Filippino Lippi Beauty, Invention and Intelligence (Niki Studies in Netherlandish-Italian Art History, 13) [Illustrated] 9004416102, 9789004416109

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Filippino Lippi

Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004434615_001

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NIKI Studies in Netherlandish-Italian Art History



Series Editor Michael W. Kwakkelstein (Florence)

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/niki Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison



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Filippino Lippi, Self-portrait, detail of fig. 6.3

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Filippino Lippi

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Beauty, Invention and Intelligence Edited by

Paula Nuttall Geoffrey Nuttall Michael W. Kwakkelstein

LEIDEN | BOSTON Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Cover illustration: Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, 1483-1484, San Gimignano, Musei Civici di San Gimigniano. Pinacoteca. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence (Conference) (2017: Istituto universitario olandese di storia dell’arte), author. | Nuttall, Paula, editor. | Nuttall, Geoffrey, editor. | Kwakkelstein, Michael W., 1963- editor. Title: Filippino Lippi : beauty, invention, and intelligence / edited by Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, Michael W. Kwakkelstein. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: NIKI studies in Netherlandish-Italian art history, 2542-5382 ; volume 13 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | English and Italian. Identifiers: LCCN 2020018564 (print) | LCCN 2020018565 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004416109 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004434615 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Lippi, Filippino, -1504--Congresses. Classification: LCC ND623.L67 F54 2017 (print) | LCC ND623.L67 (ebook) | DDC 759.5--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018564

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2542-5382 isbn 978-90-04-41610-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-43461-5 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Contents

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Contents Director’s Remarks ix Acknowledgements x List of Illustrations xi Notes on Contributors xxi xxviii Introduction 2 Paula Nuttall 1

The Critic as Artist: Swinburne on Filippino Lippi and Botticelli (1868) 10 Jonathan K. Nelson

2 Filippino in Botticelli’s Workshop 38 Michelle O’Malley 3 Visible Rays in Filippino’s London Adoration of the Magi  64 Paul Hills 4 Filippino Lippi’s Lucchese Patrons 84 Geoffrey Nuttall 5 The Virgin at the Well in Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation 120 Joost Joustra 6 ‘... Di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola.’: Filippino Lippi pittore di ritratti 152 Patrizia Zambrano 7 From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting 186 Paula Nuttall 8 Annunciation and Assumption: Notes on a Particular Constellation in the Carafa Chapel 208 Johannes Grave

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9 The Temporary and the Temporal: Suspense in the Strozzi Chapel 228 Alison Wright 10 Gli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi a Santa Maria Novella a Firenze: il restauro e la tecnica 260 Alessandra Popple and Cristiana Conti 11 Never Being Boring: Filippino Lippi, Michelangelo and the Concept of Chapel Decoration 276 Charles Robertson 12 Reconsidering Lucchese Painting after Filippino 296 Christopher Daly 13 ‘L’un des plus grands maîtres de l’école Florentine’: Filippino Lippi and His Workshop in French Collections 322 Matteo Gianeselli 14 Sfortuna di Raffaellino del Garbo 346 Alessandro Cecchi

Appendix: A Note on the Identification of the Saints in the Background of the London Adoration of the Magi  362 Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge

List of Photographic Credits 366 Index 368 379

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Director’s Remarks Foreword

Director’s Remarks In the fall of 2017 Paula and Geoffrey Nuttall concluded their stay at the NIKI with a conference on the Florentine painter Filippino Lippi (1457-1504). As Scholars-in-Residence in Florence both had worked on different topics, Paula on a group of comic-grotesque drawings attributed to Verrocchio, and Geoffrey on the di Poggio, Magrini and Bernardi families of Lucca. In the introduction to this volume Paula explains why they choose the Florentine painter as the subject of a conference. The incredible efficiency and speed with which they brought together eighteen colleagues from various countries attests to the fact that interest in Filippino Lippi is very much alive, as the great turnout also demonstrated. A group of international scholars discussed this most versatile, original and dazzling of renaissance artists. The papers, here collected, offer new insights into Filippino’s artistic relationship to his father, to Botticelli and to his Lucchese patrons. The authors explore variously questions of style and vision with reference to Lippi’s portraits, his response to Netherlandish painting, his treatment of space and light, his followers and aspects of his artistic legacy, as well as presenting new technical evidence on the Strozzi Chapel. I wish to conclude these brief remarks by expressing my sincere gratitude to Paula and Geoffrey Nuttall for their dedication to editing the conference proceedings and for having provided us with the opportunity to continue the debate and enrich our knowledge and appreciation of this exceptional painter. Michael W. Kwakkelstein

Director Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements We should like to thank Michael W. Kwakkelstein and the staff and trustees of the NIKI for enabling the conference and this publication, and particularly Sabine Elders for help with obtaining photographs; Andrea De Marchi for his contribution to the conference and for the scholars’ visit to S. Maria Novella that he facilitated; our panel chairs, Francesco Caglioti, Caroline Elam, Scott Nethersole, Patricia Rubin and Gert Jan van der Sman; and Ivo Romein and Ester Lels, our editors at Brill. London, May 2020

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Illustrations Illustrations

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Illustrations 0.1

1.1 1.2 2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

2.6

2.7

2.8

Filippino Lippi, Meeting of Joachim and Anne outside the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, 1497, tempera on panel, 112.5 × 124 cm. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst 6 Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884, oil on canvas, 293.4 × 135.9 cm. London, Tate Britain 12 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Angels (The Corsini Tondo), early 1480s, tempera and oil on panel, 173 cm. (diameter). Florence, Fondazione CR 13 Filippino Lippi, Seated man with clasped hands (recto), c. 1475-1480, metalpoint, with white opaque watercolour on grey prepared paper, 18.4 × 12.7 cm., inv. no. II.72, New York, Morgan Library and Museum 41 Filippino Lippi, Standing youth with hands behind his back, and a seated youth reading (recto), c. 1475-1480, metalpoint, highlighted with white gouache on pink prepared paper, 24.5 × 21.6 cm., inv. no. 36.101.1, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 42 Filippino Lippi, Studies of nude and draped figures (verso), c. 1475, silverpoint and white heightening on slate-blue prepared paper, 56.5 × 45 cm. (overall dimensions), 20.7 × 41.5 (upper) 20.7 × 40.8 cm. (lower), inv. no. JBS 33, Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery 43 Filippino Lippi, Studies of nude and draped figures (recto), c. 1475, silverpoint and white heightening on slate-blue prepared paper, 56.5 × 45 cm. (overall dimensions), 20.7 × 41.5 (upper) 20.7 × 40.8 cm. (lower), inv. no. JBS 33, Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery 44 Anonymous artists, reproduction of double-page spread from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/ Botticelli, Pisa, 1975 45 Anonymous artist, Three standing men, two turned to right, the one at centre seen in profile to left (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 20.4 × 27 cm., inv. no. 1875,0612.2, London, British Museum 46 Anonymous artist, Two standing men, both turned to right (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 20.4 × 27 cm., inv. no. 1875,0612.2, London, British Museum 47 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 31 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, Draped figure between two male nudes (recto), c. 1490-1500, metalpoint with heightened white on purple prepared paper, 19.8 × 26.9 cm., inv. no. KdZ 5092, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen 48

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Anonymous artist, Two cloaked men and a nude man (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 19.6 × 27.8 cm., inv. no. 21044, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett 48 2.10 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 32 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of Man reading and man seated (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 19.6 × 27.8 cm., inv. no. 21044, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett 49 2.11 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 115 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of Man reading and man seated (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on purple prepared paper, 20.5 × 24.0 cm., inv. no 115 360E, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 49 2.12 Anonymous artist, A seated man and a standing man (St Sebastian?) nude and bound (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on blue-grey prepared paper, 20.7 × 28.8 cm., inv. no. Bp,1.15, London, British Museum 50 2.13 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 147 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of A seated man (verso), 1490-1500, metalpoint heightened in white on pale bluish grey prepared paper, 19.9 × 14.4 cm., inv. no. KdZ 5189, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen 51 2.14 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 138 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of A seated figure and two standing nude men, metalpoint heightened in white on greyish blue prepared paper, 21 × 27 cm., inv. no 158E, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 51 2.15 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Two Angels, tempera on panel, 79.8 × 55 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre 55 2.16 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with St John, c. 1480, tempera on poplar, 59.1 × 43.8 cm. London, National Gallery 56 3.1 Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Christ Child, c. 1459, tempera and oil on panel, 129.4 × 118.6 cm. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen 66 3.2 Filippino Lippi, A seated and standing Man, c. 1480-1490, metalpoint heightened with white gouache on grey prepared paper, 28.1 × 20.3 cm. inv. no. KK-C-39r-XBO01, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunst­samm­ lungen 67 3.3 Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi (The Lama Altarpiece), c. 1475, tempera on panel, 111 × 134 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 70 3.4 Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi, detail of fig. 3.3, central upper section 71

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Illustrations 3.5

3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

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Meliore di Jacopo, The Redeemer between the Virgin and Three Saints, 1271, detail of the Redeemer, tempera on panel, 85 × 810 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 72 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7, left margin 73 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, 1470–1480, tempera on panel, 56.5 × 85.7 cm. London, National Gallery 75 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7 with rays of star 76 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7 with St Bernard 78 Rogier van der Weyden, Adoration of the Magi (The Columba Altarpiece), central panel, c. 1455, oil on oak, 138 × 152 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek 80 Filippino Lippi, Saints Roch, Sebastian, Jerome and Helena (The Magrini Altarpiece), 1481-1482, tempera on panel, 147 × 157.5 cm. Lucca, San Michele in Foro 86 Filippino Lippi, Saints Benedict and Apollonia, tempera and oil on panel, 157.8 × 59.7 cm., Saints Paul and Donatus, tempera and oil on panel, 157.5 × 60 cm.; Benedetto da Maiano (sculptor) and Filippino Lippi (painter), Saint Anthony Abbot, polychromed wood, ht: 122 cm., 134 cm. with base (The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, side panels, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum, central figure, Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 87 Attributed to Baldassare di Biagio, The Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1460, detail of Saints Donatus (?) and Sebastian before the Porta San Donato, tempera on panel, 237 × 235 cm. Lucca, San Paolino e San Donato 89 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Virgin and Child with Saints Clement, Peter, Sebastian and Paul, 1478-1479, tempera on panel, 170 × 160 cm. Lucca, Cathedral of San Martino 92 Filippino Lippi, Niche with Saint Martin of Tours Dividing his Cloak and Two Centaurs holding the coat of arms of Tanai de’ Nerli, c. 1490, pen and brown ink and brown wash over traces of black chalk, 38.3 × 7.6 cm, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 98 Filippino Lippi, Saint Eustace (right pilaster panel of The Magrini Altarpiece), 1481-1482, tempera on panel, 100 × 30 cm. Ferrara, Pinacoteca Nazionale 98 Detail of fig. 4.6, showing the trace of niche with egg and dart detail at the base 99 Hans Memling, Saint John the Baptist (left wing of the Pagagnotti Triptych), c. 1478-1480, oil on oak, 57.5 × 17.3 cm. London, National Gallery 101 Filippino Lippi, Saints Benedict and Apollonia (left panel of The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, tempera and oil on panel, 157.8 × 59.7cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum 110

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4.10

Filippino Lippi, Saints Paul and Donatus (right panel of The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, tempera and oil on panel, 157.5 × 60 cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum 111 Detail of fig. 7.4, central panel of The Pagagnotti Triptych 113 Detail of fig. 7.4, central panel of The Pagagnotti Triptych 113 Filippino Lippi, The Angel Gabriel, 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 110 cm (unframed diameter), San Gimignano, Pinacoteca 122 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 110 cm (unframed diameter), San Gimignano, Pinacoteca 123 The Audience Hall, Palazzo Comunale, San Gimignano 126 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation, 1334-1336, fresco, 238 × 441 cm. Montesiepi, San Galgano 127 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, detail of fig. 5.2, background landscape and figures 128 Unknown artist, Baptistery wall painting showing a woman at a well, c. 232, paint on plaster, 99 × 61 cm. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery 131 Paolo Uccello, The Annunciation, early 1420s, tempera and gilding on panel, 65 × 48 cm. Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology 133 Filippino Lippi, Five Sibyls, c. 1472-1475, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 74.3 × 140.5 cm. Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery 137 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, detail of fig. 5.2, background landscape with city 138 Carlo Braccesco, The Annunciation, c. 1490-1500, oil on panel, 158 × 107 cm, detail of central panel. Paris, Musée du Louvre 140 Francesco Bianchi Ferrari and Giovanni Antonio Scacceri, The Annunciation, 1506-1512, oil on panel, 291 × 176.5 cm, detail of background. Modena, Galleria Estense 141 Fra Filippo Lippi, The Virgin and Child with the Birth of Mary and the Meeting of Joachim and Anne (The Bartolini Tondo), mid to late 1460s, tempera on panel, 135 cm (unframed diameter). Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 143 Fra Filippo Lippi, The Annunciation, early 1440s, tempera on panel, 155 × 144 cm. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini 147 Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1470, tempera on panel, 51.2 × 35.2 cm, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 158 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1485, tempera and oil on panel, 52.1 × 36.5 cm. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection 159

4.11 4.12 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11

5.12

5.13 6.1 6.2

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Illustrations 6.3

6.4 6.5

6.6

6.7

6.8 6.9 6.10

6.11

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

7.5

7.6

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Filippino Lippi, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Saint Peter Disputing with Simon Magus before Nero, 1482-1485, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel 160 Filippino Lippi, Saint Peter Liberated from Prison, 1482-1485, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel 161 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, The Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned, 1426 and 1482, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel 163 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, The Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned, detail, 1426 and 1482, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel 164 Filippino Lippi, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Saint Peter Disputing with Simon Magus before Nero, 1482-1485, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel 165 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1482-1483, tempera on panel, 57 × 39.8 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre 170 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Musician, c. 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 51.1 × 36.9 cm. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland 171 Filippino Lippi, Head of a Youth Wearing a Cap, c. 1483-1484, metalpoint, heightened with white gouache on grey prepared paper, 22.5 × 17.9 cm., inv. no. 226 Ev, Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi 175 Filippino Lippi, Double Portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino Lippi, c. 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 37.5 × 56.4 cm. Denver, Denver Art Museum Collection/The Simon Guggenheim Memorial Collection 176 Jan van Eyck, St Francis Receiving the Stigmata, c. 1435-41, oil on panel, 29.3 × 33.4 cm. Turin, Galleria Sabauda 188 Filippino Lippi and Sandro Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1470-72, tempera on panel, 50.2 × 135.9 cm. London, National Gallery 189 Filippino Lippi, The Vision of St Bernard, c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 210 × 195 cm. Florence, Badia 191 Hans Memling. The Virgin and Child with Angels (central panel of the Pagagnotti Triptych), c. 1479-80, oil on panel, 57 × 42 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 193 Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Triptych, c. 1473-78, oil on panel, 253 × 304 cm (central panel), 253 × 141 cm (each wing). Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 194 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius, (The Palazzo Vecchio Altarpiece), 1485, tempera and oil on panel, 355 × 255.5 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffzi 197

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7.7

Rogier van der Weyden, The Lamentation, c. 1460, oil on panel, 110 × 96 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 199 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child (The Strozzi Virgin), c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 81.3 × 59.7 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Julius Bache Collection 201 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with Saints Martin of Tours and Catherine of Siena, Tanai de’ Nerli and Nanna Capponi (The Nerli Altarpiece), c. 1493, tempera and oil on panel, 170.6 × 182.5 cm. Florence, Santo Spirito 203 Master of the St Ursula Legend, The Sudarium Borne by Angels, c. 1480, oil on panel, 49.5 × 31.5 cm, Filippino Lippi, Christ and the Woman of Samaria and Noli me tangere, c. 1493-1500, tempera and oil on panel, 56 × 15 cm (each wing). Venice, Seminario Patriarcale, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana 204 Filippino Lippi, Assumption and Annunciation, 1488-1493, fresco, 711.6 × 1110 cm. Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel 210 Pietro Lorenzetti, The Virgin and Child with Saints (The Tarlati Polyptych), 1320, tempera on panel, 298 × 309 cm. Arezzo, Pieve di Santa Maria 211 Anonymous artist, Assumption of the Virgin (after Perugino, altar wall, Sistine Chapel, 1481-83), metal point and ink, 27.3 × 21 cm. Vienna, Albertina Graphische Sammlung 212 Filippino Lippi, Annunciation, detail of fig. 8.1 214 Bernardo Pinturicchio, Glorification of Saint Bernardino, 1482-1485, fresco, Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Bufalini Chapel 215 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Resurrection of the Boy (upper register), Donors and Altarpiece, 1483-1485, fresco (upper register, and donors) and tempera and oil on panel (altarpiece, 167 × 167 cm.), Florence, Santa Trinita, Sassetti Chapel 217 Exterior view of the Carafa Chapel, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome 221 Filippino Lippi, Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Miracle of the Cross, 1488-1493, fresco, 555 × 447 cm. (Triumph of Saint Thomas), Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel 222 Filippino Lippi, View of the north wall with St. John raising Drusiana, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 231 Filippino Lippi, Detail of the window wall, after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 232 View towards the altar wall, fresco after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 234 Filippino Lippi, Detail of angels on the altar wall, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 235

7.8

7.9

7.10

8.1 8.2 8.3

8.4 8.5 8.6

8.7 8.8

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

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Filippino Lippi, Detail of hanging tablet on the altar wall, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 236 9.6 Masaccio, Trinity, c. 1427, 667 × 317 cm. fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella 238 9.7 Filippino Lippi, Detail above marble tomb of Filippo Strozzi, after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 239 9.8 Florentine, Triumph of Aemilius Paullus, c. 1490-1500, engraving, 23.8 × 31.9 cm, inv. no. 1845,0825.263, London, British Museum 242 9.9 Attributed to Baccio Baldini, Hellespontine Sybil, c. 1470-1480, engraving, 17.3 × 10.5 cm, inv. no. 1895, 0915.60, London, British Museum 243 9.10 Filippino Lippi, Raising of Drusiana by St John the Evangelist, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, north wall 245 9.11 Filippino Lippi, Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St Philip, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, south wall 246 9.12 Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion of St Philip, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, south wall lunette 247 9.13 Filippino Lippi, Failed Martyrdom of St John, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, north wall lunette 249 9.14 Filippino Lippi, Adam, c. 1487, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, vault 250 10.1 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Giovanni, Grafico della tecnica esecutiva. Mappatura delle giornate di lavoro e della preparazione bianca sottostante la pellicola pittorica. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 263 10.2a-d Riprese a luce visibile e a fluorescenza UV dove si evidenziano in giallo le finiture a secco. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 264 10.3 I costoloni della volta nello spigolo fra la parete destra e la parete di fondo dove sono evidenti le efflorescenze saline e la perdita di pellicola pittorica dovuta ad infiltrazioni dalle coperture. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 266 10.4 Particolare della zona danneggiata da sali dove si notano sollevamenti gravi della pellicola pittorica. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 267 10.5 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Filippo Ripresa UV dove è evidente la superficie pittorica gravemente dilavata dal percolamento di acqua piovana. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 268 10.6 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Filippo Zona interessata da cristallizzazione di sali dovuti al percolamento di acqua piovana. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 269 10.7a-b Filippino Lippi, Particolare della Resurrezione di Drusiana durante la fase di pulitura. Applicazione della carta giapponese tramite acqua satura di

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10.9

11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5

11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9. 12.1

12.2

12.3 12.4

Illustrations carbonato di ammonio e successiva rimozione dello sporco rigonfiato con un tampone di cotone. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 271 Filippino Lippi, Scena del Miracolo del drago cacciato dal tempio Impacco di pulitura costituito da Arbocel, ammonio carbonato e sepiolite applicato sulla superficie. L’impacco bianco, in corrispondenza dell’ aureola dorata invece, è costituito da Arbocel e acqua e serve a proteggere la zona dal contatto con l’impacco adiacente. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 272 Filippino Lippi, Scena del Miracolo di s. Giovanni Rimozione dell’impacco consolidante e antisolfatante di Idrossido di Bario ad asciugatura completata. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi 273 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Drunkenness of Noah, 1509, detail, fresco, Vatican, Rome, Sistine Chapel 280 Filippino Lippi, Martyrdom of St. Peter, c. 1481-1482, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine 280 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Creation of Adam, 1510, fresco. Vatican, Rome, Sistine Chapel 282 Filippino Lippi, The Vision of St Bernard, c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 210 × 195 cm. Florence, Badia 283 Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti, Scheme for the tomb of Julius II, 1505-1506, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over stylus ruling and leadpoint, 51 × 39.9 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 286 Filippino Lippi, Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St. Philip, south wall, c. 1491-1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel 287 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Last Judgement, 1537-1541, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome 291 Filippino Lippi, Assumption and Annunciation, 1488-1493, fresco, 711.6 × 1110 cm. Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel 292 Cristoforo Robetta, Adoration of the Magi, engraving, 30.1 × 28.1 cm. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art 293 Antonio Corsi, Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Peter, 1489, tempera (?) on panel, 140 × 140 cm. Capannori, Pieve di San Pietro di Vorno 299 Vincenzo Frediani, Virgin and Child with Two Angels and Saints Nicholas, Vincent Ferrer, Dominic and Peter Martyr, 1484, tempera (?) on panel, 154 × 137 cm. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum (destroyed 1945) 303 Vincenzo Frediani, Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1484, tempera (?) on panel, 43.2 × 29.2 cm. Present whereabouts unknown 305 Anonymous Lucchese painter, Virgin and Child with Three Angels, c. 1500, oil on panel, 85 cm. (diameter). London, Courtauld Institute Galleries 306

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Anonymous Lucchese painter, Annunciation, c. 1500-1510, oil on panel, 174.5 × 166.5 cm. Berlin, Bode Museum 307 12.6 Sano Ciampanti, The Flight into Egypt, 1497, tempera on panel, dimensions unknown. Present whereabouts unknown 309 12.7 Sano Ciampanti, Virgin and Child, late 1490s, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 64 × 46.5 cm. Present whereabouts unknown 310 12.8 Sano Ciampanti, Virgin and Child with Two Angels and Saints John the Baptist, Catherine, Lucy and Joseph, and with the Annunciation and God the Father above, c. 1505-1510, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 156 × 47 cm. (central panel); 105 × 43 cm. (each side panel); 42 × 155 cm. (lunette). Lucca, Museo Nazionale Villa di Guinigi 314 12.9 Filippino Lippi, God the Father, c. 1482, tempera on panel, 56.3 × 49.5 cm. Private collection 315 12.10 Ranieri di Leonardo, Holy Family with an Angel and Saints Genesius, Blaise, Torpes (?) and the Archangel Raphael with Tobias, 1510, oil on panel, 198 × 119.4 cm. Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America 317 13.1a-b Bachiacca (workshop), The Triumph of Time and Master of the Campana Cassoni, The Triumph of Chastity, 1520-1530, oil on panel, 30 × 22 cm (double sided panel), Nevers, Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts 324 13.2 Attributed to the workshop of Davide Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Christ Child, 1495-1499, tempera on panel, 57 cm. (unframed diameter). Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts 326 13.3 Attributed to Davide Ghirlandaio, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, 1495-1499, tempera on panel, 56.2 × 55.9 cm. Bremen, Kunsthalle 327 13.4 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, c. 1500, oil on panel, 87.5 cm. (unframed diameter). Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland 329 13.5 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Virgin and Child, c. 1490, oil on panel, 50 × 28 cm. Le Mans, Musée de Tessé 331 13.6 Raffaellino del Garbo, Holy Family with an Angel, c. 1490, tempera on canvas, transferred from wood, 55.9 × 38.1 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 333 13.7 Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Saint Jerome, c. 1500, oil on panel, 75 × 43 cm. Rouen, Palais archiépiscopal 335 13.8 Attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo, Achilles in Skyros discovered by Ulysses, c. 1490, pen and brown ink, 19.5 × 19.7 cm. Chantilly, Musée Condé 336 13.9 Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Study for a seated male figure, late 1470s-mid 1480s, silverpoint heightened with white on coloured grey prepared paper, 21 × 15 cm. Dijon, Musée Magnin 338

