duke Cosimo i de’ Medici, he pointed out the portrait of the ruler’s father, Giovanni di Pierfrancesco, known today as Giovanni delle Bande Nere. 11 Marino Sanuto, La spedizione di Carlo viii in Italia, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (Venice, 1883), p. 134. 12 For Filippino’s contribution, a ‘Triumph of Peace’, see Chapter Four. 13 The tensions between the two branches of the Augustinian canons, also reflected in Filippino’s altarpiece, will be the subject of a forthcoming study. 14 Antonio Natali, ‘Re, cavalieri e barbari. Le “Adorazioni dei Magi” di Leonardo e Filippino Lippi’, in I pittori della Brancacci agli Uffizi, ed. Luciano Berti and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (Florence, 1988), pp. 77–9. 15 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 203,3 (Patrologia Latina, 38, 1035–47); see also Sermon 202,3 (Patrologia Latina, 38, 1033–5). 16 For this figure, see discussion in Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Ethiopian Christians on the Margins: Symbolic Blackness in Filippino Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi and Miracle of St Philip’, Renaissance Studies, xxxv (2021), pp. 870–71. 17 Vasari, Le vite, vol. iii, p. 567. 18 Paul H. D. Kaplan, The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (Ann Arbor, mi, 1985), p. 23. 19 For the altarpiece (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 423, 443–4, 469, 596–7, cat. 53. 20 ‘mcccclxxxxvii/ philippinus/ de floren/ tia’. 21 For the altarpiece (San Domenico, Bologna), inscribed ‘opus philippini/ flor. pict./ a. s. mcccci’, and related drawings, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 381, 409, 604–5, cat. 62, and following note; for technical studies, see Gian Piero Cammarota, Diego Cauzzi, Pietro Moioli and Claudio Seccaroni, ‘La pala di Filippino Lippi per la Cappella Casali in San Domenico a Bologna’, Bollettino d’arte, xcvi (2011), pp. 125–38. 22 Annamaria Bernacchioni in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, exh. cat., Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2011), p. 210, cat. 47.

filippino lippi

230

23 For the altarpiece (Genoa, Palazzo Bianco), inscribed ‘a. d. mccccc/ iii philippinvs florentinvs/ faciebat’, and on the back, ‘a d/ parti di flrenze a di/ primo di febbraio/ mccccciii’, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 381, 387, 422–3, 453, 499, 522, 605–6, cat. 64; and Clario Di Fabio, Filippino Lippi a Palazzo Bianco. La Pala di Francesco Lomellini (Genoa, 2004). The inscribed date, following the Florentine calendar, corresponds to 1504 in the modern calendar. 24 For the observation on the capitals, I thank Silvia Catitti; for the pilasters, see Charles Robertson, ‘Never Being Boring: Filippino Lippi, Michelangelo, and the Concept of Chapel Decoration’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), p. 287. 25 For the panel (Washington, dc, National Gallery of Art) and related cartoon (Oberlin, oh, Allen Memorial Art Museum, inv. 54.64), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 381–2, 601–2, cat. 58; Jonathan K. Nelson in Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, ed. Daniel Arasse, Pierluigi De Vecchi and Jonathan K. Nelson, exh. cat., Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Milan, 2004), pp. 300–302, cat. 58; and Bernacchioni in Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, p. 210, cat. 47. 26 For Botticelli’s painting, see Nicoletta Pons in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 296–8, cat. 57. 27 Robertson, ‘Never Being Boring’, pp. 289–92. 28 For the altarpiece (Munich, Alte Pinakothek), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 489–93, 593–4, cat. 51. 29 For the altarpiece (Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi), see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 254, 256, 355–6, cat. 38 (as 1480s); Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 308–10, cat. 60 (as c. 1493–5); Nelson in Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, p. 194, cat. 40 (as 1493–5); and Cecchi, ‘L’Adorazione’, pp. 30–31 (as 1496). 30 Ibid. 31 Jean K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Art and Artisan (New Haven, ct, and London, 2000), pp. 273–4, cat. 42.