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13.11 14.1

14.2

14.3 14.4

14.5

14.6

14.7

14.8

A.1

A.2 A.3 A.4

Illustrations Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Study for a seated male figure, late 1470s-mid 1480s, silverpoint heightened with white on coloured grey prepared paper, 20.5 × 13.5 cm. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana 339 Unknown German Painter working in Rome, Portrait of a Monk, 1800s, oil on panel, 32 × 23 cm. Dijon, Musée Magnin 341 Cristofano Coriolano after Giorgio Vasari, Portrait of Raffaellino del Garbo, from the frontispiece to the Life of 1568, engraving on paper, 13 × 11 cm. London, Royal Academy of Arts 348 Raffaellino del Garbo, The Resurrection (The Capponi Altarpiece), late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, oil on panel, 174.5 × 186.5 cm. Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia 349 Raffaellino del Garbo, Mass of St Gregory, 1501, oil and tempera on canvas, 204.5 × 198.8 cm. Sarasota, Ringling Museum of Art 350 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Madonna and Child with Saints Lucy, the Archangel Michael, Alessio and (?) Agnes, after 1500, detached sinopia, Florence, Santissima Annunziata, Chapel of St Luke 352 Raffaellino del Garbo, Madonna and Child with Saints John the Evangelist, Lawrence, Stephen and Bernard (The Segni Altarpiece), 1505, oil on panel, 285 × 283 cm. Florence, Santo Spirito 353 Florentine goldsmith and Raffaellino del Garbo (attr.), Pax with the Pieta with the Virgin and St John, late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, silver gilt, translucent enamel, tempera on parchment, 19 × 13 cm. (entire object), Florence, San Michele a San Salvi 354 Raffaellino del Garbo, Angel Annunciate, design for embroidery, 1500-1510, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with lead white over black lead, contours pricked for transfer, 9.7 cm. (unframed diameter). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 355 Unknown embroiderer after a design by Raffaellino del Garbo, St Peter enthroned, silk and gold thread embroidery, 39.4 × 21.6 cm. 1500-1510, Florence, Carnevali Collection 357 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, fig. 3.7, infrared reflectogram after cleaning and restoration (red boxes indicating the locations of details A.2, A.3 and A.4). London, National Gallery 364 Infrared reflectogram, detail of A.1 364 Infrared reflectogram, detail of A.1 364 Infrared reflectogram, detail of A.1 364

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Notes on Contributors Rachel Billinge Graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Engineering Science in 1984. In 1990 she obtained an MA in the conservation of easel-paintings at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic. She joined the Conservation Department of the National Gallery, London in 1991 as Leverhulme Research Fellow in Infrared Reflectography and worked closely with Dr Lorne Campbell on the technical examination of the paintings studied for his catalogues of paintings by artists of the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth- Century Netherlandish Schools. She is now employed at the National Gallery as a Research Associate, studying European paintings from the 13th to late 19th centuries, specializing in non-destructive technical analysis, particularly infrared reflectography but also macro-XRF scanning, X-radiography, stereomicroscopy, and surface-textural mapping. Alessandro Cecchi Alessandro Cecchi si è laureato nel 1976 e quattro anni dopo è entrato nell’Amministrazione dei Beni Culturali, prestando servizio presso la Soprintendenza di Siena (1980-1982) e poi nella Galleria degli Uffizi (1982-2006). E’ stato in seguito Direttore del Giardino di Boboli (2006-2013) e della Galleria Palatina di Palazzo Pitti (2009-2014). Dal 1 giugno del 2014 ha lasciato il servizio di Stato e dal 2016 è Direttore della Fondazione Casa Buonarroti. E’ autore di numerosi studi sull’arte fiorentina del Quattro e il Cinquecento, fra cui due monografie dedicate al Botticelli (2005) e a Masaccio (2016). Ha collaborato a vari cataloghi di esposizioni e curato singolarmente mostre dedicate a Filippino Lippi (Roma, 2011), a Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, 2011) e a Michelangelo e l’assedio di Firenze (1529-1530) (Firenze, 2017). E’ autore di una monografia Treccani su Botticelli (2018) e del libro In difesa della ‘dolce libertà’. L’assedio di Firenze (1529-1530) (2018). Cristiana Conti Cristiana Conti si è diplomata nell’1984 presso la Scuola di Restauro dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze, dove ha frequentato il corso triennale nel settore specializzato per i dipinti murali con tesi di laurea intitolata “Lo stacco e lo strappo delle pitture murali nei casi di controversa necessità: vantaggi e svantaggi dei due procedimenti”. Durante il percorso formativo ha preso parte a prestigiosi restauri quali Donatello, Stucchi della Sagrestia Vecchia di S. Lorenzo a Firenze; Ghirlandaio, Cappella Maggiore di S. Maria Novella a Firenze e Giotto, Cappella Peruzzi in S. Croce a Firenze. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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E’ uno dei soci fondatori della società S.A.R. che può vantare un’attività ormai più che trentennale e dispone di un curriculum vitae particolarmente ricco ed articolato avendo lavorato per alcune delle principali Soprintendenze italiane: Firenze, Arezzo, Urbino, Mantova, Genova, Venezia, Pisa. In particolare la ditta ha fatto parte del “Consorzio Brunelleschi” che, dal 1989 al 1995, ha condotto il restauro degli affreschi di Vasari e Zuccari della Cupola di S. Maria del Fiore a Firenze. Oltre al restauro degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi in S. Maria Novella a Firenze, tra i numerosi lavori eseguiti da Cristiana Conti vi sono il restauro degli affreschi del Pordenone nella Controfacciata del Duomo di Cremona, il restauro della Cappella Bardi di Vernio in S. Maria Novella a Firenze ed il restauro degli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi nella Cappella della Cintola nel Duomo di Prato. Tra i lavori più recenti si possono annoverare il restauro del Cortile di Michelozzo in Palazzo Vecchio a Firenze, il restauro della Madonna del Sacco di Andrea del Sarto nel Chiostro Grande della Basilica della SS. Annunziata e il restauro del ciclo di affreschi cinquecenteschi situati nel Chiostro dei Voti sempre presso la Basilica della SS. Annunziata. Christopher Daly Christopher Daly is a PhD Candidate in the Department of the History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is currently preparing a dissertation on the painters active in Lucca during the late fifteenth century. He received his Master’s Degree from Ohio University with a thesis entitled ‘Jacopo del Sellaio’s Altarpieces for the Florentine Oltrarno.’ He has held curatorial fellowships at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and in 2017 he curated an exhibition of Old Master paintings for the re-opening of the Georgi Museum in Shushan, New York. His publications include, ‘A new fragment of the Carmine altarpiece and other works by Jacopo del Sellaio’ (Commentari d’arte, 2014) and nine entries in the exhibition catalogue La Collection Alana, chefs d’oeuvre de la peinture italienne (Paris 2019). Jill Dunkerton Jill Dunkerton studied fine art at Winchester and Goldsmiths’ Schools of Art, history of art (MA) at the Courtauld Institute, and paintings conservation at the Tate Gallery and Courtauld Institute. She has worked as a restorer at the National Gallery since 1980, specialising in particular on the restoration of paintings from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including works by Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, Crivelli, van Eyck, Gossaert, Filippo and Filippino Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Lippi, Massys, Titian, Tura and Verrocchio. She has also written and lectured widely on the restoration and techniques of paintings of this period. Publications include co-authorship of Art in the Making: Italian Painting before 1400 (1989), Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery (1991), Making and Meaning: The Young Michelangelo (1994), Dürer to Veronese: Sixteenth-Century Painting in the National Gallery,(1999), Art in the Making. Underdrawing in Renaissance Paintings, (2002), as well as contributions to catalogues of exhibitions at the National Gallery and in the United States, Italy and Spain, and numerous articles in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin, The Burlington Magazine, OPD Restauro and other journals. Matteo Gianeselli Matteo Gianeselli is a curator at the Musée national de la Renaissance (Écouen), where he is in charge of the collections of paintings, tapestries, graphic arts, textiles and leather. Following his PhD on the Ghirlandaio family, he has published various articles and essays on Italian artistic practice during the Renaissance. He has a special interest in the transmission and diffusion of models within family workshops and across their generations, and also in the nineteenth-century’s reception of the Italian ‘Primitives.’ He has organised and advised on several exhibitions dedicated to Italian Renaissance painting and drawing. As a visiting fellow at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), he directs one of their research programmes, ‘Les collections du cardinal Fesch : histoire, inventaire, historique’ (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio), which seeks to trace and catalogue the immense art collection that had been gathered by the cardinal, Napoleon’s uncle, sold by his heirs after his death and scattered across the world. Johannes Grave Johannes Grave is Professor of Art History at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. He received his PhD at Jena University, was fellow at Basel University (NCCR Iconic Criticism) and deputy director of the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art in Paris before teaching as professor at Bielefeld University from 2012 to 2019. His research focuses on Early Renaissance painting, art around 1800, theories of the image and the temporality of image perception. His publications include Der ‘ideale Kunstkörper’. Johann Wolfgang Goethe als Sammler von Druckgraphiken und Zeichnungen (2006), Caspar David Friedrich (2012, 2nd Engl. ed. 2017), Architekturen des Sehens. Bauten in Bildern des Quattrocento (2015), which was awarded the Hans Janssen Prize for European Art History by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and Giovanni Bellini, The Art

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of Contemplation (2018). Since 2015 he has been one of the editors of the journal Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. Paul Hills Paul Hills is Emeritus Professor of the Courtauld Institute. Before serving as Andrew Mellon professor at the Courtauld he taught for many years at Warwick University and directed their Art History programme in Venice. He has been visiting professor at The Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence; at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, and at the Royal College of Art in London. His books include The Light of Early Italian Painting (Yale 1987), Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass (Yale 1999), Veiled Presence: Body and Drapery from Giotto to Titian (Yale, 2018) and he is co-author of The Art of David Jones: Vision and Memory (Lund Humphries 2015). He has also published essays on Leonardo, Bellini, Titian and Tintoretto in the Burlington Magazine, Art History and the Oxford Art Journal, as well as reviews in the Times Literary Supplement. In recent years he has also published essays on contemporary artists, including Shirazeh Houshiary, Brice Marden and Howard Hodgkin. Joost Joustra Joost Joustra is The Howard and Roberta Ahmanson Fellow in Art and Religion at the National Gallery and a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at King’s College London. He curated the exhibition Sin at the National Gallery, and authored the accompanying publication Sin: The Art of Transgression, exploring how sin has been depicted in art for centuries. At King’s, he teaches on the Christianity & the Arts MA. Previously, Joost was the Sackler Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art, where he also wrote his doctoral thesis titled ‘Pictorial Space and Sacred Subject Matter in Florentine Painting, 1425-1466’. Jonathan K. Nelson Jonathan K. Nelson, Teaching Professor at Syracuse University Florence, and Research Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School, has published widely on Italian Renaissance Art.  In 2004 he co-authored a major monograph on Filippino Lippi (Electa), and co-curated a Botticelli and Filippino exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Giunti); he is now completing a new monograph of Filippino (Reaktion Books). He also co-curated two exhibitions at the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence: dedicated to Venus and Love. Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty (Giunti, 2002) and Robert Mapplethorpe: Perfection in Form (teNeues, 2009). When he was Assistant Director of Villa I Tatti, the Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, he created two online exhibitions about Bernard Berenson (2012, 2015). Other books include Leonardo e la reinvenzione della figura femminile (Giunti, 2007), The Patron’s Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art, co-authored with Richard J. Zeckhauser (Princeton UP, 2008), and Marcello Guasti, Giovanni Michelucci e il Monumento ai tre carabinieri. Studi in margine alla mostra di Fiesole, co-edited with Mirella Branca (Officina Libraria, 2019). He is currently co-editing the acts of two conferences he co-organized in 2017: Bad Reception: Negative Reactions to Italian Renaissance Art (Florence) and Representing Infirmity: Diseased Bodies in Renaissance Italy (Prato).   Geoffrey Nuttall Geoffrey Nuttall is an independent scholar specialising in the artistic patronage of Lucchese merchants operating across the courts of Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, on which he wrote his PhD thesis at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He is currently preparing a book entitled The Merchants of Lucca: Art, Patronage and Luxury, c. 1370-1430. His publications include studies of the studiolo of Paolo Guinigi, Jacopo della Quercia’s Trenta Chapel, and the relationship between Florence and Lucca at the beginning of the fifteenth century. He teaches for the V&A Academy at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and was until 2019 an Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld. In 2014 he held a fellowship at the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino, and in 2017 was Scholar-in-Residence at the Dutch University for Art History (NIKI), in Florence. Paula Nuttall Paula Nuttall is Director of the Late Medieval to Early Renaissance Year Course at the V&A Academy, Victoria and Albert Museum. She studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and was until 2018 an Associate Lecturer there, teaching on the Italian Renaissance MA. Her work focuses on artistic relations between the Netherlands and Italy, on which she has published widely, including From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500 (Yale, 2004). She has advised on, and contributed to the catalogues of, a number of exhibitions, including Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 2008) and Van Eyck: an Optical Revolution (Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2020). In 2013 she co-curated the exhibition Face to Face: Flanders, Florence and Renaissance Painting at the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino, and authored the accompanying book. In 2017 she was Scholar-inResidence at the Dutch University Institute for Art History (NIKI), Florence. Her current research is on fifteenth-century secular art, particularly the female Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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nude, and Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna. She has recently published on a group of comic-grotesque drawings by Verrocchio (Renaissance Studies, 2020). Michelle O’Malley Michelle O’Malley is Professor of Renaissance Art History and the Deputy Director of the Warburg Institute, University of London. She is the author of The Business of Art (2005) and Painting under Pressure (2013), and co-author of The Material Renaissance (2007) and Re-thinking Renaissance Objects (2011). She was recently a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, where she began research on her present project, focusing on the production, ownership and reception of pictures commonly called ‘workshop work’. Currently, she is investigating issues of management and training, the deployment of creativity and the mediation of style, and aims to conceptualise a master’s workshop as an integrated workspace in which several assistants of varying skill levels, under the leadership of a master, engaged in production for two markets: commission and direct sale. Alessandra Popple Alessandra Popple si è diplomata nell’1988 presso la Scuola di Restauro dell’ Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze, dove ha frequentato il corso triennale nel settore specializzato per i dipinti murali con tesi di laurea intitolata “Indagine conoscitiva sugli affreschi staccati e strappati nel comune di Firenze dal dopoguerra ad oggi”. Durante il percorso formativo ha preso parte in prestigiosi restauri quali Donatello, Stucchi della Sagrestia Vecchia di S. Lorenzo a Firenze; Ghirlandaio, Cappella Maggiore di S. Maria Novella a Firenze e Gatti, Controfacciata Duomo di Cremona. Nel 1988 entra a far parte della società S.A.R. che può vantare un’attività ormai più che trentennale e dispone di un curriculum vitae particolarmente ricco ed articolato avendo lavorato per alcune delle principali Soprintendenze italiane: Firenze, Arezzo, Urbino, Mantova, Genova, Venezia, Pisa. In particolare la ditta ha fatto parte del “Consorzio Brunelleschi” che, dal 1989 al 1995, ha condotto il restauro degli affreschi di Vasari e Zuccari della Cupola di S. Maria del Fiore a Firenze. Oltre al restauro degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi in S. Maria Novella a Firenze, tra i numerosi lavori eseguiti da Alessandra Popple vi sono il restauro degli affreschi del Pordenone nella Controfacciata del Duomo di Cremona, il restauro della Cappella Bardi di Vernio in S. Maria Novella a Firenze ed il restauro degli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi nella Cappella della Cintola nel Duomo di Prato per cui ha pubblicato un capitolo nel 2009 in Agnolo Gaddi

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e la Cappella della Cintola: la Storia, l’Arte, il Restauro curato da Isabella Lapi Ballerini, editore Polistampa. Tra i lavori più recenti si possono annoverare il restauro del Cortile di Michelozzo in Palazzo Vecchio a Firenze, il restauro della Madonna del Sacco di Andrea del Sarto nel Chiostro Grande della Basilica della SS. Annunziata e il restauro del ciclo di affreschi cinquecenteschi situati nel Chiostro dei Voti sempre presso la Basilica della SS. Annunziata. Charles Robertson Charles Robertson studied history and history of art at University College, London and history of art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1991 he completed his doctorate on the Milanese artist Bramantino. Since 1984 he has taught history of art at Oxford Brookes University, specializing in the art of the Italian Renaissance and architectural history. He is concerned with the relationship between painting and architecture, in particular the conceptual role of the practice of painting to architectural design, and with the history of printmaking. He has published studies on Bramantino, art and patronage in Renaissance Milan, printmaking in the Renaissance, maiolica, and Michelangelo. He is preparing a book on the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, its conception and sources. Alison Wright Alison Wright is Professor in Italian Art in the Department of History of Art at University College, London. Before joining UCL she trained at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The research for her first monograph, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: the Arts of Florence and Rome (Yale 2005), centred on aspects of production, design and patronage in later fifteenth-century art, with a focus on the interrelation of the arts, disegno, portraiture, and the figure of the goldsmithpainter-sculptor. While an I Tatti Fellow she collaborated on the exhibition Renaissance Florence: the Art of the 1470s, (1999-2000). Related projects include the exhibition Nameless: Anonymous Drawings of 15th- and 16th-Century Italy (2010, Moray Art Centre, Scotland) and With and Without the Medici: Art and Patronage in Tuscany, 1434-94 (co-authored, 1998). Her most recent book, Frame Work: Honour and Ornament in Italian Renaissance Art (Yale 2019), examines framing in and around painting, sculpture and related arts in respect to social ritual, artistic change and the production of meaning. Wright has published extensively on relief sculpture and the public situation of statuary (Art History, 2011) and she is now studying the transformations of gold in Early Modern art and society.

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Patrizia Zambrano Patrizia Zambrano teaches Modern Art History at Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy. She is co-author of the 2004 monograph, Filippino Lippi, and author of many articles, reviews and contributions to exhibition catalogues, several of them devoted to Botticelli. In the 2005 she wrote a book on Bernard Berenson’s ‘Amico di Sandro’ (Electa). She was on the board of advisors for the exhibition Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400 (Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, 2011) and contributed to the catalogue. She has given several lectures on Botticelli rediscoveries, on connoisseurship, and on the origins and development of the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance independent portrait. She is preparing a book on Botticelli’s portraits, after having contributed to the 2010 exhibition on the artist at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, and as co-curator of the exhibition Le storie di Botticelli. Tra Boston e Bergamo, at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (2018-19). She is on the board of advisors for the exhibition Il Rinascimento dei Moderni: la storia, il mito (Roma, Monumento a Vittorio Emanuale II, 2020).

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Introduction

Introduction Paula Nuttall Characterised by Giorgio Vasari as ‘a painter of most beautiful intelligence and most lovely invention,’ Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) was unquestionably one of the most innovative and accomplished artists of the Renaissance.1 Famous in his lifetime, employed by a distinguished clientele at home and abroad, Filippino continued to be admired well into the sixteenth century. Yet he has attracted considerably less critical attention than his father Fra Filippo or his master Botticelli. Indeed, he has tended to be discussed in relation to these two artists since his rediscovery in the nineteenth century. As recently as 2011, the first monographic exhibition on Filippino, at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, included Botticelli’s name in its title, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, while in 2004 the relationship between the two artists was the focus of Botticelli e Filippino, l’inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura fiorentina del Quattrocento, at Palazzo Strozzi.2 These important exhibitions, together with the 1997 exhibition of his drawings at the Metropolitan Museum,3 have done much to reaffirm Filippino’s reputation for twenty-first-century audiences. So too did the publication in 2004 of Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Nelson’s monumental study of the artist – the first monograph for almost fifty years (although as yet the only monograph in English remains Katharine Neilson’s of 1938).4 However, as Nelson observes, a monograph should provide a starting point, rather than the last word, in the study of an artist.5 When, as Scholars-in-Residence at the Dutch Institute in 2017, Geoffrey Nuttall and I were invited by Michael Kwakkelstein to organise a conference on a 1 G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols, Florence 1878, 3, 461: ‘pittore di bellissimo ingegno e di vaghissima invenzione’. 2 A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh., Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale) Milan 2011; D. Arasse, P. De Vecchi and J. K. Nelson (eds.), Botticelli e Filippino, l’inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura fiorentina del Quattrocento, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Strozzi), Florence 2004. 3 G. R. Goldner and C. Bambach (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum), New York, 1997. 4 P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004; K. B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi: a Critical Study, Cambridge (Mass.), 1938. Jonathan Nelson is currently preparing a new, Englishlanguage monograph on Filippino. 5 Zambrano and Nelson (op. cit), note 4, 371. ← Filippino Lippi, Meeting of Joachim and Anna outside the Golden Gate, detail of figure 0.1

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theme of our choosing, we settled on Filippino for a variety of reasons. Firstly, aspects of his work chimed with our research interests, respectively on artistic patronage in Lucca, and the reception of Netherlandish painting in Florence. Filippino was, additionally, an artist for whom we both had a great and longstanding esteem. The re-opening of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in 2106 after a restoration campaign provided yet another pretext. But most importantly, there had never, to the best of our knowledge, been an academic conference dedicated to him – remarkably, for such a major artist. That our enthusiasm was shared, became evident from the alacrity with which colleagues responded to our invitation to participate, and the record-breaking audiences the conference itself attracted both at the NIKI, in December 2017, and in a subsequent, reduced iteration, at the Courtauld Institute in March 2018. The present volume collects all but one of the papers presented at the NIKI conference, together with a new note on a technical discovery at the National Gallery, London by Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge. Filippino’s critical fortunes have been influenced not only by his illustrious artistic lineage – he was already being compared to Fra Filippo and Botticelli by commentators around 14906 – but also by the fact that his first major Florentine work was the completion of the Brancacci Chapel. His intelligent and sympathetic contributions to the cycle begun by Masaccio and Masolino are often discussed in relation to the earlier artists’ work rather than compared, say, with the contemporary frescos by Ghirlandaio in the Sassetti and Tornabuoni Chapels. Filippino has also suffered from not having been among the equipe of painters responsible for decorating the walls of the Sistine Chapel, who have acquired the status of a late fifteenth-century artistic super-league in the scholarship. Yet compared with the Sistine walls, Filippino’s only slightly later frescos in the Carafa Chapel were a game-changer, propelling the treatment of space, dramatic action and ornament towards the threshold of the maniera moderna. Just as Filippino’s early career tends to be overshadowed by other Quattrocento artists, so his highly inventive late style, exemplified by the Strozzi Chapel (completed in 1502), was eclipsed by the alternative modernity of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Indeed, one of the long-standing critical prejudices that Filippino has had to contend with is the view of his late work as eccentric and unlovable. Filippino’s contemporary reputation was, however, 6 For the well-known comments by Lodovico Sforza’s agent in Florence see M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy, Oxford 1972, 26; J. K. Nelson, ‘Botticelli’s “virile air”: Reconsidering the Milan memo of 1493’ in G. J. van der Sman and I. Mariani (eds.), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). Artist and Entrepreneur in Renaissance Florence, Florence 2015, 168-9. Filippino and Botticelli are praised in Ugolino Verino’s Carliade (1489) as the heirs to the painters of Antiquity; see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, (op. cit), note 4, 56, 70, n. 76.

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such that he was undoubtedly a point of reference for the next generation, and his influence could profitably be explored further. Filippino has also been disadvantaged by his relatively early death at the age of 47; a prolific, versatile and ceaselessly inventive artist, it is worth thinking what the course of Florentine painting might have been, had he lived longer. Filippino was many things. He was inventive and progressive, ambitious and original. He pushed at the existing boundaries of pictorial design, most dazzlingly in the Carafa and Strozzi Chapels, but also in his altarpieces, from the early Magrini altarpiece of 1482 (Lucca, San Michele in Foro) to the late Casali altarpiece of 1501 (Bologna, San Domenico); unlike many of his peers, he did not recycle compositions and poses, but rethought pictorial solutions afresh. His interest in the grand design was matched by a fascination for detail – the knotting of a tassel, the tie of a shoe. He was visually curious, exploring and refashioning the novelties of Netherlandish painting encountered in Florence during the 1470s and 80s, and classical Antiquity (and probably also the lost work of Mantegna in Innocent VIII’s Belvedere) in Rome around 1490. He was an astute, empathetic and witty observer, a virtuosic draughtsman and colourist, and an inventive technician. He had a remarkable architectural imagination, and was a skilled perspectivist (named, indeed, as one of the great maestri di prospettiva by Luca Pacioli in 1494).7 Concomitantly, as both his contemporaries and his nineteenth-century admirers recognised, he possessed a ‘sweet air’, endowing his figures, particularly females, with a lyrical beauty and grace. He was versatile, and sensitive to the demands of artistic decorum, most notably in the Brancacci Chapel, although one might also instructively contrast the restrained pietism of the Valori Crucifixion (formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum) and the ascetic angst of its lateral panels of Saints John the Baptist and Mary Magdalen (Florence, Accademia), an altarpiece for a Savonarolan client, with the festive sensuality of the muse Erato (Berlin, Staatliche Museen), a profane domestic image of similar date.8 Filippino possessed a remarkable expressive and psychological range, already evident in the drama of early works such as the Stories of Lucretia and Virginia (Paris, Louvre), and reaching heights of extraordinary emotional subtlety in the 1497 Meeting at the Golden Gate (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst) (fig. 0.1). Here, the young woman at far left, with her haunting outward gaze, the sweeping folds of her ravishing pink and yellow drapery, the carefully-placed touches of blue on 7 Nelson (op. cit.), note 6, 173. 8 Perhaps made for the marriage of Giovanni Vespucci and Namicina Nerli, in 1500; see J. K. Nelson in C. Paolini, D. Parenti and L. Sebregondi (eds.), Virtù d’Amore. Pittura nuziale del Quattrocento fiorentino, cat. exh. Florence (Gallerie dell’Accademia-Museo Horne), Florence 2010, 226, n. 21.

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Figure 0.1 Filippino Lippi, Meeting of Joachim and Anne outside the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, 1497, tempera on panel, 112.5 × 124 cm. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst

her sleeves and the swinging tassel at her hip, and her thoughtfully positioned hands, all of which lead our eye to the tender exchange of Joachim and Anna at the centre of the painting, is just one example among countless others of what Vasari surely meant when he praised Filippino for his beautiful intelligence and lovely invention.

…

The fourteen essays that make up this volume explore multiple aspects of Filippino’s art, taking a variety of approaches as diverse as the interests of their respective authors. By way of introduction, Jonathan Nelson discusses the Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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pioneering role of Charles Algernon Swinburne in the nineteenth-century rediscovery of Filippino, shining a light on Aesthetic taste for Quattrocento art whilst also revealing Swinburne to be an astute critic, with an unusually precocious esteem for the artist’s drawings. Having viewed Filippino through the lens of his Victorian admirers, we move back to his beginnings. Michelle O’Malley considers Filippino’s role in Botticelli’s workshop in the 1470s, exploring how his drawings illuminate its methods of training and practice, and how Botticelli’s business may have benefited from the presence of such an exceptional talent within the workshop. Paul Hills focuses on a single early work, Filippino’s London Adoration of the Magi of c.1475-80, closely examining its compositional and chromatic strategies, and the artist’s use of rays of light as cognitive signs. In an Appendix (at the end of the volume), Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge present the results of infrared reflectography undertaken on the Adoration, revealing inscriptions identifying the background saints. Geoffrey Nuttall discusses the patrons of Filippino’s earliest altarpieces, the Magrini and Bernardi of Lucca, presenting new archival research that significantly enhances our understanding of these important works, their patrons and their social, commercial and political networks, and of Filippino’s role within this nexus. Patrizia Zambrano explores the hitherto neglected topic of Filippino as a portraitist, from the Brancacci Chapel to the independent portraits on panel; her close reading of his portraits reveals Filippino’s debt to Masaccio, and also to Netherlandish models. Paula Nuttall considers other responses by Filippino to Netherlandish painting, which exerted an influence throughout his career, but particularly in the 1480s, contributing to the formation of his mature style. Joost Joustra presents a rich reading of another important early work, the San Gimignano Annunciation, offering a new iconographic interpretation of its landscape background, and unpacking its spatial and temporal complexities, which are also considered in relation to Annunciations by Fra Filippo. Filippino’s two great mature fresco cycles in the Carafa and Strozzi Chapels are discussed respectively by Johannes Grave and Alison Wright. Like Joustra, they insightfully address issues of space and time, word and image, theological source and viewer participation. Grave offers a new reading of the altar wall in the Carafa Chapel, with its interrelated ‘nested’ images of the Annunciation and Assumption, and discusses the sophisticated paradoxes and ambiguities of Filippino’s treatment of space in the chapel as a whole. Wright considers the complex interplay of space and time in the Strozzi Chapel, the tensions invoked between the fictive and the real, the transient and the permanent, the animate and inanimate, which are brought to bear on the chapel’s function as a funerary site. The conservation and technique of the Strozzi Chapel is discussed by Cristiana Conti and Alessandra Popple, who present the results of Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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restoration campaigns carried out between 1999 and 2015, together with a summary of the earlier state of conservation, and technical discoveries that reveal how complex, refined and original Filippino’s wall-painting technique was. The book turns, in conclusion, to Filippino’s legacy. Charles Robertson considers Filippino’s importance for Michelangelo, inexplicably neglected in the scholarship, persuasively showing how the latter responded to specific works such as the Carafa Chapel, and to Filippino’s architectural ideas. By contrast, Filippino has long been recognised as a significant influence on late fifteenthcentury Lucchese painting. Christopher Daly elucidates the artistic personalities of Filippino’s Lucchese followers, and suggests new ways of approaching the question of his influence. Daly’s interpretation of the situation as one of stylistic appropriation inflected by expedients of marketing offers an alternative, but complementary, view to Geoffrey Nuttall’s contention that Lucchese patrons commissioned Filippino (and other non-Lucchese artists) to signal political and other networks. Matteo Gianeselli discusses a range of panel paintings and drawings from the ambit of Filippino in French collections, bringing to light some little known works and making a number of new attributions. Finally, Alessandro Cecchi offers a fresh look at Raffaellino del Garbo, one of Filippino’s most interesting and undeservedly marginalised followers who – despite a poor critical reputation going back as far as Vasari – was sought after not only as a painter of panels but a designer of work in other media, notably embroideries, both during Filippino’s lifetime and after his death. These chapters do not claim to be comprehensive, but they offer fresh and important insights. Whether shining fresh light on familiar works, providing new historical context or technical information, or illuminating Filippino’s relations with his contemporaries and successors at home and abroad, they open up the discourse, and suggest new avenues for exploration.

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Chapter 1

The Critic as Artist: Swinburne on Filippino Lippi and Botticelli (1868) Jonathan K. Nelson

In his perceptive observations about Edward Burne-Jones, written in 1895, Robert de la Sizeranne noted that ‘from Botticelli he took his type of female beauty, such as you see it in the fresco of the Nozze de Tornabuoni … From Mantegna, he copied his elegant types of knights in armour so closely that, looking at his King Cophetua … he might be Francesco de Gonzague (sic) kneeling before the Vierge de la Victoire’.1 The singing boys in the same painting by BurneJones (London, Tate Britain, 1884, fig. 1.1) reveal a hitherto unnoticed source of inspiration from a late fifteenth-century painting. The two youths hold a scroll of music, a detail that appears only rarely in Renaissance art, but prominently in Filippino Lippi’s Virgin and Child with Angels (Florence, Banca CR, ca. 1480, fig.1.2).2 The poses of the boys in Burne-Jones’ painting and the arrangement of their heads also seem to reflect those of the singers in Filippino’s tondo, then in the Palazzo Corsini, Florence. What led Burne-Jones to look at Filippino, and especially at an obscure work in a private Florentine collection? Virtually no one in the Pre-Raphaelite circle gave any attention to the artist. The striking exception is a close friend of the painter, Algernon Charles Swinburne (18371909), who sang the praise of Filippino, and specifically of the Corsini Tondo, in his 1868 essay, ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’.3 1 R. de la Sizeranne, English Contemporary Art, trans. H. M. Poynter, New York 1900, 222-23, first published in French in 1895. For discussion see J.N. Melius, Art History and the Invention of Botticelli. PhD diss., Berkeley, University of California 2010, 25 (available online); on the painting, see W.S. Taylor, ‘King Cophetua And The Beggar Maid’, Apollo 97 (1973), no. 132, 148-155. 2 This observation and some others in the present essay appeared in an abbreviated version in J.K. Nelson, ‘Botticelli as Seen by a Friend of the Pre-Raphaelites’ in M. Buron (ed.), Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites & The Old Masters, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum), Munich/London/New York 2018, 138-141, 268-269. On Filippino’s painting, see J.K. Nelson, in D. Arasse, P. De Vecchi, and J.K. Nelson (eds.), Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, exh. cat. Florence (Palazzo Strozzi), Milan 2004, 164166, cat. no. 19, with reference to Swinburne. 3 A. C. Swinburne, ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’, Fortnightly Review 4 (July 1868), 16-40. Filippino is mentioned briefly, or not at all, in the most important studies of this ← Filippino Lippi, The Corsini Tondo, detail of fig. 1.2 Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 1.1 Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884, oil on canvas, 293.4 × 135.9 cm. London, Tate Britain

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Figure 1.2 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Angels (The Corsini Tondo), early 1480s, tempera and oil on panel, 173 cm. (diameter), Florence, Fondazione CR

In this foundational text for Aestheticism, overlooked by most scholars of the Renaissance,4 the discussion of Filippino provides insight into the English essay, all by specialists in nineteenth-century English literature; see J.B. Bullen, The Myth of the Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Writing, Oxford/New York 1994, 265-273; T. Albrecht, ‘Aesthetic and Rhetoric in Swinburne’s Aesthetic Criticism’, Nineteenth-Century Prose 26 (1999), no. 1, 81-99; L.J. Starzyk, ‘Swinburne’s “Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence”: The Exegesis of Icons’, Victorian Newsletter 96 (1999), no. 1, 5-21; L. Østermark-Johansen, ‘Swinburne’s Serpentine Delights: The Aesthetic Critic and the Old Master Drawings in Florence’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 24 (2002), no. 1, 49-72; and S. Evangelista, ‘Swinburne’s Galleries’, Yearbook of English Studies 40 (2010), no. 1/2, 160-179: 160-167. 4 Significantly, Swinburne is not mentioned in F. Gamba, Filippino Lippi nella storia della critica, Florence 1958. For brief references to his comments on Filippino, see M. Levey, ‘Botticelli and Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Decadent author as well as the nineteenth-century reception of the Italian painter. The present study explores how Swinburne turned to the respected Italian Old Masters at the very moment when his own poetry was being censured. The rediscovery of Filippino, then a nearly forgotten painter, allowed Swinburne to recreate him and his teacher Botticelli into artists who exemplified the Englishman’s own interests and sensibilities. In the Italian Renaissance drawings recently put on view in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Swinburne found inspiration for an innovative form of criticism, best described a quartercentury later by Oscar Wilde. In his essay on ‘The Critic as Artist’, Wilde proclaimed that the finest form of criticism ‘treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation’.5 A close reading of Swinburne’s ‘Notes on Designs’ reveals both his sensitive appreciation of Filippino, and his use of the Renaissance artist’s drawings for his own creations. Given that his essay is not illustrated, and the drawings lack catalogue numbers, previous scholars (and surely most readers) have not noted that the poet often added details – such as sounds, textures, colors, and lighting – not found in the original works. Edmund Gosse, a close friend of Swinburne, and once a famous critic in his own right, briefly discussed the ‘Notes on Designs’ in his biography of the poet. In 1864, Swinburne stayed some weeks in Florence, where he visited pictures in the delightful company of Mrs. Gaskell. Long afterwards he told me that she was the only person who sympathized with his raptures over the ‘Medusa’ of Leonardo da Vinci: unfortunately the cruel art-critics now will have it that this panel was never touched by Leonardo. Of the drawings in the

Nineteenth-Century England’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960), no. 3-4, 291-306; A.S. Hoch, ‘The Art of Alessandro Botticelli through the Eyes of Victorian Aesthetes’, in J.E. Law and L. Østermark-Johansen (eds.), Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, Burlington 2005, 55-85; C. Elam, ‘La fortuna critica e collezionistica di Piero di Cosimo in Gran Bretagna’, in E. Capretti, A. Forlani Tempesti, S. Padovani, and D. Parenti (eds.), Piero di Cosimo 1462-1522: pittore eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, exh. cat. Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence 2015, 174-183; V. Müller, ‘How Botticellian!’: ästhetische Priorität und der Widerruf Pygmalions: Studien zur Botticelli-Rezeption im englischen Ästhetizismus, Münster 2000; and P.L. Rubin, ‘“Pictures with a Past”: Botticelli in Boston’, in N. Silver (ed.), Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes, exh. cat. Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), London 2019, 11-31. 5 O. Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist with Some Remarks upon the Importance of Doing Nothing’ (1891), in Intentions, London 1913, 93-217, esp. 143.

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Uffizi he made a close study, and his notes were long valuable in the absence of any other catalogue or manual.’6 His ‘Notes on Designs’, first published in July 1868 as an article in The Fortnightly Weekly – and then in 1875, together with a review of a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition7 – contains praise not only for the Medusa (echoed by Walter Pater, in an essay of 1869 in The Fortnightly Weekly),8 but also for numerous drawings exhibited as by Botticelli. Of all these sheets, Swinburne devoted the most attention to two drawings now ascribed to different artists: the Venus and Cupid by Andrea del Verrocchio, and the Althaea and Her Maid, by a close follower of Filippino.9 Ironically, most of Swinburne’s comments about Botticelli were inspired by images drawn by his contemporaries. The essay led Michael Levey to describe Swinburne as the first Englishman ‘to set down at any length an appreciation of Botticelli’.10 This characterization overlooks the highly discerning discussion of this artist, and of Filippino, that the Englishman Joseph Archer Crowe, in collaboration with the Italian Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, had included in their New History of Painting in Italy, published in 1864.11 Shorter but still important passages on both painters had already appeared in the most popular guides to Italian art, such as Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone, Franz Kugler’s Italian Schools, and Alexis-François Rio’s Poetry of Christian Art.12 Swinburne most probably read these, but not the massive study by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, before or during his Florentine sojourn of 6

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E. Gosse, The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, New York 1917, 104. Also see E. Gosse, Portraits and Sketches, New York 1914, 39-40, where he added that during this Florentine sojourn, Swinburne spent ‘much of the time in the society of Walter Savage Landor and of that “dear, brilliant, ingenious creature”, Mrs. [Elizabeth Cleghorn] Gaskell’. A.C. Swinburne, ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’; ‘Notes on Some Pictures of 1868’, in Essays and Studies, London 1875, 314-357, 358-380. In 1869, following Pater’s article on Leonardo da Vinci in the Fortnightly Review, Swinburne wrote to D.G. Rossetti, ‘I liked Pater’s article on Leonardo very much. I confess I did fancy there was a little spice of my style as you say’. See A.C. Swinburne, Letters, ed. C.Y. Lang, 6 vols., New Haven 1959-1962, II, 58. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 326, on the drawings in Florence, Gabinetto disegni e stampe degli Uffizi (hereafter GDSU), inv. nos. 212 E (Venus and Cupid) and 203 E (Althaea and Her Maid). Levey, op. cit. (note 4), 302. Swinburne is also discussed in an overlooked study by A. Bertram, ‘The English Discovery of Botticelli’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 98, (1950), no. 4819, 468-484, esp. 470, 475. J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the Second to the Fourteenth Century, 3 vols., London 1864, II. For the importance of these texts for Botticelli studies, see Hoch, op. cit. (note 4); and Rubin, op. cit. (note 4).

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1864. Certainly, the New History had no discernible impact on Swinburne’s discussions of Botticelli and Filippino, and ‘Notes on Designs’ presents a radically different appreciation of the two artists. Significantly, both studies appeared years before Pater’s celebrated study of Botticelli, first published in 1870.13 This essay, which does not mention Filippino, reappeared in Pater’s best-selling Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873); by 1900, over 10,000 copies had been published in England and America.14 With this book, Pater transformed the way in which the Italian Renaissance was understood and presented in the English-speaking world and beyond. Before 1870, however, Botticelli was rarely discussed in literary circles, and Filippino was almost completely overlooked. Many specialists of Victorian literature have explored the impact of Swinburne’s text on Walter Pater; some have also discussed Swinburne’s close relationship with John Addington Symonds in the mid-1870s, the very period when the latter was writing a series of highly respected and influential books on the Renaissance in Italy.15 One passage in The Fine Arts, published in 1877, might even reflect the impact of Swinburne’s essay: Symonds lists Filippino and ­Sandro as two of the most important artists of the Florentine Renaissance.16 By the time he went to Florence, in 1864, Swinburne was in close contact with Simeon Solomon, a painter credited with creating the first ‘Botticellian’ painting of the nineteenth century, Love in Autumn (1866).17 A decade earlier, figures from Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity had already appeared in Solomon’s works.18 Though Solomon and Swinburne’s artist friends surely encouraged the poet to seek out the Italian ‘primitives’ in Florence, none of these nineteenthcentury painters expressed any particular appreciation for Filippino. He does not appear, for example, in a list of favourite artists drawn up by Burne-Jones 13

14 15 16 17 18

W. Pater, ‘A Fragment on Sandro Botticelli’, Fortnightly Review 8 (1870), 155-160. For two recent studies of this fundamental volume, with brief references to Swinburne, see S. Lyons, Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt, and Secularisation, London 2015, 178; and S. Cheeke, ‘‘Fantastic Modernism’: Walter Pater, Botticelli, and Simonetta’, Word & Image 32 (2016) no. 2, 95-206, esp. 200. On the relation between the two authors, also see J. Coates, ‘Variations on the Oxford Temper: Swinburne, Pater and Botticelli’, English Literature in Transition (1880-1920) 40 (1997), no. 3, 260-274; and a problematic essay by T.E. Morgan, ‘Reimagining Masculinity in Victorian Criticism: Swinburne And Pater’, Victorian Studies 36 (1993), no. 3, 315-332. For the print runs, see R.M. Seiler, The Book Beautiful: Walter Pater and the House of Macmillan, London 1999, 180-84. P.M. Grosskurth, ‘Swinburne and Symonds: An Uneasy Literary Relationship,’ The Review of English Studies 14 (1963), no. 55, 257-268, esp. 260. J.A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts (1877), London 1906, 179. Melius, op. cit. (note 1), 14. H. Ward, ‘“The Rising Genius”: Simeon Solomon’s Unexplored Interpretation of Sandro Botticelli’, The British Art Journal 12 (2011-2012), no. 3, 60-67.

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after his trip to Italy in 1871.19 In 1857, as a student at Oxford University, Swinburne had befriended this painter, and together with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris they created an inseparable foursome. After Swinburne left the university in 1860, Burne-Jones’s wife wrote that the couple saw a great deal of Swinburne, ‘sometimes twice or three times a day he could come in, bringing his poems hot from his heart and certain of welcome and a hearing at any hour’.20 Burne-Jones’ Adoration of the Magi and Shepherds (1861; London, Tate Gallery) even includes portraits of William and Jane Morris, Swinburne, and the artist himself. In 1862, Swinburne moved into Tutor House in Chelsea, home of both Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti; during this period, Swinburne also counted John Ruskin among his close friends. Many members of Swinburne’s circle went on art tours of Italy before 1864: Burne-Jones in 1859 and 1862, William Michael Rossetti in 1862, and the poet himself in 1861. The artists kept sketchbooks filled with their impressions of the old masters, and ‘Notes on Designs’ has been described as ‘the verbal equivalent of that careful process of recording’.21 Swinburne invited readers to make this association by the very title of his essay.22 Nevertheless, the poet often presented not accurate copies of the Old Masters but lyrical prose inspired by the Uffizi works. To the frustration of some modern critics, Swinburne aimed not to present a cogently argued thesis, but to focus on works that struck him as noteworthy, ‘without more form of order than has been given by the framers and hangers’.23 In his prose, Swinburne’s literary style often takes on more importance than the subject itself, and in his essay, he regularly gave more prominence to the artistic style of the drawings than to their iconography. On occasion, Swinburne dismissed any attempt to define just what a drawing represents. Of Filippino’s sketch of three youths, he wrote disdainfully that ‘[t]he 19

20 21 22

23

The list included Giotto, Orcagna, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, Luca Signorelli, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Andrea del Sarto; see S. Wildman and J. Christian, ‘“The ‘Seven Blissfullest Years”’, in S. Wildman and J. Christian (eds.), Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-dreamer, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1998, 141-190, esp. 142. J. Christian, ‘Speaking of Kisses in Paradise: Burne-Jones’s Friendship with Swinburne’, Journal of the William Morris Society 13 (1998), no. 1, 14-24, esp. 17. Bullen, op. cit. (note 3), 265-266. Østermark-Johansen, op. cit. (note 3), 49, observed that by entitling his essay ‘Notes,’ Swinburne ‘suggested a series of loose impressionistic jottings, not unlike the copies from the old masters one can find in the sketch-books of Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’. The title might also allude to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Notes on Sculptures in Rome and Florence (1819); C. Maxwell, Swinburne, Tavistock 2006, 87. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 316. Melius, op. cit. (note 1), 54, described the essay as maddening: ‘in their diffuseness, one can never be sure that Swinburne’s critical pro­ nouncements count as concrete engagements at all’.

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story or sense of this design may be conjectured by those who have the time or taste for such guesswork’.24 The inversion of the traditional roles of form and content constituted a key plank in Swinburne’s aesthetic agenda in these years. In 1864, when Swinburne returned from Florence to England, he again took up residence with the Rossetti brothers in Tutor house.25 Swinburne’s essay, published in 1868, was written during the very period when he enjoyed regular contact with the Pre-Raphaelites. The poet’s observations about his Florentine sojourn must have provided the subject for endless conversations during his frequent meetings with artists. A recent study of Solomon suggests that the painter’s understanding of Botticelli reflects Swinburne’s approval of the ‘deformities’ in the Primavera and other works attributed to the artist.26 BurneJones’ art has even been described as ‘the mirror image’ of the ‘art-historical critique’ found in Swinburne and Pater.27 ‘Notes on Designs’ offers us unique insight on the views about fifteenth-century Florentine art discussed within the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Though it is hardly surprising to discover parallels between the aesthetic views of poets and their artist friends, few people today know that Swinburne wrote at length about Renaissance art. Ever since his succès de scandale in 1866 with the publication of his Poems and Ballads, dedicated to Edward BurneJones, Swinburne’s writings have been associated with sexual transgression. The poet remains best known for shocking Victorian society with his frank treatment of taboo topics, such as lesbianism and sadomasochism. From our perspective, nothing seems more distant from such provocative publications than a long, detailed, and sophisticated analysis of Old Master drawings. In part, this unexpected choice of subject probably represents Swinburne’s reaction to the vitriolic criticism of his poetry. In a booklet published in defence of Swinburne in 1866, William Michael Rossetti stated boldly that his friend was ‘in intellectual sympathy and culture, a pagan’.28 In ‘Notes on Designs’, Swinburne decided to fight fire with fire; he argued repeatedly that the greatest artists of a highly respected period shared his preference for secular subjects, as well as his frustration with the conventions imposed by society. In a wonderful passage on Botticelli, Swinburne wrote that, 24 25 26 27 28

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 334. D.G. Rossetti, His Family-letters with a memoir by William Michael Rossetti, 2 vols., London 1895, I, 228. Ward, op. cit. (note 18), 62. Wildman and Christian, op. cit. (note 19), 142. W. M. Rossetti, Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads: a Criticism, London 1866, 23; also see 21, ‘He is a manifest pagan; neither believing in a Christian revelation, nor entering kindly …into a Christian dispensation, and modes of thought and life’.

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Another careful satyr-like head suggests the suppressed leaning to grotesque invention and hunger after heathen liberty which break out whenever this artist is released from the mill-horse round of mythologic virginity and sacred childhood: in which at all times he worked with such singular grace and such ingenuity of pathetic device. 29 A recurring theme in Swinburne’s criticism from the 1860s was the importance of authorial autonomy; writers and artists needed to be free to select their own subjects.30 According to the poet, Filippino enjoyed a newfound freedom from depicting religious subjects: ‘To him apparently the sudden varieties and resources of secular art becoming visible and possible conveyed and infused into his work a boundless energy of delight’.31 Pater later developed this idea, and presented even Botticelli’s depictions of the Virgin as reflecting his ‘desire to break free of the Christian frameworks that were imposed upon him and to pursue aesthetic ends simply for their own sake’.32 We can understand why Swinburne wrote in a letter of 1873, I admire and enjoy Pater’s work so heartily that I am somewhat shy of saying how much, ever since on my telling him once at Oxford how highly Rossetti (D. G.) as well as myself estimated his first papers in the Fortnightly, he replied to the effect that he considered them as owing their inspiration entirely to the example of my own work in the same line.33 Swinburne’s presentation of Botticelli and Filippino as hungering after heathen liberty represents only one novelty in his ‘Notes on Designs’. The author also stoked controversy by exploring some of the same themes addressed in his poetry, most notably the femme fatale34 and the positive connotations given to pain. Swinburne described a drawing then attributed to Botticelli, but actually a copy after Filippino Lippi, as ‘two witches loosely draped … one stirs and feeds the fire under a cauldron of antique fashion and pagan device; one turns 29 30

31 32 33 34

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 326-327. Perhaps Swinburne refers to Florence, GDSU, inv. 160 F, but this depicts an entire figure, not just a head. For the most important discussions of Swinburne’s aesthetics, with specific references to the ‘Notes on Drawings’, see E. Prettejohn, Art for Art’s Sake. Aestheticism in Victorian Painting, London 2007, 37-69; Maxwell, op. cit. (note 22), 81-105; Østermark-Johansen, op. cit. (note 3); and Evangelista, op. cit. (note 3). Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 328. Lyons, op. cit. (note 13), 173. Swinburne-Lang, op. cit. (note 8), II, 240-241. On Swinburne’s ‘Primitive Femmes’, see H. Braun, The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910, Lanham 2012, 111-116, and discussion below.