231

References

32 Giovacchino Limberti, Il Convento del Palco, ed. Aldo Petri (Prato, 1975), p. 40. 33 For the Crucifixion with St Francis (destroyed, formerly Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin) and side panels, Sts John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence), and related drawings and copies, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 494–502, 598–600, cat. 55; Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 278–80, cat. 51–2; and Nelson in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli, ed. Cecchi, p. 198, cat. 42. 34 Elisabetta Turelli, ed., Immagini e azione riformatrice: Le xilografie degli incunaboli savonaroliani nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (Florence, 1985). 35 Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Amos e Zaccaria, ed. Paolo Ghiglieri (Rome, 1971–2), vol. iii, pp. 263, 265. 36 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 25–6; see also vol. i, p. 149. 37 Girolamo Savonarola, Molti devotissimi trattati (Venice, 1547), fol. 81r. 38 See Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 599–600, cat. 55.1–5. For Filippino’s Christ Crucified (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato), see Jonathan K. Nelson in Da Donatello a Lippi. Officina pratese, ed. Andrea De Marchi and Cristina Gnoni Mavarelli, exh. cat., Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato (Milan, 2013), p. 228, cat. 7.3; for the Crucifixion with Virgin and St John by Filippino and workshop (Museo Horne, Florence), see Emanuele Zappasodi, ibid., p. 230, cat. 7.4. 39 Turelli, Immagini, p. 43, fig. 2. The woodcut has often been misattributed to Botticelli. 40 For the procession, see Piero Ginori Conti, ed., La vita del Beato Jeronimo Savonarola scritta da un anonimo del secolo xvi e già attribuita a Fra Pacifico Burlamacchi (Florence, 1937), p. 131. 41 For the vision and images of the crown, see Turelli, Immagini, pp. 61–8, cat. 4, esp. figs 15–16. 42 For the Pugliese triptych (Seminario patriarcale, Pinacoteca manfrediniana, Venice), see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 488–9, 600–601, cat. 57; Nelson in Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino, pp. 282–4, cat. 53; and Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity

filippino lippi

43

44

45 46 47 48

49

50

51

52

53

232

and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park, pa, 2004), pp. 177–81. Ibid., p. 159. The inventory also mentions a ‘large’ Adoration of the Magi by Filippino that has been identified, unpersuasively in my view, with his London panel; ibid., p. 163. See Gerhard Wolf in Il volto di Cristo, ed. Giovanni Morello and Gerhard Wolf, exh. cat., Palazzo delle esposizioni, Rome (Milan, 2000), pp. 191–2. Savonarola, Amos e Zaccaria, vol. ii, p. 183. For the letter of 23 September 1502, see Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, p. 625 doc. 22. For the altarpiece (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato), and related documents, see ibid., pp. 44, 381, 605, cat. 63. For the tabernacle (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato), see ibid., pp. 52, 381, 597–8, cat. 54; and Zappasodi in, Da Donatello, ed. De Marchi and Gnoni Mavarelli p. 232, cat. 7.5. ‘ut meus hic natus iustus servate frequenter/ sic vos iustitiam pauperibusque pii a. d. mcccciii’; for discussion, see Zappasodi, ibid., p. 234, cat. 7.6. For the altarpiece (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence), documents and related drawings, see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, Filippino Lippi, pp. 407, 414–15, 607–8, cat. 65; and Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘La Pala per l’altar maggiore della Santissima Annunziata: La funzione, la commissione, i dipinti e la cornice’, in Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino. La Deposizione della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro, ed. Franca Falletti and Jonathan K. Nelson (Livorno, 2004), pp. 22–43. Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘La disgrazia di Pietro: L’importanza della pala della Santissima Annunziata nella Vita del Perugino del Vasari’, in Pietro Vannucci il Perugino, ed. Laura Teza (Perugia, 2004), pp. 65–73. David Franklin, ‘La fortuna della Deposizione della Santissima Annunziata nel Cinquecento’, Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino, ed. Falletti and Nelson, pp. 66–75. Vasari, Le vite, vol. iii, p. 559.

233

References

Epilogue: Filippino Rediscovered 1 E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Leaven of Criticism in Renaissance Art’, in Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton (Baltimore, MD, 1968), p. 34. 2 Adrian S. Hoch, ‘The Art of Alessandro Botticelli through the Eyes of Victorian Aesthetes’, in Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, ed. John E. Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen (Burlington, vt, 2005), pp. 55–85. 3 Franz Kugler, Italian Schools: Based on the Handbook of Kugler, ed. and notes by Charles Eastlake, 3rd edn (London, 1855), vol. i, p. 202. 4 Jacob Burckhardt, The Cicerone; or, Art-Guide to Painting in Italy (London, 1873), p. 62; this passage originally appeared in the German edition of 1855. 5 For these two sources, but without mention of Swinburne, see Fiametta Gamba, Filippino Lippi nella storia della critica (Florence, 1958). 6 Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the Second to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1864), vol. ii, p. 437. 7 For the Swinburne quotations in this paragraph, see Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘The Critic as Artist: Swinburne on Filippino Lippi and Botticelli (1868)’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 10–36. 8 Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters [1903], 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 1938), vol. i, p. 78. 9 Luciano Berti, ‘Ricordo di Filippino’, in Berti and Umberto Baldini, Filippino Lippi, 2nd edn (Florence, 1988), pp. 38, 88. 10 Roberto Longhi, Officina Ferrarese, 2nd edn (Florence, 1956), p. 60. 11 E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Renaissance Concept of Artistic Progress and Its Consequences’, in Norm and Form (London, 1966), p. 9.