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away with hard dull smile showing all her wolfish teeth’.35 He saw this as a demonstration of the artist’s ‘various power and fancy,’ which leads us to ask: which artist? In many Uffizi sheets, he found ‘the same faint and almost painful grace, which give a distinctive value and a curious charm to all the works of Botticelli’.36 Clearly, Swinburne delighted in disrupting the widespread celebration of fifteenth-century art for its uplifting Christian values, especially as discussed in the writings of Rio, as well as Mrs. [Anna] Jameson’s series of Sacred and Legendary Art.37 Another innovation of Swinburne’s essay was its focus on works on paper; drawings had rarely attracted the attention of writers on art, much less poets. In part, Swinburne’s interest surely reflects his contact with artists, who carefully studied the style and technique of the early Italian masters.38 Certainly, Swinburne was attentive to these works by his contemporaries. In his Poems and Ballads (1866), a footnote explains that ‘A Christmas Carol’ was suggested by a drawing by Dante Rossetti.39 More importantly, perhaps, Swinburne must have been aware of an earlier, now almost forgotten article about the Uffizi drawings by Léon Lagrange, published in the highly respected Gazette des beaux-arts.40 Fluent in French and au courant with the most recent cultural developments in Paris, Swinburne once again found an opportunity to present something new to his English readers. (Already in 1862, he had written one of the first favourable reviews in any language of Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal).41 In his ‘Notes on Designs’, Swinburne echoed some of Lagrange’s comments; both offered their observations as useful aids to visitors of the Uffizi, given that no catalogue existed for the collection of drawings. For Lagrange, drawings showed the original conception for a work ‘as it emerged from the soul, inspired by the artist’. According to Lagrange, certain aspects of paintings 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 326; for the drawing, Florence, GDSU, inv. no. 203 E, see J.K. Nelson in P. Zambrano and J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 436. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 327. Hoch, op. cit. (note 4). S. Sell, ‘“The interesting and difficult medium”: The Silverpoint Revival in NineteenthCentury Britain’, Master Drawings 51 (2013), no. 1, 63-86, without reference to Swinburne. C. Maxwell, ‘In the Artist’s Studio’, in M. Bevis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, Oxford 2013 (online publication), 1-15, esp. 3. L. Lagrange, ‘Catalogue des dessins de maîtres exposés dans la Galerie des Uffizi, à Florence’, Gazette des beaux-arts 12 (1862), no. 6, 536-554. Ignored in Swinburne studies, this essay is briefly mentioned in Hoch, op. cit. (note 4), 62. T.J. Brennan, ‘Creating from Nothing: Swinburne and Baudelaire in “Ave Atque Vale”’, Victorian Poetry 44 (2006), no. 3, 251-271. As suggested by Maxwell, op. cit. (note 22), 84, Swinburne may have also found inspiration in Théophile Gautier’s Amateur’s Guide for the Museum of the Louvre (1867), but we do not know when the poet began writing up his ‘Notes’.

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often obscured the artists’ original ideas, and as an example he mentioned the ‘pale colour’ of Botticelli’s works. Similarly, Swinburne (and then Pater) wrote of Botticelli’s drawings that ‘[t]he dull and dry quality of this thin pallid colouring can here no longer impair the charm of his natural grace’.42 Just a year before coming to Florence, the poet had read in Baudelaire’s Painters of Modern Life (1863) that ‘at no matter what stage in its execution, each drawing has a sufficiently “finished” look; call it a “study” if you will, but you will have to admit that it is a perfect study’.43 In a similar spirit, Swinburne wrote of the drawings by Antonio Pollaiuolo, all these are touched with rough suggestive rapidity, and share with many others the chief charm of these studies; that gift, namely, they give us, of ability to see for a little the passage of swift thoughts and flying fancies across the fruitful minds of masters whose daily work was cut out something too much on one pattern, exclusive therefore of new device and mobile invention.44 Like Baudelaire, and in line with modern sensibilities, Swinburne found a positive value in the sketchiness of the Uffizi sheets. He saw in drawings an opportunity for the Old Masters to explore and invent, outside of the rigid limitations dictated by the conventions of religious paintings. Of Filippino, the poet wrote that, ‘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’.45 By recasting both artists in his own image, Swinburne created ‘a new thing’: an understanding of Botticelli and his student that has captured the imagination of viewers from his day through our own. In spite of some similarities with Lagrange, Swinburne’s unusual selection of artists and his highly original observations indicate his distance from the French critic, as well as his impact on Pater. The poet, for example, virtually ignored Fra Angelico, celebrated in most nineteenth-century writings about the early Renaissance. Though Lagrange wrote a short introductory paragraph 42

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 326. In a celebrated passage about Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Pater (1870) observed that ‘the colour is cadaverous’. Though sometimes seen as evidence of Pater’s debt to Swinburne, this might indicate Pater’s knowledge of Lagrange; both authors, moreover, compare Botticelli’s Venus to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. See E. Prettejohn, Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War, New Haven/London 2017, 157, without reference to Lagrange. 43 Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 30), 62, discusses the importance of this passage for Swinburne, though not in relation to ‘Notes on Designs’. 44 Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 338. 45 Ibid.

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for nine of the fifteenth-century Florentine artists discussed in his essay, including Botticelli, this honour was denied to Filippino.46 In the French article, Filippino’s drawings merited a mere fifty-five words of commentary, and in one of his rare value judgements of the artist, Lagrange described the compositions as ‘confusing’. Swinburne evidently did not share this view. Though Leonardo, Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto received the lion’s share of ‘Notes on Designs’, the poet devoted several pages to Filippino. In 1864, Swinburne could see in person how the Uffizi had recently installed a series of rooms to exhibit their extraordinary collection of drawings.47 Here was a new body of works from a celebrated epoch. Swinburne discovered hundreds of images from the Quattro- and Cinquecento that had not yet been described, analysed, classified, and photographed. In practical terms, this meant that the readers of his unillustrated text could not refer to published images, or even to memories of works seen during trips to Italy. This gave the author far more freedom then most art critics; Swinburne’s ekphrastic passages had to stand entirely on their own. The dozens of Uffizi drawings then ascribed to Filippino, far outnumbering those attributed to his teacher or father, and many with secular subjects, attracted Swinburne’s attention and admiration. He delighted in finding verbal equivalents for the rapid strokes and bold use of highlight found in many of Filippino’s drawings. One extended quotation offers a taste of Swinburne’s inimitable phrasing: four horses plunge violently forward, whirling after them charioteer and chariot; one alone turns backward his reinless neck in angry liberty; a man hard by, staff in hand, warns eagerly and vainly with hopeless hand and voice. Near this is a noble figure of Fear; the spirit or god of this passion attired in red, with hair loose under a cap lightly set on; in his hand a bow without a bow-string; the whole form and face violently afraid, terrified even to passion.48

46 47 48

Lagrange, op. cit. (note 40), provided introductions only for Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Mino da Fiesole, Maso Finiguerra, Andrea Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Lorenzo di Credi. Apparently no published or manuscript sources list all the drawings exhibited in 1864. For a useful account of how the display cases appeared to museum visitors two decades later, see S. Horner, Walks in Florence and its Environs, London 1884. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 333-334, for the drawing, Florence, GDSU inv. no. 1170 E, Prometheus Stealing the Celestial Fire, see J.K. Nelson in Arasse, op. cit. (note 2), 262, cat. no. 45, with reference to Swinburne.

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This passage shows how Swinburne presented what struck him as the most noteworthy qualities in a work of art, especially the representations of motion and emotion, rather than try to explain the narrative, which he briefly mentioned as the ‘story of Phaeton or Hippolytus’. This very same approach, rare for criticism in his day, defines Swinburne’s writings about the poetic paintings by his friends in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and the tonal harmonies created by James Whistler.49 Often, in both Renaissance and modern works, Swinburne took pains to describe the colour or lighting. In this example, Filippino’s drawing contains no red pigment, but it hardly matters if Swinburne misremembered or took artistic liberties in his description. Certainly, he succeeded in capturing the sense of frantic movement in Filippino’s sketch. Nothing comparably survives among Botticelli’s graphic works at the Uffizi. Among these, Swinburne praised a study for the male figure in Botticelli’s beautiful and battered picture of Spring; beautiful for all its quaintness, pallor, and deformities. The sketched figure is slightly made, with curling hair, and one hand resting by the hip.50 Though the Primavera earned Swinburne’s qualified praise, the related drawing itself did not inspire his rapture. In Filippino, however, the poet found a new artist to present to his English readers. For the poet, The artist had less gift of reproducing physical beauty, less lyrical loveliness of work, less fullness of visible and contagious pleasure in his execution, than his father; but far more of variety, of flexible emotion, of inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy… if Lippo is more of a painter, Lippino is more of a dramatist.51 In its length, precision and sophistication, this analysis –which continues for several pages--surpasses any previous account of Filippino. In part, it may derive from Kugler’s handbook of Italian art, popular in England thanks to an accurate and annotated translation. Here Swinburne could have read that in the Strozzi Chapel, Filippino ‘distinguishes himself as a painter of emotions, of dramatic action, and of real life, omitting, it is true, the higher ecclesiastical 49 50 51

See Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 30), 59, on the striking lack of narrative in Swinburne’s writings about modern art. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 327. Ibid., 328.

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meaning’.52 This reputed lapse would have only increased the appeal of the painter for Swinburne. Given his iconoclastic nature, the poet probably delighted in finding a similar appraisal, and of the same fresco cycle, in Rio’s tome on Christian art; ‘the graceful details, and pleasing accessory groups contained in it, prevent the attention of the spectator from being too much fixed on the principal personages’.53 Even Burckhardt, who described Filippino as a ‘pupil of Sandro, whom he much excels in spirit, fancy, and feeling for beauty’, faulted his later works for ‘too bright colouring, overcrowding, and heavy, puffed out drapery’.54 Swinburne might have even known a far more obscure text by James Jackson Jarves; he compared Filippino’s use of ornament to ‘the shade of mouldy paganism creeping out of its tomb to cast a baleful gleam over its old rival and conqueror, Christianity’.55 Here was an artist for Swinburne to champion, in his campaign against those who evaluated art for its moral qualities. The reputed lack of religious sentiment among fifteenth-century artists had further implications for Swinburne’s appreciation of their works. A profile sketch of the head of the Virgin in the Badia altarpiece, a workshop drawing then attributed to Filippino himself, which Lagrange praised simply as ‘trèsgracieux’, earned this description by Swinburne, A fair sample of the somewhat lean and fleshless beauty, worn down it seems by some sickness or natural trouble rather than by any ascetic or artificial sorrow, in which Botticelli must have taught his pupil to take pleasure, is here in the veiled head of Simonetta.56 Far from representing Mary’s foreknowledge of the Passion, the drawing shows actual sickness, a quality Swinburne praised in the works of Botticelli and Filippino. Naturally, this brings to mind the many languid ladies in 52 53 54

55 56

F. Kugler, Italian Schools. Based on the Handbook of Kugler, ed. and notes by C. Eastlake, trans. Lady [E.] Eastlake, 3rd edition, 2 vols., London 1855, I, 204; the original German edition was 1841. A.-F. Rio, The Poetry of Christian Art, London 1854, 108; the original French edition was 1836. J. Burckhardt, The Cicerone: or, Art-guide to Painting in Italy. For the use of Travelers and Students, trans. A.H. Clough, London 1873, 62. Though this edition appeared after Swinburne’s trip to Florence, he could have read the same concepts in the German edition of 1855. J.J. Jarves, Art Studies: the ‘Old Masters’ of Italy; Painting, New York/London 1861, 284. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 329, in reference to Florence, GDSU, inv. 139 E. Here and elsewhere, Swinburne stresses the naturalism of late fifteenth-century painters, whereas Pater presented Botticelli as a visionary, a fundamental difference explored by Coates, op. cit. (note 13).

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Pre-Raphaelite paintings.57 The conflation of pleasure and pain, which reflects Swinburne’s appreciation of Baudelaire, permeates his Poems and Ballads.58 As already noted, Swinburne identified an ‘almost painful grace’ as the distinctive quality which give ‘a curious charm’ to Botticelli’s works. Throughout the essay on drawings, Swinburne gave unusual attention to images of pain and suffering, ‘a kind of metaphysical or philosophical sadomasochism’.59 He was the first author to associate a particular type of beauty, as found in the female figures of Filippino and Botticelli, with illness.60 This reading of Botticelli, based largely on drawings by other artists, and soon developed by Pater, became the predominant interpretative key for the Victorians’ understanding of the artist. In a playful allusion to this trope, Vernon Lee expressed her dismay over Botticelli’s works, with ‘Madonnas who half drop their babes in sudden sickening faintness’.61 The young Bernard Berenson presented this same quality in a positive light, in a delightful letter of 1890; he wrote Mary Costelloe, his future wife, that the female figures in Filippino’s Strozzi Chapel ‘look a bit ailing. Their refinement is almost that of the ideal Parisian’.62 Berenson returned to this theme a decade later, in his essay about Filippino’s tondo now in Cleveland, ‘the St. Margaret of our tondo is already of the delicate, frail, and slightly ailing, type that we find in one of the Strozzi frescos.63 In his 1896 The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, however, Berenson dismissed the artist, referring with evident disdain to ‘Filippino, with his touch of consumptive delicacy’.64 Three decades earlier, this sickly quality only added to the appeal of female figures created in the circle of Botticelli for Swinburne and his Pre-Raphaelite friends. The poet’s rejection of Christian sentiments and values in Old Master drawings allowed him to celebrate them as examples of ‘art for art’s sake’, the battle cry that summarizes Swinburne’s most important contribution to the criticism 57 Hoch, op. cit. (note 4), 64. 58 Evangelista op. cit. (note 3), 167. On Swinburne’s fascination with female figures who cause pain, also see Østermark-Johansen, op. cit. (note 3); and Bullen, op. cit. (note 3), 266-268. 59 Maxwell, op. cit. (note 22), 96. 60 Cheeke, op. cit. (note 13), 200. 61 V. Lee, ‘Botticelli at the Villa Lemmi’ (1882), in Juvenilia: Being a Second Series of Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions, London 1887, 77-130, esp. 87. 62 Partially transcribed in B. Berenson, Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson, H. Kiel (ed.), New York 1974, 196. 63 B. Berenson, ‘An unpublished masterpiece by Filippino Lippi’, in The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, II, London 1902, 90-96, esp. 95; the essay was originally published in a French translation in 1900. 64 B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York/London 1896, 76.

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in England.65 He was the first to translate this phrase into English from a text by Théophile Gautier, and then to popularize it. In his monograph on William Blake, published in 1868, the poet declared that Art should in no way become the ‘[h]andmaid of religion, exponent of duty, servant of fact, pioneer of morality…Her business is not to do good on other grounds, but to be good on her own: all is well with her while she sticks fast to that. Art for art’s sake first of all’.66 In a similar vein, but with reference to Renaissance works, Swinburne pronounced in the same volume that ‘[y]ou may extract out of Titian’s work or Shakespeare’s any moral or immoral inference you please; it is none of their business to see after that’.67 Swinburne had already expressed this concept in his 1862 review of Baudelaire; the opening paragraph ridicules those who ‘think that a poem is the better for containing a moral lesson or assisting in a tangible and material good work’, then proclaims that ‘the art of poetry has absolutely nothing to do with the didactic’.68 In 1868, Swinburne explicitly applied this concept to the visual arts. In his review of an exhibition of PreRaphaelite paintings, Swinburne wrote that a painting by Albert Joseph Moore, ‘is to artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets; the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful.’69 Similarly, James Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were joined by ‘the love of beauty for the very beauty’s sake’.70 It has gone virtually unnoticed that also in 1868, and in a booklet republished in 1875 with the Pre-Raphaelite review, Swinburne expressed very similar ideas about the worship of beauty, but in reference to a previously unknown body of art, the Old Master drawings in the Uffizi. Of Venetian artists, for example, Swinburne wrote that ‘since the Greek sculptors there was never a race of artists so humbly and so wholly devoted to the worship of beauty’.71 Among fifteenth-century Florentine artists, the supreme example of this approach remained Filippo Lippi, given Vasari’s account of the painter’s love for his model. Of Lippi’s representations of Lucrezia Buti, Swinburne wrote that

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

See, in particular, Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 30). A.C. Swinburne, William Blake: A Critical Essay, London 1868, 90. Ibid., 91. A.C. Swinburne, Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs Du Mal (Review), The Spectator (6 Sep­ tember 1862), no. 1784, 998-1000, esp. 998. Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 30), 58; Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 360. Ibid., 379. Ibid., 344.

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for pure and simple beauty it is absolutely unsurpassable: innocent enough also for a Madonna, but pure by nature, not chaste through religion. No creeds have helped to compose the holiness of her beauty ... Before the date of her immortal lover there was probably no artist capable of painting such a thing at all.72 Once art was freed from a didactic role, and no longer judged as the ‘servant of fact’ or ‘pioneer of morality’, the role of critic and observer took on new importance. In both of his 1868 reviews, as Elizabeth Prettejohn observes, Swinburne presented his remarks ‘as his own subjective “impressions” of the works, rather than the objective “truth” about them’.73 In his creative criticism, Swinburne too felt liberated from facts; the only truth worth discussing was his highly personal reaction to art. This approach provided the basis for the famous distillation of Aestheticism found in the preface of Pater’s Renaissance, ‘What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? And if so, what sort or degree of pleasure?’74 Swinburne explored these questions in his revolutionary approach to Renaissance drawings. This changed how his readers understood and discussed Fra Filippo, Filippino and Botticelli. For Swinburne, a drawing of Lucrezia Buti by Filippo Lippi ‘is of a beauty so intolerable that the eyes can neither endure nor abstain from it without a pleasure acute even to pain.’75 For Berenson, ‘the pleasure one gets from Botticelli is really an exquisite, high strung pain’.76 Another aspect of Swinburne’s aesthetic project in ‘Notes on Designs’ strikes us as foreign as his elaborate prose. In his review of the 1875 booklet, Henry James observed that Swinburne went far beyond an exploration of the effects that the Uffizi drawings produced in him: ‘He is an imaginative commentator, often of a very splendid kind, but he is never a real interpreter and rarely a trustworthy guide. He is a writer, and a writer in constant quest of a theme’.77 Like his Pre-Raphaelite friends, Swinburne used the Italian Renaissance works 72 73 74 75 76 77

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 324. Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 30), 55. W. Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, the 1893 text, D.L. Hill (ed.), London/ Berkeley 1980, xix-xx, Pater’s italics. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 324. For Berenson’s letter of 1888 see Rubin, op. cit. (note 4). H. James, A.C. Swinburne, Essays and Studies (review), in Views and Reviews, ed. L.R. Phillips, Boston 1908, 51-62, originally published in 1875. The quote reads as a general comment on Swinburne’s criticism, though James also made references to the essay on Renaissance drawings.

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of art as the basis for his own original creations. As Wilde explained in ‘The Critic as Artist’, the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives.78 In his search for a theme in the Uffizi drawings, and in his attempt to make them a vital portion in the lives of his readers, Swinburne found the femme fatale. Together with many authors and artists across Europe, he was fascinated by the ‘medieval’ witch, Sidonia von Bork, as recounted in a German Gothic novel by Wilhelm Meinhold, first published 1848, and translated the following year by Oscar Wilde’s mother, Jane Wilde.79 Most probably, Dante Gabriel Rossetti introduced the subject to Burne-Jones, who made two watercolours of the subject in 1860, and to Swinburne, who mentioned her in relation to Filippino’s drawing of Minerva: the strange typical figure of a woman holding what seems some armorial blazon on a scroll in her hand; her face is also thin, fierce, and hesitating; some doubtful evil, some mystery of a witch’s irresolute anger, is half expressed and half suppressed by her features and her action. If indeed she was meant simply for the presiding genius of a family or some allegorical spirit about to proclaim their titles, the artist has contrived to give her rather the aspect of a sorceress who holds their house in her hand, a Sidonia ready to destroy their hope of generation by a single spell. Especially she will recall the heroine of Meinhold to those who have seen Mr. E. Burne-Jones’s nobler drawing of the young Sidonia wearing a gown whose pattern is of branching and knotted snakes, black upon the golden stuff; for the garment of this witch also is looped up and broached with serpents.80 78 79 80

O. Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist with Some Remarks Upon The Importance Of Doing Nothing’ (1891), in Intentions, London 1913, 93-217: 144. P. Bridgwater, ‘Who’s Afraid of Sidonia von Bork?’, in S. Stark (ed.), The Novel in AngloGerman Context: Cultural Cross-currents and Affinities; papers from the conference held at the University of Leeds from 15 to 17 September 1997, Amsterdam 2000, 213-228. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 329-330, with further reference to Meinhold’s Sidonia on 365; for the drawing, Florence, GDSU, inv. no. 1255 E, Minerva, see J.K. Nelson in Arasse, op. cit. (note 2), 260, cat. no. 40, with reference to Swinburne.

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‘Strange’, a favourite adjective for Swinburne, took on a positive valence in his discussions of art from any period. No other author writing about Filippino’s representation of Minerva, or similar figures by the artist, described them as evil or angry. Moreover, it is difficult to see any parallels with Burne-Jones’ Sidonia beyond the juxtaposition of beautiful women and snakes. Serpents appear throughout the ‘Notes on Drawings’, and especially in Swinburne’s discussions of drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo. In a fascinating article on this phenomenon, Lene Østermark-Johansen explained that for Swinburne, the serpent theme was ‘a complex symbol of the archetypal female beauty which attracts his male gaze and results in his mesmerising prose’.81 This serpentine style led an anonymous reviewer of the 1875 book to complain that, ‘[i]n a greater degree even than in his poetry Mr. Swinburne is here the slave of his own wondrous vocabulary; his ideas are often determined by phrases instead of determining them’. 82 But Wilde was closer to the mark in seeing Swinburne as a master, not a slave; instead of allowing the objective reality in Filippino’s drawing to determine his ideas, he turned to the work of art as a source of inspiration for his poetic verses. The comparison between Minerva and Sidonia, one of many references to contemporary art in the ‘Notes on Designs’, surely caught the attention of Burne-Jones. A few pages later in the same essay, Swinburne’s painter-friend could have read about the ‘Holy Family in the Corsini Palace, where children make music on strange instruments’.83 Two errors in this description – Joseph does not join Mary and Jesus, and the angels sing – reminds us that Swinburne was working from memory. Years later, when Burne-Jones returned to Florence, he evidently visited the Corsini Palace and, like Swinburne, found inspiration there. In the same collection, Burne-Jones could have seen a Wheel of Fortune, praised by Swinburne as an invention of Michelangelo’s: there is a figure of Fortune, with a face of cold exaltation and high clear beauty; strong wings expand behind her, or shadows rather of vast and veiled plumes; below her the wheel seems to pause, as in a lull of the perpetual race. The design was evidently the sketch out of which the picture of Fortune in the Corsini Palace was elaborated by some pupil of the master’s.84

81 82 83 84

Østermark-Johansen, op. cit. (note 3), 49. For the anonymous review, see ibid., 50. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 332-333. Ibid., 322.

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The connection with Swinburne does not seem to be noted in the extensive literature on the numerous versions of Burne-Jones’ celebrated composition of 1883, replete with references to Michelangelo. By comparing the ‘Notes on Design’ with works by Burne-Jones, we better understand the impact of the Old Masters on modern artists. Swinburne’s discussion of the Tondo in ‘Notes on Designs’ begins with an observation that must surprise all scholars of Filippino, but not those of Swinburne: ‘no careful and grateful student of this painter can overlook his special fondness for the seaside’.85 For art historians who cling to objective truth, Filippino’s works do not reveal any particular attention to the sea or shore. Of the first two examples provided by Swinburne, Filippino’s 1496 Uffizi Adoration of the Magi includes but a hint of seascape in the distance, understandably ignored in all other accounts of the painting; much the same can be said of the Nativity in the Galleria Palatina, lovingly described by Swinburne, and now universally ascribed to Francesco Botticini.86 But such details are beside the point; it is the author, not painter, who had a special fondness for seasides, and who mentioned them insistently in his poetry and prose.87 In his search for a theme to address in his ‘Notes on Designs’, Swinburne found inspiration in an overlooked detail of the Corsini Tondo: ‘in the background low broken rocks enclose and reveal cold inlets and quiet reaches of the sea.’88 Apparently, the work was still ascribed to Filippo Lippi when Swinburne visited the palace, though Crowe and Cavalcaselle had correctly identified it as Filippino in their 1864 handbook.89 The poet perceptively noted that the ‘color and manner too seem altogether those of Lippino’, and also brought our attention to one of the few works were Filippino does indeed create a suggestive seascape. This inspired him to muse on the artist’s father: it might be imagined that with the blood of a father who had roved and laboured perforce by sea Filippino had inherited some salt relish of the pure wide water and various shores unknown to the placid inland painters of his age content as cattle or sheep with the valley and the field. 85 86

87 88 89

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 332. On Florence, Galleria Palatina, inv. 1912/347, Swinburne wrote, ‘his small similar landscape of the Nativity, where adoring angels rain roses after roses over a mother and child; and outside a close fence of interwoven rose-bushes, the sweet and various land breaks down to a green clear shore after miles of rocky and watery field’; Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 332. S.C. Wilson, ‘“My Song To The Sea”: Some Notes On Reading Swinburne’, in A. Lombardo (ed.), Giornale di bordo: saggi sull’ immagine poetica del mare, Rome 1997, 307-323. Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 333. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, op. cit. (note 11), 449.

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To him, therefore, rather than to Filippo, in whom this note of preference is not so perceptible, must on all accounts be assigned the honour – for to either it must be an additional honour – of having painted the Holy Family in the Corsini Palace. Swinburne probably realized that his account of the blood of Filippo Lippi and the maritime interests of his son had as much relation to objective reality as the connection between Filippino’s Minerva and Burne-Jones’ Sidonia. Certainly, he believed that ‘the art of poetry has absolutely nothing to do with the didactic’, and for his poetic description of the Corsini Tondo, Swinburne found an unusual point of departure in the background port. He changed tactics in a remarkable example of ekphrasis and criticism, one of the longest passages devoted to a single drawing in ‘Notes and Designs’, his discussion of Filippino’s Dream of the Warrior.90 Swinburne first expressed his belief that even for the Old Masters, the narrative held little importance: ‘Two larger sketches in the same room seem to be either parts of a single story or dubious and tentative studies taken while the artist had not made up his mind how to work and what to work on’. The poet then launched into a detailed description of the two scenes, adding the sounds and atmospheric effects absent in the drawing itself. On the left, ‘Cupids discover a knight sleeping in some dim spell-bound place; with soft laughter, with silent feet and swift fingers, they draw off his armour and steal away the sword and helmet, leaving his head bare to the dew and wind of that strange twilight’. The imagery on the right includes a voluptuous female nude, a voyeur, and the sea, three themes that predominate in Swinburne’s own poetry: ‘a knight armed, and newly landed from a ship just inshore, finds a maiden asleep under the sea-rocks’. Once again, he adds details not found in monochrome sketch: ‘in the low sky behind the ship a faint fire of dawn has risen, and touches the shadowed shore and the dissolving clouds with growing and hesitating light’. For Swinburne, and perhaps only for this poet, ‘the chief charm [of Filippino’s sketch] lies in a dim light of magic morning mixed with twilight and shed over strange seas and a charmed shore’. When Swinburne finally addressed the subject itself he revealed his respect for the classical world, but whereas Pater found in Botticelli a direct source to the ‘buried fire’ of the ancients,91 the poet brings us closer to the sentiments of the Pre-Raphaelites: 90 91

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 330-331; for the drawing, Florence, GDSU, inv. no. 1257 E, The Dream of the Warrior, see J.K. Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 35), 441, with reference to Swinburne. See Prettejohn, op. cit. (note 42), 147-166.

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The design was not improbably made for a picture of Bacchus and Adriane; it has the cold and lucid beauty of an older legend translated and transformed into mediaeval shape. More than any others, these painters of the early Florentine school reproduce in their own art the style of thought and work familiar to a student of Chaucer and his fellows or pupils. Rather than celebrating ‘Renaissance’ artists for depicting the rebirth of the ancient gods, Swinburne created an unforgettable image: ‘Nymphs have faded into fairies, and gods subsided into men’. The poet found value in the faults that he and earlier authors detected in fifteenth-century artists: A curious realism has grown up out of that very ignorance and perversion which seemed as if it could not but falsify whatever thing it touched upon. This study of Filippino’s has all the singular charm of the romantic school which remains alike remote from pure tradition and allegoric invention … Two great samples exist of this school among painters: the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, the Death of Procris by Piero di Cosimo. Freed from limitations of both Ancient and Christian art, Filippino and his contemporaries could create figures with frankness and directness: ‘[t]he clear form has gone, the old beauty dropped out of sight; no freshness and fervour of new significance has come to supplant it’. Here Swinburne evidently alluded to the ancient classical ideal; his subsequent attack on the classicising goals of later artists could be aimed at those of the sixteenth or even the nineteenth century: ‘no memory and no desire has begun to reach back with studious eyes and reverted hands towards it, as towards some purer and fuller example of art than any elsewhere attainable’. But Swinburne refers not only to the physical form of Filippino’s works; in their very conception, he suggests, they are ‘[d]iscrowned of epic tradition, dispossessed of divine descent’. Swinburne appreciated the distance between Filippino’s art and an ancient ideal of perfection. Earlier in his essay, he noted in the artist’s works ‘something now and then of the hard types of face and form, the satisfaction apparently found in dry conventional faults, which disfigure the beauty of Botticelli’s own pictures’.92 Swinburne returned to this point when he noted that ‘some of the faultiest and most favourite types of his master reappear in the late frescos of Lippino,’ in the Strozzi Chapel: ‘there are faces suggestive of overmuch leather and bony 92

Swinburne, op. cit. (note 7), 328.

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outline, such as Botticelli, in the violent pursuit of realism, too often allowed himself to design for the sake of genuine expression and physical fidelity’.93 Before Pater turned the world’s eyes to Botticelli’s melancholy Madonnas and delicate mythologies, this was how the artist was seen by Swinburne. The imperfections of the figures by Botticelli and Filippino made them more immediate to Swinburne, who provided us with a key to understanding the appreciation of their works in the Pre-Raphaelite circle: False and monstrous as are the local conditions and the local colouring with which it works, the forms and voices of women and men which it endeavours to make us see and hear are actually audible voices and visible forms…they are not phantoms; they tread real earth, and breathe real air, though it be not in Greece or Troas.94 For this reason, ‘the mediaeval or romantic form has an incommunicable charm of its own’. In his ‘Notes on Designs,’ Swinburne presented a portrait of Filippino as an artist who shared the same values as the author himself, from a ‘hunger after heathen liberty,’ to a ‘boundless energy of delight’. A century and a half later, scholars never look to fifteenth-century Florentine drawings for images of a femme fatale or the sea, much less for a celebration of art for art’s sake. Some authors today surely find inspiration in these works, though they do not present their creative writing in the form of an exhibition review. But ‘Notes on Designs’ does far more than offer insight into Swinburne and his period, and the origins of the Botticelli craze. Swinburne found in Filippino some of the very same qualities that are still appreciated in the artist: ‘the ambition after new things, the desire of various and liberal invention’. In so doing, Swinburne helped create an image of Filippino best expressed by another celebrated wordsmith, Roberto Longhi, who in 1934 defined the artist as, ‘the most restless and lawless Florentine in the last decades of the Quattrocento’.95 Bibliography Albrecht, T., ‘Aesthetic and Rhetoric in Swinburne’s Aesthetic Criticism’, NineteenthCentury Prose 26 (1999), no. 1, 81-99. 93 94 95

Ibid., 328-329. Ibid., 331. R. Longhi, Officina Ferrarese (1934) 2nd ed., Florence 1956, 60, ‘il fiorentino più inquieto e fuori legge degli ultimi decenni del Quattrocento’.

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Arasse, D., De Vecchi, P., and J.K. Nelson (eds.), Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. Passion and Grace in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, cat. exh.. Florence (Palazzo Strozzi), Milan 2004. Berenson, B., The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York/London 1896. Berenson, B., ‘An unpublished masterpiece by Filippino Lippi’, in The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, II, London 1902, 90-96. Berenson, B., Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson, H. Kiel (ed.), New York 1974. Bertram, A., ‘The English Discovery of Botticelli’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 98, (1950), no. 4819, 468-484. Braun, H., The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910, Lanham 2012. Brennan, T.J., ‘Creating from Nothing: Swinburne and Baudelaire in “Ave Atque Vale”’, Victorian Poetry 44 (2006), no. 3, 251-271. Bridgwater, P., ‘Who’s Afraid of Sidonia von Bork?’, in S. Stark (ed.), The Novel in AngloGerman Context: Cultural Cross-currents and Affinities; papers from the conference held at the University of Leeds from 15 to 17 September 1997, Amsterdam 2000, 213-228. Bullen, J.B., The Myth of the Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Writing, Oxford/New York 1994. Burckhardt, J., The Cicerone: or, Art-guide to Painting in Italy. For the use of Travellers and Students, trans. A.H. Clough, London 1873. Cheeke, S., ‘Fantastic Modernism’: Walter Pater, Botticelli, and Simonetta, Word & Image 32 (2016) no. 2, 95-206. Christian, J., ‘Speaking of Kisses in Paradise: Burne-Jones’s Friendship with Swinburne’, Journal of the William Morris Society 13 (1998), no. 1, 14-24. Coates, J., ‘Variations on the Oxford Temper: Swinburne, Pater and Botticelli’, English Literature in Transition (1880-1920) 40 (1997), no. 3, 260-274. Crowe J.A., and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the Second to the Fourteenth Century, 3 vols., London 1864, II. Elam, C., ‘La fortuna critica e collezionistica di Piero di Cosimo in Gran Bretagna’, in E. Capretti, A. Forlani Tempesti, S. Padovani, and D. Parenti (eds.), Piero di Cosimo 1462-1522: pittore eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence 2015, 174-183. Evangelista, S., ‘Swinburne’s Galleries’, Yearbook of English Studies 40 (2010), no. 1/2, 160-179. Gamba, F., Filippino Lippi nella storia della critica, Florence 1958. Gosse, E., Portraits and Sketches, New York 1914. Gosse, E., The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, New York 1917. Grosskurth, P.M., ‘Swinburne and Symonds: An Uneasy Literary Relationship,’ The Review of English Studies 14 (1963), no. 55, 257-268.

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Hoch, A. S., ‘The Art of Alessandro Botticelli through the Eyes of Victorian Aesthetes’, in J.E. Law and L. Østermark-Johansen (eds.), Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, Burlington 2005, 55-85. Horner, S., Walks in Florence and its environs, London 1884. James, H., A.C. Swinburne, Essays and Studies (review), in Views and Reviews, L.R. Phillips (ed.), Boston 1908, 51-62. Jarves, J.J., Art Studies: the ‘Old Masters’ of Italy; Painting, New York/London 1861. Kugler, F., Italian Schools. Based on the Handbook of Kugler, ed. and notes by C. Eastlake, trans. Lady [E.] Eastlake, 3rd edition, 2 vols., London 1855, I. Lagrange, L., ‘Catalogue des dessins de maîtres exposés dans la Galerie des Uffizi, à Florence’, Gazette des beaux-arts 12 (1862), no. 6, 536-554. Lee, V., ‘Botticelli at the Villa Lemmi’ (1882), in Juvenilia: Being a Second Series of Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions, London 1887, 77-130. Levey, M., ‘Botticelli and Nineteenth-Century England’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960), no. 3-4, 291-306. Longhi, R., Officina Ferrarese (1934) 2nd ed., Florence 1956. Lyons, S., Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt, and Secularisation, London 2015. Maxwell, C., Swinburne, Tavistock 2006. Maxwell, C., ‘In the Artist’s Studio’, in M. Bevis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, Oxford 2013 (online publication), 1-15. Melius, J.N., Art History and the Invention of Botticelli. PhD diss., Berkeley, University of California 2010. Morgan, T.E., ‘Reimagining Masculinity in Victorian Criticism: Swinburne and Pater’, Victorian Studies 36 (1993), no. 3, 315-332. Müller, V., ‘How Botticellian!’: ästhetische Priorität und der Widerruf Pygmalions: Studien zur Botticelli-Rezeption im englischen Ästhetizismus, Münster 2000. Nelson, J.K., ‘Botticelli as Seen by a Friend of the Pre-Raphaelites’ in M. Buron (ed.), Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites & The Old Masters, cat. exh. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum), Munich/London/New York 2018, 138-141, 268-269. Østermark-Johansen, L., ‘Swinburne’s Serpentine Delights: The Aesthetic Critic and the Old Master Drawings in Florence’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 24 (2002), no. 1, 49-72. Pater, W., ‘A Fragment on Sandro Botticelli’, Fortnightly Review 8 (1870), 155-160. Pater, W., The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, the 1893 text, D.L. Hill (ed.), London/Berkeley 1980. Prettejohn, E., Art for Art’s Sake. Aestheticism in Victorian Painting, London 2007. Prettejohn, E., Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the PreRaphaelites to the First World War, New Haven/London 2017. Rio, A.-F., The Poetry of Christian Art, London 1854.

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Rossetti, D.G., His Family-letters with a Memoir by William Michael Rossetti, 2 vols., London 1895. Rossetti, W. M., Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads: a Criticism, London 1866. Rubin, P.L., ‘“Pictures with a Past”: Botticelli in Boston’, in N. Silver (ed.), Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes, cat. exh. Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), London 2019, 11-31. Seiler, R.M., The Book Beautiful: Walter Pater and the House of Macmillan, London 1999. Sell, S., ‘“The interesting and difficult medium”: The Silverpoint Revival in NineteenthCentury Britain’, Master Drawings 51 (2013), no. 1, 63-86. Sizeranne, R. de la, English Contemporary Art, trans. H. M. Poynter, New York 1900. Starzyk, L.J., ‘Swinburne’s “Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence”: The Exegesis of Icons’, Victorian Newsletter 96 (1999), no. 1, 5-21. Swinburne, A.C., Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs Du Mal (Review), The Spectator (6 Sep­ tember 1862), no. 1784, 998-1000. Swinburne, A.C., William Blake: A Critical Essay, London 1868. Swinburne, A. C., ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’, Fortnightly Review 4 (July 1868), 16-40. Swinburne, A.C., ‘Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence’, in Essays and Studies, London 1875, 314-357. Swinburne, A.C.,‘Notes on Some Pictures of 1868’, in Essays and Studies, London 1875, 358-380. Swinburne, A.C., Letters, C.Y. Lang (ed.), 6 vols., New Haven 1959-1962, II. Symonds, J.A., Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts (1877), London 1906. Taylor, W.S., ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’, Apollo 97 (1973), no. 132, 148-155. Ward, H., ‘“The rising genius”: Simeon Solomon’s unexplored interpretation of Sandro Botticelli’, The British Art Journal 12 (2011-2012), no. 3, 60-67. Wilde, O., ‘The Critic as Artist with Some Remarks upon the Importance of Doing Nothing’ (1891), in Intentions, London 1913, 93-217. Wildman, S. and J. Christian, ‘“The ‘Seven Blissfullest Years”’, in S. Wildman and J. Christian (eds.), Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-dreamer, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1998, 141-190. Wilson, S.C., ‘“My Song To The Sea”: Some Notes On Reading Swinburne’, in A. Lombardo (ed.), Giornale di bordo: saggi sull’ immagine poetica del mare, Rome 1997, 307-323. Zambrano, P. and J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 2

Filippino in Botticelli’s Workshop Michelle O’Malley The work of Filippino Lippi in Alessandro Botticelli’s workshop, from 1470 to perhaps just before 1480, has been carefully traced.1 Not surprisingly, the approach to studying these pictures has been mainly from the viewpoint of mapping Filippino’s career. However, as Filippino remained with Botticelli for around ten years, it is also worth considering Filippino’s early work from the point of view of Botticelli’s workshop operation. Jonathan Nelson began to consider the meaning of Filippino in Botticelli’s workshop in an analysis of the Esther pictures, attributed to Botticelli and Filippino.2 He discussed the issue of the workshop and authorship, underlining the way pictures made by the young Filippino underscore Botticelli’s artistic goals and accomplishments. Other works by the young Filippino are equally useful for thinking about the way Botticelli trained workshop assistants and managed their contributions to the output of the business. Under the rubric of exchange, it is also worth considering how Filippino may have trained Botticelli. While these issues may seem highly Botticelli-based, and so an unusual line to take in this volume, it is important to emphasise that it is Filippino’s work that helps to unlock elements of what we might understand about Botticelli’s practices of workshop operation. For example, Filippino’s drawings and those by his less famous colleagues under Botticelli’s roof suggest that Botticelli developed an innovative training method for his assistants. Paintings by Filippino that are largely agreed to date from the 1470s underscore the flexibility of Botticelli’s workshop methods and suggest that Filippino’s contributions to the workshop may have provided a model for Botticelli’s practice with assistants later in his career. The presence of Filippino in Botticelli’s workshop underscores the talent that master painters might employ or develop in their pupils 1 See P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004; G. Goldner and C. Bambach, (eds.) The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle, New York 1997; I. H. Shoemaker, ‘Filippino Lippi as a Draughtsman’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Columbia University 1975; K. B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi, A Critical Study, Cambridge MA 1938; A. Scharf, Filippino Lippi, Vienna 1935. 2 J. K. Nelson, ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”? How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop,’ in: R. Hatfield (ed.) Sandro Botticelli and Herbert Horne: New Research, Florence 2009. ← Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with St John, detail of fig. 2.16

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and assistants over the years, just as does the presence of Michelangelo in Ghirlandaio’s workshop and Leonardo in Verrocchio’s.3 Filippino in Botticelli’s workshop also prompts questions about our understanding of the workshop and its outputs, not only in relation to masters’ decisions about deploying assistants, but also in regard to the number of pictures related to master painters and deemed to be ‘workshop work’. These numbers can be high, and there are decided implications for the discipline’s propensity to label pictures as ‘workshop work’ when they are judged to lack the excellence required to be attributed to the master. These questions of assistants’ training, of authorship and of attribution are the subjects of this chapter.

Studying the Figure

The early drawings attributed to Filippino trace his development as a draughts­ man.4 Filippino’s earliest surviving drawings date from the painter’s time in Botticelli’s workshop. They are mainly figure studies, and George Goldner and Carmen Bambach, in their catalogue of the drawings, argue both that the studies were made from life and that they were made without relation to preparation for any particular painting.5 Indeed, the drawings are understood as studies made purely for learning to draw, and the surviving early drawings track the young painter as he improved his skill. For example, the drawing of a flat, somewhat awkward figure on the recto of a sheet in the Pierpont Morgan Library shows the artist working through problems in the pose and placement of feet as he learned to delineate a man with proportion and volume (fig. 2.1).6 A drawing from the Louvre shows the artist similarly struggling with the place of a figure’s legs and feet.7 Eventually Filippino produced better-proportioned, more natural-looking figures, as in a drawing now at the Metropolitan 3 On Leonardo, see particularly C. C. Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, 4 vols, New Haven and London 2019, I, 86-91. 4 Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (note 1), 106-29, cat. 8-17. 5 Ibid., 17, 25. On drawing from life and the function of drawings, see J. G. Rushton, Jr., ‘Italian Renaissance Figurative Sketchbooks, 1450-1520’, Unpublished PhD. Diss., University of Minnesota, 1976, 67-74, J. Cadogan, ‘From relief to memesis: Drawing the human figure from life and from antique sculpture in the Renaissance’, in From Pattern to Nature in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo, M. W. Kwakkelstein and L. Melli (eds.), Florence, 2012, 195-213 and L. Melli, ‘Il ruolo del Verrocchio nel disegno di figura: dal modello alla natura per l’antico’, in Ibid., 121-36. 6 The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Inv. II 72-73; Goldner and Bambach (note 1), 119-21. 7 Department des Arts Graphiques du Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 342; ibid., 122-24.

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Figure 2.1 Filippino Lippi, Seated man with clasped hands (recto), c. 1475-1480, metalpoint, with white opaque watercolour on grey prepared paper, 18.4 × 12.7 cm., inv. no. II.72, New York, Morgan Library and Museum

Mu­seum of Art, New York (fig. 2.2).8 Filippino’s catalogued drawings document development: figures that are somewhat stiff, slightly awkward and made with a hesitant technique give way to figures that are better balanced and livelier. Sheets of Filippino’s drawings that are dated to c. 1475, collected by Vasari and now in the Christchurch Picture Gallery, Oxford, show figures that are particularly animated, made with strong outlines that emphasise the young painter’s training with Botticelli (figs. 2.3 and 2.4).9 Once probably two pages made at the same time, the sheets show Filippino working in metalpoint to study anatomy and dress. The two end figures of what is now one strip of the Christchurch drawings, for example, repeat the same fluffy-haired cloaked model, highlighting slightly different shapes in the fall of his drapery. On the verso of the other strip, Filippino tackled the drapery of the cloaked figure again. There 8 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. 36.101.1; ibid., 128-30. 9 Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, JBS 33; ibid., 11-17.

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Figure 2.2 Filippino Lippi, Standing youth with hands behind his back, and a seated youth reading (recto), c. 1475-1480, metalpoint, highlighted with white gouache on pink prepared paper, 24.5 × 21.6 cm., inv. no. 36.101.1, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

are several drawings, too, of nude figures. The head of the nude farthest to the left – the first figure drawn – was studied again and again across the page, then overlaid with more studies of different nudes. The way the lines overlap suggests that the figures across each sheet were all probably studies of individual models posing at different times. Indeed, the fluffy-haired cloaked man seems to appear again, having posed on a different occasion nearly nude. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 2.3 Filippino Lippi, Studies of nude and draped figures (verso), c. 1475, silverpoint and white heightening on slate-blue prepared paper, 56.5 × 45 cm. (overall dimensions), 20.7 × 41.5 (upper) 20.7 × 40.8 cm. (lower), inv. no. JBS 33, Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery

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Figure 2.4 Filippino Lippi, Studies of nude and draped figures (recto), c. 1475, silverpoint and white heightening on slate-blue prepared paper, 56.5 × 45 cm. (overall dimensions), 20.7 × 41.5 (upper) 20.7 × 40.8 cm. (lower), inv. no. JBS 33, Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery

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Figure 2.5 Anonymous artists, reproduction of double-page spread from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/ Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, (figs. 29-32, 164- 165, illustrating figs. 2.6 and 2.7 and figs. 2.9 and 2.10 in the present chapter)

A large but much less-celebrated group of drawings, held in a variety of collections, echo this approach to studying the figure. The drawings are difficult to take into account because they are rarely exhibited, almost certainly because they are largely unattributed. In 1975, Carlo Ragghianti and Gigetta Dalli Regoli pulled together many of these drawings in European collections in a book called Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal modello to argue for a new workshop approach developed in the 1470s.10 Nonetheless, it is easy to overlook this volume.11 A few of the book’s double-page spreads make it clear why this is the case: the black and white, the high gloss, and the piled-up page design are all 10

11

C.L. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: disegni dal modello, Pisa 1975. The book focuses on Florentine drawings from the second half of the fifteenth century ‘originally grouped by Bernard Berenson under names such as Davide Ghirlandaio, Francesco Granacci, and Alunno di Domenico, secondary figures whose murky identities all but guaranteed that the drawings got little further attention’, ibid., 45. Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli argue instead that the collection of drawings were inspired by the experi­ mentation of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio, ibid., 47, are largely from the workshops of Botticelli and Filippino, and amount to a pattern book for the study of the figure, ibid., 1. Moreover, the authors underline that the drawings were not preparatory for any particular work of art, but are studies of possibilities of delineating the figure, ibid., 2-3. This volume and the issue of life drawing in the workshop, particularly of nudes, is, however, discussed by J. Burke, The Italian Renaissance Nude, New Haven and London, 2018, 95-103. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 2.6 Anonymous artist, Three standing men, two turned to right, the one at centre seen in profile to left (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 20.4 × 27 cm., inv. no. 1875,0612.2, London, British Museum

detrimental to an appreciation of the drawings’ quality (fig. 2.5). But in the hand, the drawings give a very different sense of the skill and finish invested in the sheets. For example, the British Museum’s study of three men, easily overlooked in the Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli illustration, which suggests bloom across the page, is actually a sophisticated study of draped figures on beautifully prepared pinkish-purple paper (fig. 2.6).12 Like Filippino’s drawings, these studies are in metalpoint, the figures are enlivened with highlights, and they depict a series of individual men, not interacting figures. Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli group the drawings in a complicated system that attributes some to Botticelli and his collaborators, some to Filippino and his collaborators, and some to both, with a few given to other painters. But in the 1470s, Filippino worked for Botticelli, and what is particularly striking is how many of the drawings Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli discussed echo the early drawings by Filippino catalogued by Goldner and Bambach. The artist of the 12

British Museum, London, Inv. 1875.0612.2; Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, op. cit. (note 10), 164.