select bibliography

Araki, Fumika, Le cappelle Bufalini e Carafa. Dall’odio dottrinale e culturale tra domenicani e francescani alle rivalità artistiche (Rome, 2019) Arasse, Daniel, Pierluigi De Vecchi and Jonathan K. Nelson, eds, Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, exh. cat., Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Milan, 2004) Berenson, Bernard, ‘Amico di Sandro’, Gazette des beaux-arts, xi (1899), pp. 459–71, and xxii (1899), pp. 21–36 ––, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters [1903], 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 1938) Berti, Luciano, and Umberto Baldini, Filippino Lippi, 2nd edn (Florence, 1988) Borsook, Eve, ‘Decor in Florence for the Entry of Charles viii of France’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, x (1961), pp. 106–22 Burke, Jill, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park, pa, 2004) Cammarota, Gian Piero, Diego Cauzzi, Pietro Moioli and Claudio Seccaroni, ‘La pala di Filippino Lippi per la Cappella Casali in San Domenico a Bologna’, Bollettino d’arte, xcvi (2011), pp. 125–38 Carl, Doris, Benedetto da Maiano: A Florentine Sculptor at the Threshold of the High Renaissance (Turnhout, 2006) Catitti, Silvia, ‘L’architettura della Cappella Carafa in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Roma’, Annali di architettura, xvi (2004), pp. 25–43 Cecchi, Alessandro, ed., Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, exh. cat., Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome (Milan, 2011)

235

Select Bibliography

––, ‘Sfortuna di Raffaellino del Garbo’, in Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, ed. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 346–60 Daly, Christopher, ‘Reconsidering Lucchese Painting after Filippino’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 296–321 De Marchi, Andrea, ‘“. . . ella fa maravigliare chiunche la vede per la novità e varietà delle bizzarrie che vi sono”: Filippino Lippi e Benedetto da Maiano nella cappella Strozzi’, in Santa Maria Novella: La basilica e il convento, vol. II: Dalle Trinità di Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, ed. Andrea De Marchi (Florence, 2016), pp. 207–38 Debenedetti, Ana, Botticelli: Artist and Designer (London, 2021) Di Fabio, Clario, Filippino Lippi a Palazzo Bianco. La Pala di Francesco Lomellini (Genoa, 2004) Dunkerton, Jill, and Rachel Billinge, ‘Appendix: A Note on the Identification of the Saints in the Background of the London Adoration of the Magi’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 362–5 Falletti, Franca, and Jonathan K. Nelson, eds, Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino. La Deposizione della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro (Livorno, 2004) Fondaras, Antonia, Augustinian Art and Meditation in Renaissance Florence: The Choir Altarpieces of Santo Spirito, 1480–1510 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020) Friedman, David, ‘The Burial Chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in Florence’, L’Arte, ix (1970), pp. 109–31 Gamba, Fiametta, Filippino Lippi nella storia della critica (Florence, 1958) Ganz, David, ‘Bild und Buch als Pforten des Auges: Exklusive Sichtbarkeit in Filippino Lippis Cappella Carafa’, in Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren: Bildtheorie und Bildpraxis in der Vormoderne, ed. David Ganz and Thomas Lentes (Berlin, 2004), pp. 261–90 Gatward Cevizli, Antonia, ‘Turbans in the Strozzi Chapel: Filippino Lippi and the Mamluk Embassies to Florence’, Burlington Magazine, clxii (2020), pp. 860–64 Geiger, Gail L., Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel: Renaissance Art in Rome (Kirksville, mo, 1986)

filippino lippi

236

Gianeselli, Matteo, ‘“L’un des plus grands maîtres de l’école florentine”: Filippino Lippi and His Workshop in French Collections’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 322–44 Goldner, George R., and Carmen C. Bambach, eds, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997) Grasso, Michele, ‘Ipotesi per un disegno di Filippino Lippi per la Cappella Carafa’, Figure (University of Bologna), i (2013), pp. 121–9 Grave, Johannes, ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur: Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in Das Auge der Architektur: Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, ed. Andreas Beyer, Matteo Burioni and Johannes Grave (Munich, 2011), pp. 221–49 ––, ‘Annunciation and Assumption: Notes on a Particular Constellation in the Carafa Chapel’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 208–27 Helas, Philine, and Gerhard Wolf, ‘The Shadow of the Wolf: The Survival of an Ancient God in the Frescoes of the Strozzi Chapel (S. Maria Novella, Florence), or Filippino Lippi’s Reflection on Image, Idol and Art’, in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotion, and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Farnham, 2009), pp. 133–58 Hills, Paul, ‘Visible Rays in Filippino’s London Adoration of the Magi’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 64–82 Ito, Takuma, ‘A Private Chapel as Burial Space: Filippo Strozzi with Filippino Lippi and Benedetto da Maiano in Santa Maria Novella, Florence’, Bulletin of Death and Life Studies, vii (2011), pp. 215–42 Joustra, Joost, ‘The Virgin at the Well in Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 120–51 Kurz, Otto, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Worship of the Apis’, Burlington Magazine, lxxxix (1947), pp. 145–7 Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Wounded Centaur’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxii (1969), p. 390

237

Select Bibliography

Mainini, Lorenzo, ‘Eresia e cultura umanistica, idee per una rilettura degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, Storia dell’arte, cxxxi (2012), pp. 9–26 Melius, Jeremy, ‘Connoisseurship, Painting, and Personhood’, Art History, xxxiv (2011), pp. 288–309 Morosini, Roberta, Dante, il Profeta e il Libro: La leggenda del toro dalla Commedia a Filippino Lippi. Tra sussurri di colomba ed echi di Bisanzio (Rome, 2018) Nagel, Alexander, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago, IL, 2011) Natali, Antonio, ‘Re, cavalieri e barbari. Le “Adorazioni dei Magi” di Leonardo e Filippino Lippi’, in I pittori della Brancacci agli Uffizi, ed. Luciano Berti and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (Florence, 1988), pp. 73–84 Neilson, Katharine B., Filippino Lippi (Cambridge, ma, 1938) Nelson, Jonathan K., ‘Filippino Lippi as Student, Collaborator, and Competitor of Botticelli’, in Botticelli and Filippino, ed. Arasse, De Vecchi and Nelson (Milan, 2004), pp. 85–99 ––, ‘La Pala per l’altar maggiore della Santissima Annunziata: La funzione, la commissione, i dipinti e la cornice’, in Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino, ed. Falletti and Nelson (Livorno, 2004), pp. 22–43 ––, ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”? How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop’, in Sandro Botticelli and Herbert Horne: New Research, ed. Rab Hatfield (Florence, 2009), pp. 137–50 ––, ‘Le rivoluzionarie composizioni di Botticelli e Filippino Lippi per i dipinti da cassone e da spalliera’, in Virtù d’amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, ed. Claudio Paolini, Daniela Parenti and Ludovica Sebregondi, exh. cat., Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (2010), pp. 139–48 ––, ‘La Cappella Carafa: Un nuovo linguaggio figurativo per la Roma del Rinascimento’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Cecchi (Milan, 2011), pp. 41–50 ––, ‘Botticelli’s “Virile Air”: Reconsidering the Milan Memo of 1493’, in Sandro Botticelli: Artist and Entrepreneur in Renaissance Florence, ed. Gert Jan van der Sman and Irene Mariani (Florence, 2015), pp. 166–81 ––, ‘L’astrologo e il suo astrolabio: L’Adorazione dei Magi di Filippino Lippi del 1496’, in Il cosmo magico di Leonardo da Vinci nell’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, ed. Eike Schmidt, Marco Ciatti and Cecilia

filippino lippi

238

Frosinini, exh. cat., Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (2017), pp. 74–91 ––, ‘The Critic as Artist: Swinburne on Filippino Lippi and Botticelli (1868)’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 10–36 ––, ‘Ethiopian Christians on the Margins: Symbolic Blackness in Filippino Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi and Miracle of St Philip’, Renaissance Studies, xxxv (2021), pp. 857–87 ––, and Louis A. Waldman, ‘La questione dei dipinti postumi di Filippino Lippi: Fra Girolamo da Brescia, il Maestro di Memphis e la pala d’altar a Fabbrica di Peccioli’, in Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino, ed. Falletti and Nelson (Livorno, 2004), pp. 120–47 Norman, Diana, ‘In Imitation of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Art, Patronage and Liturgy within a Renaissance Chapel’, Renaissance Studies, vii (1993), pp. 1–27 Nuttall, Geoffrey, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Lucchese Patrons’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 84–118 Nuttall, Paula, ‘From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 186–207 ––, Geoffrey Nuttall and Michael W. Kwakkelstein, eds, Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020) Oliva, Adriano, ‘Theologa depicta. La rappresentazione e l’esaltazione della teologia di san Tommaso in una lunette della cappella Carafe alla Minerva: Nuove proposte interpretative sulla base di alcune fonti letterarie’, Memorie domenicane, xlii (2011), pp. 223–42 O’Malley, Michelle, ‘Filippino in Botticelli’s Workshop’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 38–62 Parlato, Enrico, ‘Filippino Lippi’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 2005), vol. lxv, pp. 189–98 Pelagotti, Anna, ‘Risultati delle indagini scientifiche’, in La Pala Nerli, ed. Rapino (Florence, 2013), pp. 69–74 Popple, Alessandra, and Cristiana Conti, ‘Gli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi a Santa Maria Novella a Firenze:

239

Select Bibliography

Il restauro e la tecnica’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 260–75 Rapino, Daniele, ed., La Pala Nerli di Filippino Lippi in Santo Spirito. Studi e restauro (Florence, 2013) ––, ‘La Pala Nerli: Una proposta di lettura’, in La Pala Nerli, ed. Rapino (Florence, 2013), pp. 11–44 Robertson, Charles, ‘Never Being Boring: Filippino Lippi, Michelangelo, and the Concept of Chapel Decoration’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 276–95 Rubin, Patricia Lee, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, ct, and London, 2007) ––, ‘Filippino Lippi “pittore di vaghissima invenzione”: Christian Poetry and the Significance of Style in Late Fifteenth-Century Altarpiece Design’, in Programme et invention dans l’art de la Renaissance, ed. Michel Hochmann (Paris, 2008), pp. 227–46 Sale, John Russell, ‘The Strozzi Chapel by Filippino Lippi in Santa Maria Novella’, PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976 Salvatore, Tommaso, ‘Un manoscritto dantesco “nascosto” in un dipinto di Filippino Lippi’, Medioevo e Rinascimento, xxix (2015), pp. 43–60 Scharf, Alfred, Filippino Lippi (Vienna, 1935) Wilson, Blake, Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy: Memory, Performance, and Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 2019) Winternitz, Emanuel, ‘Muses and Music in a Burial Chapel: An Interpretation of Filippino Lippi’s Window Wall in the Cappella Strozzi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, xi (1965), pp. 263–86 Wright, Alison, ‘The Temporary and the Temporal: Suspense in the Strozzi Chapel’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 228–58 Zambrano, Patrizia, ‘“. . . Di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola”: Filippino Lippi pittore di ritratti’, in Filippino Lippi, ed. Nuttall, Nuttall and Kwakkelstein (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020), pp. 152–84 ––, ed., Bernard Berenson. Amico di Sandro (Milan, 2006) ––, and Jonathan K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi (Milan, 2004)

acknowledgements

Most of this volume was written during lockdown in the summer of 2020, drawing on research begun more than thirty years earlier. In 1987 I submitted a proposal to New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts for a PhD dissertation about ‘The Later Works of Filippino Lippi: From His Roman Sojourn Until His Death’, completed in 1992. Although I cannot possibly thank all those who have helped and supported me over the last three decades, it is a pleasure to express my gratitude to the many scholars who read one or more draft chapters of the volume and provided valuable suggestions: Ben Allsopp, Ana Debenedetti, Diletta Gamberini, Christian Kleinbub, Mauro Mussolin, Sean Nelson, Lino Pertile, Pat Simons and Tommaso Salvatore. A very special thanks to those who read the entire manuscript and helped to shape it in countless ways: Silvia Catitti, Chris Daly, Patricia Rubin, Edoardo Villata and Patrizia Zambrano. I would also like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Caitlin Petty, Bennett Harrison and the other graduate students in my ‘Botticelli and Filippino in the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ classes held at Syracuse University Florence in 2019 and 2021.

photo acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the below sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it. Some locations of artworks are also given below, in the interest of brevity: akg-images: 63 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich); © Antonio Quattrone 2022: 14, 26 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), 32, 34 (Santo Spirito, Florence), 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), 55, 60 (Basilica di San Domenico, Bologna), 64 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), 66 (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence), 69; © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: 44; Badia Fiorentina, Florence: 1; Francesco Bini/Sailko (cc by 3.0): 9; The British Museum, London: 41; Cassa di Risparmio, Florence: 16; Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, photo Bridgeman Images: 10; Cleveland Museum of Art, oh: 35; Denver Art Museum, co: 5; Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence: 70; Galleria Palatina, Florence: 24; Galleria Sabauda, Turin: 13; Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence: 28, 29, 33, 58; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: 31; Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, ma (bequest of Charles A. Loeser, 1932.129), photo © 2022 President and Fellows of Harvard College: 35; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 27, 71; Minneapolis Institute of Art, mn: 49; Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/ Sergio Anelli/Bridgeman Images: 42, 43 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence); Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images: 3, 4, 7, 8 (Antonio Quattrone/ Archivio Quattrone), 36; Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa: 17, 21; Musée Condé, Chantilly: 19; Musée du Louvre, Paris: 22, 23; Museo Horne, Florence: 18; National Gallery, London: 15, 30, 56, 57; National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc: 62; © National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (cc by 4.0): 6; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, ca,

filippino lippi

242

photos © The Norton Simon Foundation: 11; Palazzo Bianco, Genoa: 61; Palazzo Comunale, Prato: 68; Palazzo Comunale, Musei Civici di San Gimignano, Siena: 2; Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Rome: 20; San Michele in Foro, Lucca, photo reproduced with permission of Archivio fotografico Diocesano di Lucca: 12; Seminario Patriarcale, Venice, photo Cameraphoto Arte Venezia/Bridgeman Images: 67; Statens Museum for Kunst (smk), Copenhagen: 59; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library Photo Archive, Williamstown, ma: 65.