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Figure 2.7 Anonymous artist, Two standing men, both turned to right (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 20.4 × 27 cm., inv. no. 1875,0612.2, London, British Museum

London drawing in figure 2.6 was clearly perfecting his skill at the naturalistic fall of drapery, as was Filippino in the Christchurch sheets. In addition, the artist repeated some of the models, as Filippino did: the young man drawn on the right of the recto of the sheet (fig. 2.6) makes another appearance on the verso (fig. 2.7), cloaked again but standing in a new position very similar to that of some of the Christchurch figures. Such draped, posed figures are found in scores of the Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli illustrations. Indeed, as they underline, specific posed figures clearly appear in drawings by different artists. For example, the cloaked figure on the left of the verso of the London drawing (fig. 2.7) is repeated as the middle figure in a sheet in Berlin (fig. 2.8); the folds of the drapery and the turned staff are identical.13 The nude on the right of this Berlin drawing is repeated on the right of the recto of a sheet in Hamburg (fig. 2.9), while the drawing on the verso of the Hamburg sheet (fig. 2.10) depicts the 13

Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Inv 5092, Ibid. cat. no. 84, fig. 116. The figure on the right is repeated in a loose sketch in Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Inv. 383E; Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, op. cit. (note 10), cat. no. 100, fig. 151.

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Figure 2.8 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 31 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, Draped figure between two male nudes (recto), c. 1490-1500, metalpoint with heightened white on purple prepared paper, 19.8 × 26.9 cm., inv. no. KdZ 5092, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen

Figure 2.9 Anonymous artist, Two cloaked men and a nude man (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 19.6 × 27.8 cm., inv. no. 21044, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 2.10 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 32 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of Man reading and man seated (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on pink prepared paper, 19.6 × 27.8 cm., inv. no. 21044, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett

Figure 2.11 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 115 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of Man reading and man seated (verso), c. 1480, metalpoint heightened with white on purple prepared paper, 20.5 × 24.0 cm., inv. no 115 360E, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 2.12 Anonymous artist, A seated man and a standing man (St Sebastian?) nude and bound (recto), c. 1480, metalpoint, heightened with white on blue-grey prepared paper, 20.7 × 28.8 cm., inv. no. Bp,1.15, London, British Museum

same two figures as a drawing in Florence (fig. 2.11).14 Each of these is clearly by a different draughtsman. The two figures in the Hamburg drawing (fig. 2.10), for example, are by an artist interested in strong outline and careful modelling; those in the version in Florence (fig. 2.11) have a more nervous outline, and form is modelled with slashed lines of white highlight and dark metalpoint. The artist of the Berlin drawing (fig. 2.8) produced a sketchy, less finished cloaked figure than the artist of the same figure in the London sheet (fig. 2.7), and a less anatomically understood nude than the artist in the Hamburg drawing (fig. 2.9). Another set of identical figures can be traced in drawings in London, Berlin and Florence. The same sprawling seated man on the recto of the British Museum drawing in figure 2.12 also appears on a single sheet in the Kupferstich­ kabinett, Berlin (fig. 2.13) as well as in a sheet in the Uffizi, looking rather bored

14

Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Inv. 21044 and Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Inv. 360E; ibid. cat. no. 36, fig. 32 and cat. no. 98, fig. 115.

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Figure 2.13 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 147 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of A seated man (verso), 1490-1500, metalpoint heightened in white on pale bluish grey prepared paper, 19.9 × 14.4 cm., inv. no. KdZ 5189, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen

Figure 2.14 Anonymous artist, reproduction of fig. 138 from C. Ragghianti and G. Dalli Regoli, Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal Modello, Pollaiolo/Leonardo/Botticelli, Pisa, 1975, of A seated figure and two standing nude men, metalpoint heightened in white on greyish blue prepared paper, 21 × 27 cm., inv. no 158E, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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in each rendition.15 The nude depicted in figure 2.12 was studied twice by an artist represented by another drawing in the Uffizi (fig. 2.14), where the profile of the centre nude was corrected and emphasised with a very strong continuous outline. 16 The nude was drawn again, on the right side of the sheet, with an improved profile and equally emphasised outline. A firm outline also appears along the proper left side of the nude of the British Museum drawing, and it may be that this profile was a focus of the drawing session. Figure 2.14 also contains a drawing of a man leaning on his hand with his elbow propped on his knee, a variation of the pose of the seated man in figures 2.12 and 2.13. The drawings suggest that such figures were commonly arranged for assistants to practice their drawing skills. It is a complicated pose to draw, requiring careful representation of bent limbs in precise relation to each other, depiction of the weight and volume of clothing, and portrayal of a sense of nonchalance. Some draughtsmen were more successful than others These are only a few of the many drawings catalogued and discussed by Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli. What is notable is that each is a carefully executed study of unconnected figures in metalpoint on well-prepared paper. The figures have the kind of mannered stance and exaggerated drapery evident in the Christchurch sheets: stances and draperies that seem to have been arranged particularly for making studies. For example, in the sheets attributed to Filippino as well as in the presently unattributed drawings are images of figures holding tricky poses, carrying artificially rucked-up cloaks, and representing nudes in action. That is, what is key about these drawings is that they share qualities in terms of subject, focus and technique. In recent years, this type of unattributed drawing has almost universally been catalogued as Circle/School of Filippino Lippi; this has influenced the drawings’ common dating to c1480. However, many were not long ago attributed to Botticelli, as scrawls on the backs of some of the drawings show.17 Moreover, several of the drawings exhibit an emphasis on outline that suggests training with Botticelli, an emphasis that suggests, in other words, that some of these artists could have been working alongside the young Filippino in the 1470s. Though some drawings may be later and so made by assistants training in Filippino’s workshop, Filippino’s catalogued drawings show that such drawings depend from the method he 15 16 17

British Museum, London, Inv. Bp 1.15; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Inv 5189 verso; ibid. cat. no. 85, fig. 147; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Inv. 391E; Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, op. cit. (note 10), cat. no. 106, fig. 136 and cat. no. 68, fig. 70. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Inv. 159E; Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, op. cit. (note 10), cat. no. 91, fig. 138. See, for example, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Inv. 223E verso; ibid., cat. no. 24, fig. 40.

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first practised under Botticelli. That is, the drawings almost certainly represent a method Botticelli used to obtain from his assistants a high degree of skill in the depiction of the figure, both draped and nude. As a group, such drawings are often assumed to be not only by assistants but also of assistants.18 Indeed, the well-known sheets from Maso Finiguerra’s workshop suggest that a young artist had a fortuitous chance to use as a model a colleague who was also at work drawing. The figures considered here, however, are different. The implication of the drawings by Filippino and those catalogued by Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli is that assistants were drawing men who were posing formally as models; they donned capes or stripped down to hold mannered stances precisely so members of the workshop could sketch them. Jill Burke, in discussing drawings from life, particularly the drawings published by Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, has recently argued convincingly that workshop assistants did not pose as nude models, and it is likely that the models depicted in these sheets, clothed and unclothed, were brought into the workshop purely to pose.19 As Burke observes, their body types are similar, and she refers to Leonardo’s suggesting that models be chosen for grace and developed musculature.20 The practice of posing was clearly serious: models might use a support to hold tiring poses. This is clear in several drawings, for example the third man from the left on the Christchurch lower sheet in fig. 2.4 and the right hand figures on the recto and verso of the British Museum sheet in figs. 2.6 and 2.7 are holding poles.21 The poses of the nude men with arms out on both sheets of the Christchurch drawings in fig 2.4 suggest that Filippino simply opted to omit the supporting pole, but not to change the position of the hand curled around it. The implication of Filippino’s drawings of the 1470s, and the large group of unattributed drawings that are similar in approach and dated in the same decade, is that Botticelli oversaw regular, organised drawing sessions. In other words, the implication is that Botticelli practised a formal system of training that included drawing from the model.22 Such a system suggests that Botticelli put particular emphasis on the development of his assistants’ drawing skills. Crucially, the sheets are a reminder 18 19 20 21

See, for example, Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (note 1), 178-79. Burke, op. cit. (note 11), 101-02. Burke, op. cit. (note 11), 101. See also BM Inv. Pp, 1-24; Filippino’s Uffizi drawing Inv. 204E and Dresden drawing C.21 in Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (note 1), 125 and 39. 22 Christchurch JBS 32. This is not precisely the argument of Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli, as they see the drawings as recording a system of drawing practiced by Botticelli and Filippino together; they do not link the method to a practice of training developed by Botticelli, though this is implied in their analysis.

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that all painters practised drawing; the painters who never ran their own workshops as much as those who eventually became masters themselves. We cannot tell which among the anonymous artists of the Ragghianti and Dalli Regoli drawings progressed to become master painters, but it is likely that most assistants trained in a system of regularly drawing figures from life improved and increased their skill. While it is easy to identify areas of stiffness, hesitancy and awkwardness represented in these drawings, it is also clear that the drawings show a reasonable understanding of anatomy and a proficiency in depiction; many of the figures have weight, volume and even character. The ability to draw figures like this was a skill central to the work of a busy master painter like Botticelli, who was creating pictures from around 1470 for commissions and for the direct-sale market. Understanding the body, as well as being able to depict varieties of pose and gesture, was especially important in the workshop of Botticelli’s early career. So was an ability to depict drapery. The numerous images of the Adoration of the Magi made in the 1470s suggest one way he could have used assistants’ skills in drawing the cloaked figure. Pictures of the Virgin and Child suggest another. This was a common subject, and while some Virgin and Child images of the 1470s were commissioned, others were almost certainly produced for speculative sale, a task often delegated to workshop assistants. A few surviving early Virgin and Child pictures, such as the nearly identical paintings in Pasadena and Chicago, suggest serious production for the speculative market early in Botticelli’s career.23 Their very repetition implies that the demand for Botticelli’s paintings for domestic devotion was especially high.

Design and Production

Perhaps because of high levels of demand, Botticelli turned over to Filippino the scope to design certain pictures. One such is the Virgin and Child with Angels in Paris, long attributed to Filippino and dated to the early 1470s (fig. 2.15). The angels of the picture particularly show Filippino’s grounding in reproducing the ‘look’ of Botticelli’s work, and it might be argued that this and other paintings, such as the Virgin and Child with Saint John in London (fig. 2.16), derive from lost designs by Botticelli. However, the figures of these Virgin and Child pictures, as Patrizia Zambrano argues, are less tender and less physically and emotionally connected than are most of Botticelli’s early Virgin and Child 23

For dating to the late 1460s, see R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, 2 vols, London 1978, II, cat. nos. A12 and A13; for an argument for dating in the 1470s, see H. Körner, Botticelli, Cologne 2006, 91-92.

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Figure 2.15 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with Two Angels, tempera on panel, 79.8 × 55 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre

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Figure 2.16 Filippino Lippi, Virgin and Child with St John, c. 1480, tempera on poplar, 59.1 × 43.8 cm. London, National Gallery

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figures.24 That is, the work shows a different conceptualisation of the relation between the Virgin and Child, and this suggests that the master did not give the design to the assistant. Moreover, other paintings attributed to the young Filippino, such as the Washington Tobias and the Angel and the Cherbourg Entombed Christ supported by the Virgin, the Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea, for example, suggest that Botticelli delegated various subjects to Filippino to design and paint throughout the 1470s. This evidence that Filippino undertook designs while in Botticelli’s workshop may seem normal from the point of view of Filippino studies, but in the fifteenth century, creating design was regarded as the province of the master painter. This is underlined in Italian renaissance contracts that specifically mention the master painter as responsible for designing a new work.25 It means that Filippino’s position as a generator of designs in Botticelli’s workshop was unusual and significant. Moreover, the dating of the Paris picture to the early or mid-1470s implies that Botticelli almost immediately deployed Filippino’s extraordinary talent within his business.26 As this suggests, Filippino probably helped both to satisfy clients who commissioned paintings from Botticelli and to provide stock for Botticelli’s speculative sale market. Botticelli’s collaboration with Filippino highlights an unusual dynamic in the renaissance painting workshop, and it suggests a way that Filippino may well have trained Botticelli, for later in his career, Botticelli organised the production of paintings for speculative sale particularly to use the skills of his individual assistants as draughtsmen. They commonly had the agency to draw figures freehand, almost certainly in relation to a design by the master, and to create backgrounds.27 Occasionally they also composed pictures: he gave some 24 25

26 27

Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 123. The clearest statement of the expectation that the master would design a commissioned work is in the contract between Pinturicchio and Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, noting Pinturicchio was to design everything, paint the heads, undertake any touching up needed and bring the whole work to his usual quality of finish; see G. Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese secoli XII-XVI, Siena 1854-56 (repr., Utrecht 1969 ), vol. 3, 10. Evidence also appears in contracts with specific sua mano clauses; see M. O’Malley, ‘Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-century Paintings Contracts and the Stipulated Use of the Painter’s Hand,’ in: E. Marchand and A. Wright (eds.) With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530, Aldershot 1998, 15578 and The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy, London/ New Haven 2005, 93-94. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), cat. no. 5. The existence of versions of this picture suggest its status in the workshop. This is clear in the individual interpretations of, for example, the Virgin and Child panels made in connection with the figures of the San Barnaba altarpiece. See Lightbown op. cit. (note 23) II, cat. no. C13, C14, C15 and C17, which are not identical.

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the autonomy to interpret his design ideas within specific conceptual perimeters.28 While none of the resulting pictures has the élan of a painting by Filippino, they are solid productions that represent Botticelli’s characteristic look in design and style.

Assistant Numbers

Considering Filippino in Botticelli’s early workshop offers the opportunity to address a wider question in the discipline of art history concerning the way pictures are designated as ‘workshop work’ in relation to their quality, without much attention to the implications of such categorisation in terms of workshop operation. Such attributions imply that not only Botticelli but also many other painters had large numbers of assistants, even though research on workshop size suggests the opposite.29 We know of only two men in Botticelli’s workshop around 1470: Filippino, and Benedetto di Domenico d’Andrea, who was documented as ‘with Botticelli’ in January 1473, but who may have joined him as early as 1470, when he broke his contract as an assistant to Neri di Bicci.30 In 1473, Benedetto was twenty-eight years old, and had already had over six years of training from Neri.31 This suggests that he and Filippino together offered Botticelli an especially experienced workforce. It is possible that they were joined by Jacopo di Domenico di Papi in the later 1470s; he was certainly working for Botticelli in 1480, the year he turned twenty.32 This tally gives Botticelli, as far as we know, two mature assistants in the mid-1470s, and maybe three such assistants toward the end of the 1470s, depending on how long Benedetto remained and when Jacopo joined. 28 29

30 31 32

The author is working on an article on Botticelli’s methods of workshop management and operation. Jean Cadogan suggests that Ghirlandaio used three assistants to produce the Innocenti altarpiece; see J. K Cadogan, ‘Sulla bottega del Ghirlandaio,’ in: W. Prinz and M. Seidel (ed.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, 1994, Florence 1996, 89-90, and that he used five assistants to produce the Tornabuoni and Pisa frescos; see J. K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan, London/New Haven 2000, 169. On the identity of, and documentation concerning, Botticelli’s assistants, see A. Cecchi, Botticelli, Milan 2005, 66-86. Ibid. 66. On Jacopo di Domenico, see Ibid., 75-76. and L.A. Waldman, ‘Three Altarpieces by Pier Francesco Foschi: Patronage, Context and Function (with Notes on Some Assistants in the Workshop of Botticelli),’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 137 (2001), 22.

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Few pictures attributed to workshop assistants other than Filippino are dated to the 1470s. They include the versions of the portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici, made after the Pazzi conspiracy, some Virgin and Child images and some female portraits.33 Nothing can be attributed to Benedetto. Much later, Lorenzo Violi noted that many idlers could be found in Botticelli’s workshop; it is not impossible that the Mariani household was a popular meeting place and that some young men, idling there, acted as models.34 What about later decades? Around 1480, Filippino left the workshop and Botticelli took on two eleven-year olds: Raffaello di Lorenzo di Fruosino Tosi, called il Tosso, and Giovanni di Benedetto di Giovanni Cianfanini.35 In 1480, Jacopo di Domenico di Papi was first documented and Benedetto, now about 35 years old, may still have been working for the master. A further assistant is mentioned once.36 This gives Botticelli four or five assistants in 1480, three of whom, Tosi, Cianfanini and Jacopo di Domenico, are documented to have remained until 1490. None of them, however, could replace the talent of Filippino. Nonetheless, these must be the men who helped create, for example, numerous commissioned pictures as well as the Nastagio degli Onesti images, the versions of the Madonna of the Magnificat, the Judgement of Paris, the individual pictures of Venus, the Virgin and Child images in Dresden, Frankfurt, Florence, London, Lille and Oxford, and certain feminine portraits, to name some pictures given to assistants that are popularly dated to the 1480s.37 Of the 1490s, we know of only two assistants, but most ‘workshop’ pictures post-date 1490, because they are related to pictures assumed to have been commissioned around or after 1490, or because they resemble Botticelli’s later style. They suggest that Botticelli had many more assistants than are documented. While attributing hands is not the goal of this exercise, these images give us a sense of the numbers of men in the workshop that are implied by the 33

34 35 36 37

See A. Schumacher (ed.), Botticelli. Likeness, Myth, Devotion, cat. exh., Frankfurt (Städel Museum), Ostfildern-Ruit 2009, 164-69 on Giuliano de’ Medici; Körner, op. cit. (note 23), 291 on Virgin and Child images; Lightbown, op. cit. (note 23), cat. B30-32 on Giuliano de’ Medici, B115 on Virgin and Child images, C4-6 on female portraits. Lightbown, op. cit. (note 23), doc 13a. Cecchi, op. cit. (note 25), 80-82. Ibid. 82. See Körner, op. cit. (note 23), 277 on the Judgement of Paris, 277-82 on Nastagio, 257-58 on the versions of Venus, 291-92 on Virgin and Child images; Cecchi, op. cit. (note 25), 202-18 on Nastagio, 218 on the Magnificat; Lightbown, op. cit. (note 23), 47-51 on Nastagio, 42-44 on the Magnificat, 120-22 on the versions of Venus, 117-118 on portraits, 126-128 on Virgin and Child images; Schumacher, op. cit. (note 33), 232-5 on the Judgement of Paris, 236-39 on the versions of Venus, 152-55 on female portraits.

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numerous attributions casually made to ‘the workshop’. They suggest that we may need to re-think either the average size of workshops or the range of the work, in terms of the level of quality, that master painters might produce.

Assistants as ‘Botticelli’

Filippino’s work in Botticelli’s workshop is useful for thinking through elements of Botticelli’s workshop practices. Filippino’s drawings, the drawings by other artists that are very similar in conception to Filippino’s work, and the agency Filippino had to design pictures, suggest the creativity Botticelli brought to workshop management. Filippino’s work suggests that, from early in his career, Botticelli set up models to develop his assistants’ drawings skills. Filippino’s early drawings show how he benefited from repeating certain figural poses; this is likely also to have been the case for other assistants. Filippino’s paintings dated between 1470 and 1480 indicate one way that Botticelli deployed the skills Filippino developed. Later work by other assistants suggest that, in the years after Filippino’s time in his workshop, Botticelli gave some assistants similar agency to create pictures almost certainly for speculative sale. The numerous pictures by Filippino and others who assisted Botticelli highlight an implication of the casual attributions art historians make to ‘workshop work’; the numbers alone should make us think carefully about our understanding of the size and possible outputs of Renaissance painters’ workshops. While the work of the 1470s attributed to Filippino demonstrates how a proto-master might go about building on his master’s ideas to develop his own skills in design, Filippino’s development must have occurred in a context in which the pictures he produced were understood as ‘by’, or at least ‘of’ Botticelli. He was, after all, a member of the Botticelli workshop. However, that does not mean that potential clients and buyers did not realise that the Botticelli business housed an especially individual talent in addition to that of the master. That kind of information may well have been a factor in the early demand for Botticelli’s work that is implied by the pairs of pictures that Botticelli produced, such as the nearly identical pictures in the Art Instiute, Chicago, and the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena as well as the several versions of pictures based on the well-known images of Botticelli’s master, Filippo Lippi, that Botticelli is known to have made in the 1460s. Such works suggest that the level of demand was high and that it, over time, undoubtedly caused a need for more assistants. The documentation presently known is unlikely to represent everyone who worked in Botticelli’s shop. One clear fact, however, is that none Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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equalled the sophisticated talent that Filippino brought to the workshop over the course of the 1470s. Acknowledgments Much of the research for this article was undertaken during a Fellowship in 2015-16 at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle, North Carolina. I am very grateful to the Center for its support. Bibliography Bambach, C. C., Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, 4 vols, New Haven/ London 2019. Burke, J., The Italian Renaissance Nude, New Haven and London, 2018. Cadogan, J. K., Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan, New Haven/London 2000. Cadogan, J. K., ‘Sulla Bottega Del Ghirlandaio’, in W. Prinz and M Seidel., (eds.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, 1994, Florence, 89-96. Cadogan, J. K., ‘From relief to mimesis: Drawing the human figure from life and from antique sculpture in the Renaissance’, in M. W. Kwakkelstein and L. Melli (eds.), From Pattern to Nature in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo, Florence, 2012, 195-213. Cecchi, A., Botticelli, Milan 2005. Goldner, G., and Bambach C., (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New Haven/London 1997. Körner, H., Botticelli, Cologne 2006. Lightbown, R., Sandro Botticelli, 2 vols., London 1978. Melli, L., ‘Il ruolo del Verrocchio nel disegno di figura: dal modello alla natura per l’antico’, in M. W. Kwakkelstein and L. Melli (eds.), From Pattern to Nature in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo, Florence 2012, 121-36. Milanesi, G., Documenti Per La Storia Dell’arte Senese, Secoli xii-xvi, Utrecht 1969. Nelson, J. K., ‘“Botticelli” or “Filippino”? How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop’, in R. Hatfiled (ed.), Sandro Botticelli and Herbert Horne: New Research, Florence 2009, 137-68. O’Malley M., The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy, New Haven/London 2005. O’Malley M., ‘Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Paintings Contracts and the Stipulated Use of the Painter’s Hand’, in E. Marchand and A. Wright (eds.), With and

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without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530, Aldershot 1998, 155-78. Ragghianti, C. and Dalli Regoli G., Firenze 1470-1480: Disegni dal modello; Pollaiuolo, Leonardo, Botticelli, Pisa 1975. Rushton, J. G. Jr., ‘Italian Renaissance Figurative Sketchbooks, 1450-1520’, Unpublished PhD. Diss., University of Minnesota, 1976. Scharf, A., Filippino Lippi, Vienna 1935. Schumacher A. (ed.), Botticelli. Likeness, Myth, Devotion, cat. exh. Frankfurt am Main (Städel Museum), Ostfildern-Ruit 2009. Shoemaker, I. H., ‘Filippino Lippi as a Draughtsman’, unpublished PhD thesis, Colum­ bia University, 1975. Waldman L. A., ‘Three Altarpieces by Pier Francesco Foschi: Patronage, Context and Function (with Notes on Some Assistants in the Workshop of Botticelli),’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 137 (2001), 17-36. Zambrano, P. and Nelson J.K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 3

Visible Rays in Filippino’s London Adoration of the Magi Paul Hills Returning to Florentine art after four decades studying Venetian, I am struck by the distinctive and often surprising features of late quattrocento painting in Tuscany. One of the most striking of these, despite Alberti’s strictures, is the abundance of gold rays and golden ornament applied with gold leaf or shellgold to the surface of paintings, notably by Botticelli, but also by Filippino.1 In works by their contemporaries in Venice and the Veneto, such as Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio and Cima da Conegliano, gold rays are far less common. Even if we compare two paintings involving visions of radiant light, where at first sight there appears to be some rapprochement between the Florentine and Venetian schools, Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert in the Frick Collection, c. 1479, and Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard in the Badia in Florence, c. 1484-5 (fig. 7.3), we notice that Filippino tends to bring his colour back towards gold, whereas Bellini translates gold into light.2 An obvious explanation for this persistence of rays might be that Botticelli and Filippino simply carried on using the technique that Filippino’s father had deployed to dazzling effect. Filippo Lippi’s skill was nowhere more in evidence than in the Adoration of the Child that he painted as altarpiece for the chapel in the Medici Palace (fig. 3.1), in which networks of fine gold rays perform as narrative pointers, as ornament and as sign of divine presence and spiritual energy.3 Significantly, Lippi rarely laid down a gold field or campo d’oro on his 1 Alberti censures the ‘excessive use of gold’ on the surface of paintings but welcomes gold on ‘other ornaments … that are added to painting, such as sculpted columns, bases and pediments’: Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, para. 49 in: C. Grayson (ed.), On Painting, Oxford 1972, 92-3. 2 For Bellini’s technique see In a New Light: Giovanni Bellini’s ‘St Francis in the Desert’, S. Rutherglen and C. Hale (eds.), The Frick Collection, New York 2015; for his modulation of colour and light see P. Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250-1550, New Haven/London 1999, 133-54. 3 For discussion see M. Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi. The Carmelite Painter, New Haven/London 1999, 172-82 and fig. 178. ← Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of fig. 3.7

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Figure 3.1 Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Christ Child, c. 1459, tempera and oil on panel, 129.4 × 118.6 cm. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen

panels: far from unthinkingly employing an outmoded technique, he purposefully recast and refined the use of gold rays to quicken and animate his depiction, thereby transfiguring a largely iconic subject into an event.4 Filippo’s example was widely imitated in Florence in the 1470s and 1480s, if rarely matched in refinement of execution and subtlety of purpose. Less original painters, such as the Master of the Castello Nativity and Jacopo del Sellaio, tended to ‘gift-wrap’ their Madonna’s with filigree threads of gold. In their case the impulse to ornament predominates. But in these same years more gifted artists, preeminently the young Leonardo, avoided the use of gold rays in favour of a more naturalistic treatment of light. Perugino, who like Leonardo passed through Verrocchio’s shop as a young man, also chose to structure his paintings according to a new conception of chiaroscuro, if occasionally resorting to the use of gold.5 Given this shift amongst outstanding young painters active in Florence, the fact that one as talented as Filippino continued to use

4 Since contemporary texts refer to the campo d’oro rather than fondo’ d’oro, it is preferable to refer to this as the ‘gold field’ rather than ‘gold background’. For discussion see P. Hills, Veiled Presence: Body and Drapery from Giotto to Titian, New Haven/London 2018, 86-7. 5 In Perugino’s Annunciation in Fano, for example, God the Father appears against a mandorla of gold, but no rays of gold extend towards the Virgin.

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Figure 3.2 Filippino Lippi, A seated and standing Man, c. 1480-1490, metalpoint heightened with white gouache on grey prepared paper, 28.1 × 20.3 cm. inv. no. KK-C-39r-XBO01, Dresden, Kupferstich­ kabinett, Staatliche Kunst­samm­lungen

rays of gold through the 1480s and beyond cannot be explained entirely by his artistic inheritance. Instead we must turn to his drawings and graphic preferences. The large number of drawings that have come down to us, many of which cannot be related to documented commissions or surviving paintings, indicate that he took particular pleasure in drawing the figure, both nude and draped. Throughout his career he evidently chose to draw from models to develop fluency and stimulate invention. Often he completed one figure and then added another beside the first in an ad-hoc arrangement in which only the emphatic rhythms of the drapery give a semblance of unity to the pair. A sheet in Dresden of a seated and standing man (fig. 3.2) is typical of a group of drawings, datable to the early 1480s, in which drapery in bold and sometimes illogical folds shapes figure and drapery as one.6 The curling locks of hair and heavy draperies in these 6 George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New Haven/London, 1997, cat. no. 25, 148-9.

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sheets of drawings suggest that Filippino was responding to Verrocchio’s contemporary sculptures, especially the rhythm and bulk of the bronze group of Christ and St Thomas for Orsanmichele, though he never quite matches the complex logic of the sculptor’s folds.7 Michael Baxandall has noted, ‘drawing in general is a tendentious vehicle for thought about appearance’.8 The nature of this bias depends upon an artist’s chosen medium, and in Filippino’s case his preferred medium, especially in the years around 1480, was metalpoint, though he also used pen and ink throughout his career. In the Dresden drawing and others like it, he drew on paper prepared with a coloured ground and heightened with white, a technique that furnished a three-tone system, with the ground as mid-tone, the metalpoint as dark, and the white heightening as light. Since the darks, executed with the strokes of lead-point or silver-point, are closer to grey than to black, the white heightening, laid in with the point of the brush, takes on a conspicuous role in affirming relief. The medium militates against an entirely smooth gradation from light to dark or dark to light and gives prominence to the white highlights as salient and somewhat detached from the matrix of form. They lie over the surface like a dusting of snow. Repeated use of the three-tone system subtly shaped Filippino’s pictorial habits of modeling. In particular, the salience of white highlights applied with the brush suggests some parallels with the modelling and use of gold rays in his paintings. In his acute consideration of the three-tone system used by Florentines, Baxandall noted the difference between the darks, applied with the point of the stylus of silver or lead, and the highlights, applied with the brush dipped in biacca or lead-white. ‘Metalpoint’, he observed, ‘naturally makes fine linear marks and urges linear continuity; object and plane edges can be abstracted with fine linear marks, and internal detail and differentiation of surface can be worked on with the help of hatching.’9 By contrast the whites ‘accommodate the making of blobs and bars rather than fine lines, and lend themselves less readily to differentiation within their domain’. In the Dresden sheet, Filippino mitigated this contrast a little by using a blunter and perhaps softer point of lead or silver to make a relatively broad line in the darks, which are often laid in with hatching, while applying the white as highlights that scud over the 7 For the Christ and St Thomas see A. Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, New Haven/London 1997, 57-80, 209-12. 8 M. Baxandall, Shadows and Enlightenment, New Haven/ London 1995, 149. 9 Ibid, 150-51. Baxandall’s analysis is found in an appendix entitled ‘Three notes on Leonardo and Early Renaissance Shadow’, 146-55, which despite its importance has been largely ignored by scholars of the Renaissance.

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ridges of the folds in a relatively linear manner.10 Essentially, the three-tone system as he employs it is linear in emphasis. Furthermore it generalizes textures rather than distinguishing between them: thus highlights on skin or hair are not so different from highlights on cloth. Both these features of Filippino’s drawings have consequences for the colour and modelling in his paintings. Most painters active in Florence from Masaccio onwards, modelled their figures as lit by a lateral light, with one side illuminated and the other shaded in more-or less equal proportions. Alberti codified this practice in passages in his treatise on painting in his discussion of ‘circumscription’ and ‘the reception of light’ where he recommends marking with a line the mid-point between the light and the shaded surface.11 On Filippino’s sheet in Dresden copious hatching in metalpoint on the lavender-grey ground more-or-less follows the logic of lateral light falling from the left, but the white highlights, added in the last stages, are more equivocal. Rather than dividing the figure into an illuminated side and a lit side, the white concentrates the light into a mobile highlight more akin to lustre than to stable tonal modeling. Lustre, as the reflection of a light source, changes its position on an object according to the angle of vision of the beholder: it moves as the beholder moves.12 Filippino does not replicate lustre with the visual logic of Netherlandish painters such as Van Eyck; instead he harnesses its mobility to his own rhythmic purpose. In the drawing in Dresden, especially on the right-hand figure, the white heightening accents the crests of the folds as if glancing along the salient summits of a sculpture in lustrous material. Endowed with their own energy, the lines of white heightening tend to float free, exerting a pull towards the surface slightly at odds with the shading. Similarly, in his paintings, highlights, whether picked out in gold or in high-toned pigment, are both mobile and conspicuous, bridging near and far in looping arcs. In the context of religious painting, the gleam of these highlights affirms sacred presence. Before examining the work that is the main focus of this paper, the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery in London, we must first consider a painting of the same subject that was formative for the young Filippino, namely Botticelli’s Adoration in the Uffizi (fig. 3.3).13 10 11 12 13

For Filippino’s distinctive handling of silver and lead-point see Bambach’s analysis in Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (note 6), 24-5. Alberti, Book II, para 32 in: Grayson, op. cit. (note 1), 71, concluding sentence. For the distinction between lustre and lumen see E.H. Gombrich, ‘Light, Form and Texture in Fifteenth-Century Painting North and South of the Alps’ in: The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, Oxford 1976, 19-35. For recent discussion of Botticelli’s many paintings of the Adoration of the Magi see D. Dombrowski, Die religiösen Gemälde Sandro Botticellis: Malerei als ‘pia philosophia’,

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Figure 3.3 Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi (The Lama Altarpiece), c. 1475, tempera on panel, 111 × 134 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi

In this altarpiece, destined for Santa Maria Novella, Botticelli considered carefully the relation between the rectangular format of the pala and the pictorial architecture within it. He aligned the front of the stable roof to coincide with the upper border of the panel, and depicted grasses hanging down from the eaves of the roof to furnish a natural valance to the altarpiece. The rays of the Star of Bethlehem pierce the darkness just within this fringe, and yet owing to the very narrow interval between the attached frame in leaf pattern and the grassy eaves depicted below it, the star appears as both at the front of the pictorial space and just within it. The star’s rays are repeated in smaller bursts, the radiating form of which is extended in the bright highlights of Joseph’s tawny yellow cloak as they cascade towards the Child (see detail, fig. 3.4). Following Italienische Forschungen der Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz, Max-PlanckInstitut, Vierte Folge, vol. VII, Berlin and Munich 2010, 89-132; for discussion of gold rays in Botticelli’s Lama Adoration see especially 111-15. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 3.4 Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi, detail of fig. 3.3, central upper section

this descent, we notice that the cone-shape of the starbursts is replicated and brought within touch in the form of the veil that falls over the golden vessel offered by the magus directly below the Virgin. This linear patterning with highlights harks back to the Florentine duecento, where artists such as Meliore adapted Byzantine chrysography by combining Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 3.5 Meliore di Jacopo, The Redeemer between the Virgin and Three Saints, 1271, detail of the Redeemer, tempera on panel, 85 × 810 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi

highlights in gold with highlights in white or pale-toned pigment (fig. 3.5). Essentially curvilinear, they wind round sleeves and over shoulders to give shape to figure and drapery. A similar linear dynamic informs Botticelli’s modelling. In Filippino the relation to the earlier tradition of chrysography is less obvious, but he also fashions similes between gold rays, highlights and gauzy veils. Filippino’s earliest compositional idea for an Adoration of the Magi is preserved in a drawing in pen, ink and wash in the Uffizi. 14 In this, as in Botticelli’s painting, he lined up the roof of the stable with the top edge of the painting, 14

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Figure 3.6 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7, left margin

but Filippino delineates this roof as a canopy projecting forward. At the upper right of the drawing, he made a series of regularly spaced strokes of the pen, as if plotting some kind of elementary grid. In the Adoration in London (fig. 3.7), datable to a few years later, Filippino no longer aligned the stable roof to coincide with the top edge of the frame, but again takes the measure of his surface by inscribing straight lines on all four sides of the panel, about 1.5 centimeters from the borders..15 At the left margin this line coincides with the division in the masonry in a section of wall (fig. 3.6), which – unlike the stable in the centre ­– is depicted as lying parallel to the picture plane. The masonry division at the top of this wall also coincides with a line that extends right across the panel, dividing it exactly in half. On both the vertical and horizontal axis, constructional lines become for a stretch visibly embodied within the depicted image. 15

This was noted by Jill Dunkerton and reported in the catalogue entry in P. Zambrano and J. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 323; see also the full discussion by Patrizia Zambrano, op. cit. 169-78.

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There is nothing especially remarkable about this move between line as geometric abstraction and line as physical entity given that Filippino was working in a pictorial culture in which draughtsmen moved readily between indenting on paper or panel with blind stylus and inscribing a visible trace with metalpoint, pen and ink, or brush. Botticelli’s Adoration tondo, also in the National Gallery in London, is covered with these constructional indentations made with ruler and compasses and visible to the naked eye in raking light.16 Like Botticelli, and like Filippo Lippi before him, Filippino occasionally used blind stylus in his drawings. For the Florentine artists from the mid-to-late fifteenthcentury the blind stylus is a significant agent of intellect and imagination, assisting them to move from the conceptual to the physical trace or tratto. Use of the stylus eased the passage between the invisible and the visible.17 On the London panel Filippino applied fine lines of mordant gilding to describe the entry of the star’s rays just below the top edge of the panel (fig. 3.8). The lines of gold, now somewhat abraded, are so fine as to be barely visible against the pale sky. As in Botticelli’s Adoration in the Uffizi, smaller sparks radiate on either side of the central ray. Descending toward the Child these golden filaments almost blend with the grasses hanging down from the stable roof, where directly above the above the Virgin Filippino has added a little gold to the long blades of grass to heighten the effect. Below this, at the point where the central ray meets the Madonna’s halo, a perceptual shift takes place, as the viewer’s eye jumps the interval from this vertical ray to the staff that Joseph leans on. Such shifts or interchanges between immaterial rays and material objects conducting light along their edge will become a hallmark of Filippino’s style. In the London Adoration, as we follow Joseph’s staff down to the head of the kneeling king, we notice how Filippino is thinking with colour, composing with colour. Significantly, he departs from Botticelli’s example by clothing the central king in a bright yellow that relates him to the deeper amber of Joseph’s mantle; like Joseph, this king wears a deep blue robe, visible in an arc at the neckline (see detail facing p. 65). Here the development of Filippino’s thought is revealed by a pentimento visible in the yellow folds hanging down from the shoulder of the king, where the greenish tones of the ground now faintly show through. Evidently the artist first conceived of the arm as bent at the elbow and draped in the same manner as the king to the left. Changing his mind, he has brushed in a long over-sleeve in order to extend the cascade of amber and yellow right down to the ground. He has distinguished all three kings by adding 16 17

See J. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer, London/New Haven 1991, 138-9. See C. Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300-1600, New York/Cambridge 1999, 333-340.

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Figure 3.7 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, 1470–1480, tempera on panel, 56.5 × 85.7 cm. London, National Gallery

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Figure 3.8 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7 with rays of star

ornament in gold to their garments in small patches like orphreys, but since all three are dressed in unusually pale colours, this gold is not conspicuous. A lively pattern of diamonds fringed with golden strokes lies in a broad band around the hanging over-sleeve. This king bears no gift, and – most unusually – his hands are concealed from view. At this precise juncture, between the king and the Child, Filippino permits nothing to interrupt the vertical axis that descends from the heavenly ray of the star and culminates in the golden-yellow draperies that fall to the earth. It is here, on the ground beside the king, that we notice another novelty in the shape of a cloak of muted yellow slumped over a rock. Although the motif appears to be unprecedented in Florentine Adorations, it has provoked no comment in the scholarly literature. An ingenious iconographer might come up with a symbolic meaning for this cloak, but its primary purpose is revealed when it is masked from view, for then the picture becomes startlingly Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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unbalanced. Instinctively, Filippino has echoed the triangular shape of the thatched gable in the mound of the cloak, while muting the yellow to serve as a transition between the bellezza di colore of the draperies and the ochre and sandy tones of the foreground and of the landscape. There are countless other ways in which the same colouristic sensibility is at work, creating alliances and transitions: consider for example the unusual choice of pale grey tinged with violet for the drapery of the left-hand king that relates this figure to the tones of the stonework behind, thereby creating a telling caesura or interval before reaching the climax of the golden yellows of the central group. The hat, incidentally, must belong to the central king, but inclines towards the younger, its yellow bringing to life the subtle undertone in complementary violet that is common to the grey masonry and the pale robes nearby. Or again, consider how Filippino has wound a green sash around the waist of the central king to pick up the muted green tones and encircling rhythms of the ground he kneels on. Thanks to the fluency of Filippino’s brush and the modulation of the sandy and ochre hues throughout the picture, the almost secret gold rays of the star are accommodated within the refined chromatics of this picture. As an example of a painter feeling his way with colour, inventing with colour, it is remarkable. One might add that this manner of composing with colour, and forging alliances between rays of light and the modeling of material things is facilitated on this small scale by some generalization in dress. The principal figures are dressed in loose drapery rather than tailored costume. Unlike Pollaiuolo, for example, Filippino, even when working on a larger scale, rarely clothes his saints in sharply differentiated velvets, satins and brocades. Instead he chooses to distinguish through tints rather than through descriptions of texture. The original location of this painting is subject to debate. What is certain, as Nicholas Penny has emphasised, is that ‘it was long prized by great collectors’.18 Measuring 57 by 86 centimeters, the painting invites and rewards the intimate and prolonged inspection that a private owner could give it, and it is only from close-up that the beholder can make out the small scenes from the lives of saints scattered through the wide landscape. Several of these tiny scenes, such as the Vision of St Bernard at the top left (fig. 3.9), depict prayer and spiritual illumination.19 But one may wonder whether this is really a revival of a Thebaid type of landscape with saints, with which it has sometimes been com18 19

P. Rubin and A. Wright, Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, cat. exh., London (National Gallery), 1999, cat. no. 69, 292. For new evidence regarding the identification of the saints, see the note by Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge in the Appendix to this volume. I am grateful to Jill Dunkerton for discussing the painting with me.

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Figure 3.9 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of figure 3.7 with St Bernard

pared, since the figures are too small, even when seen close-up, to offer meaningful focus for meditation. As Jill Dunkerton notes the Appendix to this volume, the identification of the saints has not proved easy until the recent discovery of inscriptions in the underdrawing. Rather than primarily serving a devotional purpose, the painting has the air of a virtuoso display of skill, combining geometric construction and organic form, manifold figures and extensive landscape. It is a display by a young artist reaching the height of his powers that elicits admiration in the beholder, who is rather knowingly addressed by the gaze of the pair of implausibly elegant shepherds – one seated, one standing – who frame the scene on either side. In terms of the treatment of the Adoration itself, the choreography of figures takes precedence over iconographic convention: the ox, the ass and rustic shepherds have no place here, and – as we have noted – the oldest king bears no gift, and those of the other kings are reduced to insignificance. What then is the status and function of the gold rays of the star that descend upon the Christ Child? I would argue that they are both intrinsic to the subject and extrinsic to the descriptive image. Although incorporated within the colour and morphology of the painting, the function of the central ray is as much cognitive as physical: like an arrow it points to the incarnate Christ. Even in its pristine state, it can never have been conspicuous. It works for the beholder, and belongs, in a sense, outside the picture. Not located in any precise depth of Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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space in front or behind, it is a cognitive sign that may be understood as belonging both to the main subject, the Adoration, and to the illumination received by the saints in the landscape. As in many Florentine Adorations where such gold rays are included, the Magi and their train take no note of it. The unremarked presence of the star here differs markedly from Filippino’s later treatment of the subject in his altarpiece for San Donato a Scopeto, now in the Uffizi, where several figures gesture in wonder at its appearance and another conspicuously holds an astrolabe.20 Patrizia Zambrano, in her wide-ranging account of the London Adoration, has drawn attention to Marsilio Ficino’s tract, De stella magorum, published in 1482, in which the philosopher argued that the star or comet did not only guide the Magi, but was also an effective sign of the continuity and congruence between sources of wisdom in antiquity and biblical prophecy relating to the advent of the Messiah.21 With this in mind it is tempting to look more widely at Ficino’ s writing, especially his conception of rays, radii. His most celebrated discussions of the metaphysics of light, the De sole and De lumine, were published later, in 1492 and 1493. Closer in time to Filippino’s youth, Ficino’s earlier writings, such De raptu Pauli of 1476, or earlier still, the Platonic Theology, are shot through with imagery of rays as cognitive instruments or conductors. To cite one passage from Book 18 of the Platonic Theology: “the natural insight of understanding and the natural ardor of the will are a sort of ray (radius) infused in us directly by the divine light itself (lux) via its radiance (lumen) and this ray naturally leaps back to the same light …”. 22 Ficino’s imagery is essentially dynamic and reflexive. Carlos Steel points out that in Ficino’s view the ‘active intellect is a “spark” (scintilla) of the divine mind itself, and its reflection in the phantasm produces another spark (scintilla rerum).’ 23 But I believe it would be foolish to try to map Ficino’s essentially figurative account of an interior process of mental reflection onto the pictorial conventions employed by painters such as Botticelli and Filippino, which I have argued have deep roots in workshop conventions such as chrysography. Nevertheless, Ficino’s language of rays, radiance and sparks indicates that these artists and their elite patrons lived in a cultural milieu in which rays as light and rays as cognitive 20 21 22 23

See J. Nelson, ‘L’astrologo e il suo astrolabio: l’“Adorazione dei Magi” di Filippino Lippi del 1496,’ in: Il cosmo magico di Leonardo: L’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, cat. exh., Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi) 2017, 74-91. Zambrano and Nelson, op cit. (note 15), 172-3. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, vol. 6, Books XVII-XVIII, J. Hankins (ed.), Harvard 2006, 140 (Latin text), 141 (English translation). C. Steel, ‘Ficino and Proclus: Arguments for the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas’ in: J. Hankins and F. Meroi (eds.) The Rebirth of Platonic Theology, Florence 2013, 81.

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Figure 3.10 Rogier van der Weyden, Adoration of the Magi (The Columba Altarpiece), central panel, c. 1455, oil on oak, 138 × 152 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek

signs were readily elided. Interior reflection – the process of coming to know – is pictorially manifest in a visible trace. North of the Alps the relationship between rays as light and rays as signs was rather different. If we compare Filippino’s London Adoration with the most celebrated painting of this subject in the north, Rogier van der Weyden’s St Columba altarpiece from Cologne (fig. 3.10) – a work which I believe was known in Florence through copies – it is clear that Rogier, like other Netherlandish painters, is adept at locating his light sources rather precisely within the depths of pictorial space, both in the central Adoration and in the Annunciation and Presentation of Christ depicted in the wings.24 In the central panel, Rogier occluded the radiant Star of Bethlehem by the ruined masonry of the stable, thereby pushing the star back from the threshold of the painting, while 24

I argue that Leonardo’s unfinished Adoration of the Magi reflects knowledge of Rogier’s composition in: P. Hills, ‘Leonardo and Flemish Painting’, Burlington Magazine, 121 (1980) 609-15, especially 613-14.

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admitting a bright patch of celestial light though a gap in the roof to the right. With their very different sense of pictorial surface, and their distinctive conception of rays as simultaneously extrinsic and intrinsic, neither Botticelli nor the young Filippino locate light sources so precisely in space. This is all the more striking since Filippino, like his patrons, undoubtedly admired many features of Netherlandish painting.25 In the Adoration in London, the hill or large mound that rises behind the stable and masks from view the foremost riders in the train of the Magi, but not the pennants that flutter above them, owes much to the relation of foreground and background, figures and landscape, in the Lamentation by Rogier van der Weyden and his assistants (fig. 7.7), that had been admired in Florence for a decade. The tease of the fluttering pennants that signal the progress of the invisible train, is indicative once again of the young Filippino’s desire to impress with his pictorial invention. In Filippino’s later work, the light effects become more dazzling and more mobile. Celestial epiphanies abound in his frescos and in his altarpieces, yet in almost all instances a curious ambiguity about the location of the rays of light endures. In these later religious works Filippino Lippi continues to employ visible rays as both extrinsic and intrinsic to the depicted image. In their own distinctive manner, they function as ornament and sign. Bibliography Alberti L. B., On Painting, C. Grayson (ed.), Oxford 1972. Bambach C., Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300-1600, Cambridge 1999. Baxandall M., Shadows and Enlightenment, New Haven/London 1995 Butterfield A., The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, New Haven/London 1997 Dombrowski D., Die religiösen Gemälde Sandro Botticellis: Malerei als ‘pia philosophia’, Italienische Forschungen der Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz, Max-PlanckInstitut, Vierte Folge, vol. VII, Berlin/Munich 2010. Dunkerton J., Foister S., Gordon, D. and Penny, N., Giotto to Dürer, London/New Haven 1991. Eike D. (ed.) Il cosmo magico di Leonardo: L’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence 2017. Ficino M., Hankins J. (ed.) Platonic Theology, vol. 6, Books XVII-XVIII, (I Tatti Library) Harvard 2006.

25

See P. Nuttall, Chapter 7 in the present volume.