index

Illustration numbers are indicated by italics Alberti, Leon Battista 52, 75, 110, 136–7, 159, 164 Alemanno, Yohanan 157 Alighieri, Dante 16, 22–3, 31–4, 37, 72, 79, 148, 155–6 Amico di Sandro 65 Anonimo Magliabechiano 7, 71, 91 Aquinas, St Thomas 116–20, 124, 127, 155 Aristotle 80 Augurello, Giovanni Aurelio 37 Augustine, St 155, 168–9 Barbieri, Filippo 16–17 Barocchi, Ambrogio 28 Bellini, Giovanni 13 Bembo, Pietro 13, 81, 162–3 Benedetto da Maiano 41, 135–8 Berenson, Bernard 64–6, 197 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 30–33 Bernardo di Leonardo see Master of Memphis Berti, Luciano 197 Biagio d’Antonio 20 Billi, Antonio 91 Boccaccio, Giovanni 16, 32, 37, 63, 72, 154–5 Bonaiuto, Andrea di 117, 127

Botticelli, Sandro 11, 20, 33–4, 37, 40–66, 68–96, 106, 189, 195–6 Adoration of the Magi (Del Lama) 41, 51, 167, 169 Adoration of the Magi (Pucci) 51, 60, 76 Annunciation (Guardi) 86–91, 33 Annunciation (Scala) 52, 60 Calumny of Apelles 27 Coronation of the Virgin 82, 29 Divine Comedy (drawings) 22 Pietà 176 Primavera 41, 44, 51 Punishment of Korah 50 Story of Esther 55–61, 65, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Story of Lucretia 62–4 Story of Mary Magdelene 50, 76 Story of Nastagio degli Onesti 62 Story of Virginia 62–4 Virgin and Child with Saints (Bardi altarpiece) 84–6, 94, 31 Virgin and Child with Saints (San Ambrogio altarpiece) 41, 50 Virgin and Child with Saints (San Barnaba altarpiece) 79, 94, 28 Youth of Moses 154

filippino lippi

Botticini, Francesco 44 Braccesi, Alessandro 21–2 Bracciolini, Poggio 16 Bramante, Donato 159–60 Brancacci, Felice 46 Brandolini, Aurelio 120–21 Brunelleschi, Filippo 12, 94, 198 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 106, 116, 176 Burckhardt, Jacob 196 Buti, Lucrezia 15 Calvino, Italo 48, 50–51 Capponi, Nanna 91, 95 Carafa, Oliviero 16–17, 89–90, 103–5, 113–14, 116–27, 198 Caroli, Giovanni 127 Cartoni, Niccolò 19 Casali, Giovanni Battista 171 Cassiodorus 77 Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista 196 Charles viii, king of France 112, 140, 166, 180–81 Ciampolini, Giovanni 111 Cianfanini, Giovanni see Master of Apollo and Daphne Cicero 81, 122 Cimabue 76–7 Constantine, Emperor 78, 148–9, 152 Cortesi, Paolo 126–7, 129, 160 Costelloe, Mary 64–5 Crowe, Joseph Archer 196 Desiderio da Settignano 186 Donatello 184 Eames, Charles 12 Epictetus 32–3

244

Erasmus, Desiderius 166 Ethiopian eunuch 152–4, 158 Ferdinand ii, king of Aragon 143 Ficino, Marsilio 130, 155, 157–9 Filarete 13, 39 Filippino, works of Adoration of the Magi (drawing) 51 Adoration of the Magi (Florence) 153, 161–70, 58 Adoration of the Magi (London) 51–2, 56, 65, 15 Adoration of the Magi (London, with Botticelli) 208n45 Adoration of the Magi (Prato) 213n29 Altarpiece for San Salvatore (lost?) 206n25 Annunciation (Carafa) 86–91, 103–4, 114–15, 32, 36, 37 Annunciation (St Petersburg) 130 Annunciation (San Gimignano) 10, 42–3, 53–4, 78, 79, 91, 2 Assumption of the Virgin 106, 114–15, 123, 176, 36, 37, 45 Brancacci Chapel 45–9, 64, 78, 103, 149, 161, 197, 199, 3, 4, 7, 8, 14 Carafa Chapel 7, 11, 36, 88, 97–127, 149, 162, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45 Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Noli Me Tangere (Pugliese triptych) 148, 187–8, 67 Christ Crucified 185 Coronation of the Virgin 206n25 Crucifixion of St Peter 13, 49, 149, 193–4, 3

245

Index

Crucifixion of St Philip 13, 145, 149, 193–4, 50 Crucifixion with Virgin and St Francis (Valori) 161, 163–4, 174, 183–7, 193, 65 Crucifixion with Virgin and St John 231n38 Cumaean Sybil (drawing) 218n3 Death of Laocoön 34, 69, 110–11, 137 Death of Laocoön (drawings) 50, 109–10, 43 Death of Meleager (drawings) 69 Decoration for Filippo Strozzi (lost) 44 Decoration in Spoleto Cathedral 39 Deposition 13, 185, 193–4, 70 Disputation with Simone Magus 15, 27, 49, 155, 4 Double Intercession (Palco altarpiece) 161, 164, 176–83, 185, 193, 63 Erato 141 Erato (drawings) 225nn25, 29 Facade of Florence Cathedral (lost) 112, 136 Hippolytus’ Departure for the Hunt and Harpy (drawing) 107–9, 42 Holy Family with Sts Margaret and John the Baptist (Cleveland) 92, 163–4, 179, 35 Judgement of Paris (drawing) 226n36 Meeting at the Golden Gate 163, 170–71, 59 Miracle of St Philip 94, 129, 145–8, 152–61, 172, 51, 55

Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix 117–18, 123–25, 127, 39 Moses Strikes the Rock 19, 157, 57 Mystic Marriage of St Catherine 137, 163–4, 171–4, 176, 60 Old Man 211n9 Patriarchs (Strozzi) 133, 139, 48 Piero del Pugliese (lost) 26–7 Piero del Pugliese with Filippino Lippi 21, 26–7, 79, 5 Pietà 174–5, 62 Pietà with Sts Anthony Abbot and Paul the Hermit (drawings) 50, 69, 175–6, 25 Portrait of a Canterino 23–4, 6 Raising of Drusiana 145, 147–52, 160, 53 Raising of Drusiana (drawing) 150–51, 54 Raising of Theophilius’ Son 27, 46, 48–50, 169, 7, 8 St Eustace 210n8 St Francis in Glory (drawing) 19 St Martin Sharing His Cloak (drawing) 91 St Peter Being Freed from Prison 48, 14 St Jerome 93, 164, 179, 64 St John the Baptist and St Mary Magdalene (Valori altarpiece) 163–4, 183–5, 66 St Sebastian between Sts John the Baptist and Francis (Lomellini altarpiece) 171–4, 61 Sts Benedict and Apollonia and Sts Paul and Frediano (Bernardi altarpiece) 41–3, 11

filippino lippi

Sts Roche, Sebastian, Jerome and Helen (Magrini altarpiece) 41–3, 77, 12 Scenes of Pagan Sacrifice (Carafa) 99, 102 Silver Candelsticks (lost) 202 Story of Esther 55–61, 65, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Story of Lucretia (Carafa) 99, 102, 110 Story of Lucretia (Florence) 62–5, 24 Story of Moses 156–7, 56–7 Story of Virginia (Carafa) 99, 102, 110 Story of Virginia (Paris) 62–5, 110, 23 Strozzi Chapel 11, 13, 18, 103, 107, 129–60, 162–3, 170, 197, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55 Sybils (Carafa) 97, 38 Tobias and the Angel 45 Tomb of Fra Filippo Lippi 27–9, 89, 104, 111, 113, 9 Torture of St John 145, 149–50, 155, 52 Three Archangels 44, 48, 13 Trial of the Young Moses (drawing) 19 Triumph of Aemilius Paullus (engraving) 111–12 Triumph of Peace (lost) 112, 140 Triumph of St Thomas 106, 111, 117–23, 126, 150, 39, 40 Triumph of St Thomas (drawings) 117–21, 123, 41 Triumph of Venus (drawing) 111, 155, 44 Triumph of Virtue over Vice (lost) 98–9

246

Veil of Veronica (Carafa) 122, 148 Veil of Veronica (Strozzi) 130, 148, 158 Virgin and Child (Strozzi) 44, 74, 27 Virgin and Child with Four Angels (Corsini) 52–3, 56, 164, 16 Virgin and Child with Sts Anthony and Margaret, Stephen and Catherine (Prato tabernacle) 33–4, 193, 69 Virgin and Child with Sts Anthony, Peter, Paul and John the Baptist (Pistoia altarpiece, lost) 40 Virgin and Child with Sts Florentius and Bartholomew 20 Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist and Stephen (Prato altarpiece) 192–3, 68 Virgin and Child with Sts John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius (Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece) 71–9, 88, 90, 120, 26 Virgin and Child with Sts John the Evangelist and Philip (Strozzi) 138–9 Virgin and Child with Sts Jerome and Dominic (Rucellai altarpiece) 14, 82–6, 30 Virgin and Child with Sts Martin of Tours, John the Baptist, Catherine of Alexandria and Two Donors (Nerli altarpiece) 91–6, 163, 179, 185, 34 Vision of St Bernard 9, 29–34, 43, 48–9, 77, 82, 90, 130, 161, 197–8, 1

247

Index

Window Wall (Strozzi) 115, 129–30, 135–45, 159–160, 176, 188, 47 Wounded Chiron 33–7, 10 Galilei, Vincenzo 141 Ghiberti, Lorenzo 198 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 46, 67–9, 75, 78, 132, 149, 180 Giuliano da Sangallo 20, 134, 137, 174 Gleizes, Albert 160 Gombrich, Ernst 198 Herodotus 151 Horace 36, 164 Inghirami, Tommaso 125–6 Isabella d’Este 13, 69–72, 189 Jarves, James Jackson 15 Kugler, Franz 196 Lancilotti, Francesco 72 Landino, Cristoforo 21–2, 37, 39, 48, 72, 74–8, 151, 156, 164 Latini, Brunetto 78 Leonardo da Vinci 11, 45, 53, 67, 69, 71–2, 84, 92, 132, 165, 167, 169, 179 Lippi family Filippo (Fra) 15, 27, 39, 44, 46, 68, 74, 197 Filippo di Filippo see Filippino Roberto 15 Livy 16–17 Longhi, Roberto 197 Lucian 36–7 Lucretius 50–51

Macrobius 152 Manetti, Antonio 12 Mantegna, Andrea 115 Masaccio 39, 46, 48–50, 52, 7 Master of Apollo and Daphne 20 Master of Memphis 19–20 Adoration of the Golden Calf 19, 156–7, 56 Deposition 20, 193–4, 71 Erato and Melpomene 141, 49 Moses Strikes the Rock 19, 157, 57 St Francis in Glory 19 Submersion of Pharaoh 20, 156–7 Master of Saint Ursula Legend 187 Matteo di Pacino 30 Maturanzio, Francesco 118 Medici family Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ 113 Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ 166–8 Lorenzo de’ (the Magnificent) 27–8, 33, 68, 71, 77–8, 81, 110–13, 167, 170 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ 166–8 Pierfrancesco de’165–8 Piero di Lorenzo de’110, 166 Memling, Hans 33, 42–3, 84 Metzinger, Jean 160 Monti, Maddalena 15 Neilson, Katharine 65 Nerli, Tanai de’ 91, 95–6 Orsini, Niccolò 119 Ovid 34, 143 Pacioli, Luca 75 Panofsky, Erwin 106

filippino lippi

Parenti, Marco 142 Parenti, Piero di Marco 143 Pater, Walter 195–6 Perugino, Pietro 46, 50, 67–72, 75, 78, 82, 162, 176, 189, 193–4 Petrarch, Francesco 16, 24, 32, 40, 72, 81 Petrus Comestor 156–7 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 33, 80–81, 130, 141, 157 Piero di Cosimo 161 Pinturicchio, Bernardino 115 Pliny the Elder 151–2 Poliziano, Angelo 28, 32–3, 37, 141 Pollaiuolo, Antonio del 44, 78 Proust, Marcel 15 Pugliese, Francesco del 29, 148, 187 Pugliese, Piero del 19, 22, 26, 29, 34, 46, 187 Quintilian 74–5, 81, 164 Raffaellino del Garbo 19–20 Scenes of Pagan Sacrifice (Carafa) 99, 102 Stories of Lucretia and Virginia (Carafa) 102, 110 Virgin and Child with Sts Florentius of Foligno and Bartholomew 20 Raphael 89–90, 106, 116 Rio, Alexis-François 15 Robetta, Cristofano 141 Rosso Fiorentino 194 Savonarola, Girolamo 127, 129–30, 137, 143–4, 153, 160, 163–4, 183–8 Saxl, Fritz 110 Scharf, Alfred 65, 196 Seneca 122

248

Sforza, Francesco 67 Sforza, Ludovico (Duke of Milan) 67, 69, 92, 175 Sixtus iv (pope) 68, 71, 126 Statius 154 Strozzi, Alfonso 133, 138, 143, 151, 153, 155, 198 Strozzi, Filippo 18, 44, 89, 103, 133–7, 141–3, 155 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 9, 196–7 Tomacelli, Marino 143 Tornabuoni, Giovanni 132, 135 Tornabuoni, Nofri 113 Torriani, Gioacchino 119 Valla, Lorenzo 118 van der Goes, Hugo 43 van Eyck, Jan 33 Valori, Francesco 183 Valori, Niccolò 183 Vasari, Giorgio 7–8, 15, 18–19, 22, 27, 29, 34, 36, 45, 61, 97, 99, 104, 110–13, 123, 131, 143–4, 149, 161, 163, 165–6, 168–70, 174, 179, 194–5, 198 Verino, Ugolino 11, 26 Verrocchio, Andrea del 44 Villani, Giovanni 155 Virgil 151 Vitruvius 9 Vivarini, Antonio 158 Warburg, Aby 105–6, 110 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 106 Workshop of Filippino 18–21 see also Master of Memphis