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Goldner G. and Bambach C., The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) New Haven/London, 1997. Gombrich E.H., The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, Oxford 1976. Hankins J., and Meroi F. (eds.) The Rebirth of Platonic Theology, Florence 2013. Hills P., ‘Leonardo and Flemish Painting’, Burlington Magazine, 121 (1980) 609-15. Hills P., Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250-1550, New Haven/ London 1999. Hills P., Veiled Presence: Body and Drapery from Giotto to Titian, New Haven/London 2018. Holmes M., Fra Filippo Lippi. The Carmelite Painter, New Haven/London 1999. Rubin P. and Wright A., Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, cat. exh. London (National Gallery), London 1999. Rutherglen S. and Hale C. (eds.), In a New Light: Giovanni Bellini’s ‘St Francis in the Desert’, The Frick Collection, New York 2015. Zambrano P. and Nelson J.K, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 4

Filippino Lippi’s Lucchese Patrons Geoffrey Nuttall In the early 1480s Filippino Lippi received two commissions from Lucchese clients that have been accepted since the nineteenth century as key works in the artist’s early career. They are the Magrini Altarpiece (fig. 4.1), still in the church of San Michele in Foro in Lucca, commissioned by Francesco di Jacopo Magrini, and the Bernardi Altarpiece (fig. 4.2) commissioned by Nicolao di Stefano Bernardi on behalf of his uncle, Giannino di Jacopo Bernardi for the demolished church of Santa Maria del Corso in Lucca, comprising two painted panels of Saints Benedict and Apollonia, Paul and Donatus (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena), and a wooden statue of St Anthony Abbot by Benedetto da Maiano, polychromed by Filippino (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca).1 Despite the acknowledged importance of these works, the identities of their patrons, and how these are embodied in the altarpieces themselves, are aspects of their histories that have attracted little scholarly interest to date.2 This chapter explores these questions, largely with reference to unpublished archival material, and in doing so sheds new light on Filippino’s earliest surviving altarpieces. Both Francesco Magrini and Nicolao Bernardi were of Florentine descent.3 Legend had it that around 1200 the Bernardi brought the art of beating gold 1 For discussion and bibliographies of the Magrini and Bernardi altarpieces: P. Zambrano in P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 225-239, especially 228-232, 335-337 and 338-340 and for the published documents, 619-620; M. Ferretti in: Matteo Civitali e il suo tempo: Pittori, scultori ed orafi a Lucca nel tardo Quattrocento, cat. exh. Lucca (Museo Nazionale Villa Guinigi), Milan 2004, 429-431 and Caglioti, ibid., 486. 2 For the Magrini Altarpiece recent art historical inquiry has relied largely on the important article by C. Ragghianti, ‘Filippino Lippi a Lucca. L’altare Magrini – Nuovi problemi e nuove soluzioni,’ Critica d’Arte, 37 (1960), 1-56; for an extract from the amendment of July 1479 to Francesco Magrini’s will of May 1479: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 619. The detailed contracts for the Bernardi Altarpiece were published by G. Concioni, C. Ferri and G. Ghilarducci, I Pittori Rinascimentali a Lucca, Vita, Opere e Committenza, Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Memorie e Documenti per servire alla Storia di Lucca) 4, Lucca 1988, 129-135. For an earlier discussion of the altarpieces’ impact in Lucca: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 232-239. 3 The most detailed general sources regarding the Bernardi family are BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1105, Famiglia Bernardi, and M. Paoli, Arte e committenza private a Lucca nel Trecento e Quattrocento, ← Filippino Lippi, Saints Benedict and Apollonia, detail of fig. 4.9 Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 4.1 Filippino Lippi, Saints Roch, Sebastian, Jerome and Helena (The Magrini Altarpiece), 1481-1482, tempera on panel, 147 × 157.5 cm. Lucca, San Michele in Foro

leaf from Florence to Lucca, and ten generations later they were amongst the most prosperous mercantile families in the city, the family’s coat of arms bearing the tools of the goldbeater’s trade, and Nicolao Bernardi’s grandfather, Giovanni di Landuccio Bernardi, controlling the city’s premier workshop.4 By contrast, Francesco Magrini’s parents were economic migrants of modest means, arriving in the city in the 1440s.5 His father Jacopo came originally from Lucca 1986, 148-158. For Francesco Magrini, see BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1118, Famiglia Magrini, 70-79. 4 Paoli, op. cit. (note 3), 81 and 153. For the genealogy of the Bernardi: BSL, Ms. 1105, 30r-32r, and ibid., 6r for their Florentine origins. 5 BSL, Ms. 1118, 72 for the genealogy of the Magrini; for their arrival in Lucca, BSL, Ms. 1014, 9.

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Figure 4.2 Filippino Lippi, Saints Benedict and Apollonia, tempera and oil on panel, 157.8 × 59.7 cm., Saints Paul and Donatus, tempera and oil on panel, 157.5 × 60 cm.; Benedetto da Maiano (sculptor) and Filippino Lippi (painter), Saint Anthony Abbot, polychromed wood, ht: 122 cm., 134 cm. with base (The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, side panels, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum, central figure, Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi

Carmignano, and died as a Lucchese citizen before 2 April 1462.6 Francesco’s maternal grandfather, Pietro Gucci of Florence, was a retagliatore, a cutter of fabric from rolls of cloth, a trade as applicable to the silk industry of Lucca as to the wool industry of Florence.7 6 AN 704, 61r, ‘Bartolomea, vedova relicta quondam Jacobi Magrini de Carmignano, contrada Florentina e lucanis civis et filiae quondam Pieri Tomassi Gucci retagliatoris pannorus et civis florentinis.’ 7 For a definition of retagliatore: L. Wiener, ‘Economic History and Philology’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 25 (1911), 263.

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The date of Francesco Magrini’s birth is not known, but he is first recorded in business in 1461 and died shortly after 31 August 1509, probably in his late seventies.8 He was brought up in the Lucchese neighbourhood of San Girolamo, a church founded by the Gesuati in 1440 under the patronage of the Burlamacchi family, and consecrated by Baldassare Manni, Bishop of Lucca, in 1446.9 The family’s arrival in Lucca coincided with the foundation of the church, and their decision to settle in the neighbourhood, close to the walls on the south side of the city, may be attributable to a pre-existing attachment to the Gesuati and a special devotion to St Jerome, the order’s protector.10 Francesco’s brother Girolamo was buried there before 1470, and Francesco himself originally intended to be buried in his brother’s tomb.11 He remained devoted to the saint, naming his eldest legitimate son Girolamo, recording several testamentary bequests to the church throughout the 1470s, and including honouring the saint in his altarpiece.12 Since the late twelfth century, the economy of Lucca had been dominated by the manufacture and sale of luxury silks to the secular and ecclesiastical elites of Western Europe, and an idea of the splendour of Lucchese production during Magrini’s lifetime can be gained from the garments worn by Saints Donatus and Sebastian in The Assumption of the Virgin (Lucca, San Paolino e San Donato), attributed to Baldassare del Biagio and dated around 1460 (fig. 4.3).13 Such was the value of these fabrics, because of the high quality of the silk, the exclusivity of the dyes, and the sheer quantity of gold and silver thread in the weave, that a second-hand market flourished; and it was as a patterius,14 a dealer in second-hand silks, that Francesco Magrini had established himself 8 9 10

11 12 13

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AG 37, 35r, 3 July 1461, and AN 1529, 491v, 31 August 1509. Paoli, op. cit. (note 3), 128 For a general history of the order: F. Belcari and A Cesari, Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini da Siena, fondatore de’ Poveri Gesuati, Verona 1817, and for the Gesuati in Lucca: I. Gagliardi, I Trofei della Croce, l’Esperienza Gesuata e la Società Lucchese tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, Rome 2005. Magrini’s first will, AN 14, 41r-42r, and the same text but in a less careful hand, ibid. 134r-135v, was witnessed on 15 May 1470, and on 41r and 134r respectively it is stated ‘seppelliri voluit in eccelsia sancti Jeronimi de Luca in tumulo ipsorum fratrius.’ Francesco made bequests to San Girolamo in his wills of 1470: AN 14, 41r, 15 May 1470 and again in 1479: AN 14, 93r, 6 May 1479. For the origins and development of the silk industry in Lucca: I. del Punta and M. L. Rosati, Lucca, una città di seta; produzione, commercio e diffusione dei tessuti lucchesi nel tardo medioevo, Lucca 2017. For Baldassare di Biagio see M. Ferretti in: Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 79-93. See for example, AN 1022, 180v, 22 April 1469, ‘Franciscus quondam Jacopo alias vocatus di Magrino patterius…’ and AN 1206, 89r, 7 November 1470, ‘Franciscus Magrini patterius lucem civis...’.

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Figure 4.3 Attributed to Baldassare di Biagio, The Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1460, detail of Saints Donatus (?) and Sebastian before the Porta San Donato, tempera on panel, 237 × 235 cm. Lucca, San Paolino e San Donato

by 1470.15 Typical of his trades is the piece of gold brocade, ‘unam pianetam domaschini allexandri cum bruschis auri foderatam’ that he sold on 7 November 1470.16 To ascertain the commercial worth of second-hand fabrics such as these, Magrini was proficient in estimating the quality of the fabric itself, the current market value of the gold and silver in the weave, and of the pearls, precious stones and furs with which they were often adorned. Additionally, as these luxury silks frequently constituted a significant portion of a household’s wealth, they often had to be valued for inclusion in testamentary bequests, dowries, repayment of debts, and the like, thus requiring the professional expertise of men such as Francesco Magrini.17 This skill set recommended him not only to private clients, but also to merchants, government officials and clerics, as an adviser on all manner of commercial transactions. In 1461, for example, he advised the canons of Santi Giovanni e Reparata, the Lucchese 15

16 17

For the definition of patterius: F. Benozzo, ‘Toponimi orali di area alto-italiana: una stratigrafia semantico-motivazionale,’ Quaderni di Semantica 1 (2015), 254. The tran­ scription of AN 14, 105v, 5 July 1479, in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 619, misreads patterius as pannerius, a cloth merchant. The distinction is not trivial, as patterius required a much broader skill set. AN 1023, 89r-v, 7 November 1470. For example, in his will of 1479, AN 14, 225r-226r, Bartolomeo di Baldassare Schiatta made multiple bequests of fabric to his wife and other members of the family. In 1480 the inventory of the late Nicolao di Fannucci’s estate, AN, 739, 166r-172r, gives valuations for well over 100 garments or pieces of fabric. In Francesco Magrini’s own will of 1506, he left quantities of black fabric to his naturalised son Giachetto, AN 25 263r, 24 April 1506.

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baptistry, on the sale of land,18 and on 27 July 1472 he provided a valuation on the correct rate of exchange between gold marks and ducats.19 Here he was referred to as a sensale, an official appointment within the Lucchese Merchants’ Court, acting as an authoritative and impartial assessor of commercial transactions.20 By 1480 he was attending meetings of the city’s governing body, the Anziani, in the company of Lucca’s most influential families, including the Bernardi.21 Magrini’s business must have prospered throughout the 1470s, as by 1479 he had moved from San Girolamo to the prestigious location of the Piazza San Michele in Foro, often referred to as San Michele al Mercato, the commercial heart of the city.22 His house was on the west side of the square, directly opposite the church of San Michele, where he also kept his stock of fabrics. By the late 1470s he had begun to style himself merchatori, rather than patterius, though a crossed-out ‘p’ in a document written in 1482 suggests that his origins as a tradesman had not been forgotten, at least by the lawyer who drafted the document.23 Since the early 1470s, Magrini’s network of contacts included the priors, canons and operai of the cathedral board of works, the main engine of Lucchese artistic patronage during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.24 In particular, Magrini developed close relations with Domenico Bertini and Nicolao Noceto, senior members of the Lucchese government, well connected to the papacy.25 In Magrini’s will of May 1470, Domenico Bertini was to administer a 18 19 20

AG 37, 35r-40v, 3 July 1461 to 7 September 1461. ASL, Rocchi Burlamacchi, Deposito, pergamena, 27 July 1472. The official role of the sensale is set out in great detail in the statutes of the Corte dei Mercanti, see P. Pelù, Il codice mercantile guinigiano dell’anno 1406, Lucca 1998, 55-63. 21 For example: ASL, Colloqui, 1, 625, 2 May 1481; 635, 7 August 1481; 711, 9 De­cember 1483; 715, 22 January 1484. 22 By 1470, Magrini’s business premises were already in the Piazza: AG 24, document 5, 9 November 1470. He was certainly living there in a house above his shop by 1479: AN 14, 93r-97r, 6 May 1479, and he remained there until the end of his life, ‘in apotheca pannoros dicti Francesco site subitus eius domum sue solite habitationis positum in contrada Sancte Michelis in foro iuxta platea publica abutate via publica mediante et iuxta viam publicam septentes.’: AG 24, document 64, 9 August 1506. This was said to have once been the premises of the Arnolfini and Diodati bank: BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1118, 70r. The site, still extant, corresponds to the south corner of the modern Via del Poggio and the Piazza San Michele. 23 AN 1206, 32v, 12 December 1482. 24 For the patronage of San Martino, and a comprehensive bibliography of the artists and patrons involved: F. Caglioti, ‘Matteo Civitali e i suoi committenti nel Duomo di Lucca,’ in: A. d’Aniello and M. T. Filieri (eds.), Matteo Civitali nella cattedrale di Lucca; studi e restauri, Lucca 2011, 21-112 and 381-411. 25 Ibid. 21-112 for Domenico Bertini and Nicolao Noceto.

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charitable bequest;26 almost twenty-five years later, it was through Bertini’s good offices that Magrini’s natural son, Giachetto, was legitimised;27 and in 1482 Nicolao di Piero Noceto raised monies against luxury silks and jewellery valued by Magrini.28 Over the course of the 1470s, Magrini also became prominent in the Compagnia della Croce di Lucca, a confraternity of flagellants, whose charitable activities included administering to the sick, the dying and to prisoners.29 It was probably through longstanding relationships cemented here that in 1487 his son Girolamo married Maddalena, the daughter of Bartolomeo di Nicolao Martini,30 a canon at San Girolamo from the 1440s, prior of the Compagnia della Croce from the 1450s, and a senior canon of Lucca cathedral.31 Magrini’s participation in the Compagnia would have introduced him to two important patrons who were also senior canons of the cathedral, Clemente di Antonio Andreucci and Roberto di Piero Guinigi. In 1478, Andreucci jointly commissioned The Virgin and Child with Saints Peter, Clement, Sebastian and Paul by Domenico Ghirlandaio for a new altar in the cathedral, dedicated to St Peter in Chains and the Conversion of St Paul (fig. 4.4).32 The frame was made by a neighbour and close associate of Francesco Magrini, Jacopo di Marco da Villa Basilicata, who with Bartolomeo Martini witnessed Magrini’s will of 6 May 1479.33 Roberto Guinigi, secretary to the future Pope Pius III, was patron of four altars in Lucca, and is depicted in the altarpiece of The Virgin and Child

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33

AN 14, 41v, 15 May 1470. AN 757, 120r-122v, 29 August 1494, when Giachetto, baptised Jacopo, was 25 years old. AN 747, 75r-75v, 31 August 1482. Bongi S., Inventario del R. Archivio di Stato in Lucca, Vol. 1, Lucca 1872 BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1119, 599, 1487. ASL, Compagnia della Croce, 7, lists Bartolomeo Martini as prior between 1450 and 1482. AN 898, 156r, 28 August 1478 names him as ‘canone maioris’ of both the Cathedral and San Girolamo. Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 426. The dedication of the chapel was probably to honour Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II, whose titular church in Rome was San Pietro in Vincoli. Giuliano was on good terms with the canons of Lucca cathedral: ASL, Cenami, acquisto Ghivizzani, pergamena, 12 January 1481. Ibid. 426. Jacopo di Marco di Villa Basilicata’s workshop was also in the Piazza San Michele: AN 900, 212, 27 October 1480. Jacopo was Masseo di Bertone Civitali’s brother-inlaw: F. Caglioti, in: A. Aniello and Maria Teresa Filieri (eds.), Matteo Civitali nella Cattedrale di Lucca: Studi e restauri, Lucca, 2011, 100. In addition to major commissions in San Martino and San Francesco in Lucca, Jacopo was transacting other business in Magrini’s shop around 1480: AN 898, 81v, 14 April 1479. For the will: AN 14, 95v. Jacopo was also responsible for woodwork in the church of San Pietro Somaldi, the meeting place of the Compagnia della Croce: AN 1088, 15 January 1481.

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Figure 4.4 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Virgin and Child with Saints Clement, Peter, Sebastian and Paul, 1478-1479, tempera on panel, 170 × 160 cm. Lucca, Cathedral of San Martino

with Saints and Donor (San Colombano, Capannori, near Lucca) dated 1514, by Ranieri di Leonardo da Pisa.34 34

In 1477 Sixtus IV granted Roberto Guinigi the rights to the chapel of St Lucy in the church of Santi Giovanni e Reparata: ASL, acquisto Traballesi, pergamena, 5 April 1477. Guinigi had perhaps come to Sixtus’s attention whilst serving as secretary to Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, Cardinal of Sant’ Eustachio and Archbishop of Siena, nephew of Pius II and the future Pope Pius III: ATL, 534, 20r, 28 August 1480. Guinigi was the founder and benefactor of altars in Santi Simone e Giuda and the Cathedral, the rector of the church at Capannori, and is identified as the donor on the scroll at the foot of the panel; for a summary of his patronage, see AG, 307, Notizie di Benefizi fondata di Roberto di Piero

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Perhaps Magrini’s most significant contacts within the Lucchese elite, however, were Jacopo Ghivizzano and his brothers, Pietro, Paolo, Nicodemo and Agostino, who from the early 1470s transacted business with him and, as Magrini consolidated his personal wealth, from whom he purchased land and houses in and around Lucca.35 The Ghivizzano’s palace was on the east side of Piazza San Michele, opposite Magrini’s. In 1477 Jacopo Ghivizzano installed two grandiose floor tombs, one for himself and the other for his brothers, in the centre of the nave of San Michele.36 From 1470 to 1484 he was head of the cathedral board of works and served as an operaio at San Michele.37 The late 1470s and early 1480s coincided with a period of intense diplomatic activity between Florence and Lucca, Jacopo Ghivizzano playing a leading role in the negotiations with the Florentine government over the settlement of various border disputes.38 Ghivizzano had excellent business, political and personal contacts in Florence, notably with Bartolomeo Scala, the Florentine Chancellor.39 In 1481 he served as ambassador to Florence, probably taking Francesco Magrini with him as an adviser on the commercial aspects of the treaty he hoped to conclude.40 Magrini must, in any event, have been familiar with Florence, given his parentage, his need to travel outside Lucca on

35

36 37 38 39

40

Guinigi (undated, in a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century hand). The figures of Guinigi and St Colombano and their relation to the Christ Child derive from Filippino Lippi’s Nerli Altarpiece. For Ranieri di Leonardo: Concioni, Ferri and Ghirlarducci, op. cit. (note 2), 185-195, and M. Tazartes, Fucina Lucchese. Maestri, botteghe, mercanti in una città del Quattrocento, Pisa 2007, 94-98. For example, AG 24, document 6, 6 November 1470, records that Jacopo Ghivizzano, in his capacity as an operaio of San Michele in Foro, used Magrini to purchase property on behalf of the church. For later purchases of land from the Ghivizzani, see for example, AG 24, document 41, 9 November1485. BSL, Ms. 1014, 30v for the inscriptions no longer legible in situ. Paoli, op. cit. (note 3), 131. The administration of San Michele in Foro was the responsibility of the Opera di San Martino until 1512, when it came under the control of the Gigli family. For the intensity of Lucchese-Florentine diplomacy around 1480, see the extensive correspondence in ATL 534. For the deliberations of the Anziani involving Magrini: ASL, Colloqui 1, 1457-1493. A. Brown, Bartolomeo Scala (1430-1497), Cancelliere di Firenze. L’umanista nello Stato, Florence 1990, 147. For the close personal relationship between the Scala and Ghivizzano: BCS, Autografi Porri, busta 1.25, lettera 4, 31 August 1481. For a letter dictated by Bartolomeo Scala on behalf of the Florentine government, noting Ghivizzano’s success in the negotiations over the dispute between Barga and Gallicano: ASL, Tarpea, pergamena, 8 November 1481. For the high regard of the Florentine chancellor and the Ferrarese ambassador in Florence for Jacopo Ghivizzano: ATL 534, 51v-52r, 16 November 1481, and ATL 533, 16v, 18 November 1481. Magrini witnessed the marriage contract of Ghivizzano’s daughter Margherita in November 1481: AN 936, 69r-71v, 27 November 1481.

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business, and his participation in joint commercial ventures between Lucchese and Florentine merchants.41 He was certainly in Florence in April 1482, as a trusted affiliate of the Lucchese delegation, led by Ghivizzano’s successor Martino Cenami, that finalised the terms of the Florentine-Lucchese treaty the following month.42 The contract for The Magrini Altarpiece has not been traced, but Francesco’s movements and socio-political connections over this period can shed light on its chronology.43 By 1479 Magrini had established himself within the upper echelons of Lucchese society, living in a substantial property in the city’s main piazza, and with the status and influential connections to seek the patronage of an altar in one of the city’s most important churches. He must have acquired rights to the first altar on the right hand side of San Michele in Foro before May 1479, as in his will of 6 May 1479 he asked to be buried beneath a floor tomb in front of this altar, then dedicated to St James; the debased Magrini coat of arms, a pair of lion’s paws divided by a horizontal band, is still visible over the burial vault in front of the altar.44 In July 1479, following the recent deaths of his daughters Bartolomea and Caterina, almost certainly from plague, Magrini revised his will.45 He bequeathed 200 gold florins for an altarpiece in San Michele, the altar no longer dedicated to St James but to the plague saints, Roch and Sebastian. The central panel of the altarpiece was to depict the Virgin and Child flanked by Roch and Sebastian on one side, and Jerome and Helena, the name saints of Magrini’s dead brother and sister, on the other.46 Additionally, in the pilasters of the frame, he specified two other saints often associated with 41

42

43 44 45 46

In Magrini’s wills of 16 May 1470 and 6 May 1479 he asked to be buried in the churches of San Girolamo and San Michele in Foro respectively, but contingent on his dying in Lucca, a provision that suggests he was often absent from the city, presumably travelling on business: AN 14, 41r and 134r, 15 May 1470, and AN 14, 93r, 6 May 1479. Magrini’s ongoing Florentine connections may have determined his and his family’s acquisition of Pisan citizenship in 1498: AG 24, document 59, 27 January 1497 (old style). ATL 616, 56, 19 April 1482. This is the Anziani’s copy of the letter from Martino Cenami in Florence, ‘Tornando Francesco di Magrino, non ho volute venghi sensa miei lettere per dare aviso del segreto alle V. S. alle quali sempre mi raccomando e feliciter valeant. Florentia die xviiii aprilis, 1482.’ For a summary of the various attributions since Vasari: M. Filieri in Matteo Civitali op. cit. (note 1), 429. For the will: AN 14, 93r-94v, and 217r-218r, 6 May 1479. The latter is a rough draft of the former. For the coat of arms: BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1014, Magrini, 9. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 619, published only the first two paragraphs. For the complete text: AN 14, 105v-106r, 5 July 1479. For an undated draft of the same amendment, though with different witnesses: AN 14, 197r-v. Francesco had four siblings, none of whom are documented after 1470; Girolamo, Elena, Camilla and Benedetto: BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1118, 72.

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plague, Julian and Eustace.47 Though the possibility that the Magrini Altarpiece had a predella cannot be excluded, there is no reference to it in May 1479, nor any substantial evidence that it ever existed.48 Magrini also made a further provision in the revision of his will for 100 gold florins, to celebrate two plenary masses, to be said daily and in perpetuity in front of the altar, and a third plenary mass for the church of San Girolamo.49 By April 1480 Magrini was an operaio of San Michele in Foro, and he endowed the altar, still referred to as the altar of St James in the episcopal record, with a gift of 100 gold florins, possibly to fund plenary masses for his dead children, rather than for himself.50 His rights to the altar and chapel were formalised by the bishop of Lucca, Nicolao Sandonnini, in December 1482, a process probably facilitated through Magrini’s connections with the cathedral administrators and another member of the Ghivizzano family, Tommaso.51 Concurrently, Magrini sought to have his illegitimate son Giachetto made rector of the altar, a request supported by another of the church’s operai, and his son’s future father-in-law, Bartolomeo Martini.52 It was probably whilst in Florence, around the time of his involvement in the Florentine-Lucchese treaty negotiations, that through his influential contacts within the ruling elite, such as the Martini, Bertini, Noceto, Ghivizzano, Cenami and Guinigi, Magrini gained access to Filippino Lippi, placing the contract with the artist at some point between July 1479 and September 1481.53 Filippino is known to have been in Lucca in September 1482, and this may be

47

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49 50 51 52 53

The Papal connections of Magrini’s associates at San Martino and the Compagnia della Croce may also have influenced his choice of Saints Julian and Eustace. Clemente Andreucci and Paolo Spada had tacitly acknowledged Lucca’s close relationship with Giuliano della Rovere in the dedication of their chapel (see note 32 above) and similarly Magrini would have been aware that Roberto Guinigi was chaplain to Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Sant’ Eustachio (see note 34 above). Ragghianti, op. cit. (note 2), argued that the three small Filippinesque panels, of unknown provenance, depicting episodes from the life of St Roch (Florence, Galleria Bellini), should be associated with the Magrini Altarpiece. Their reference exclusively to St Roch, given the dedication of the chapel to both Roch and Sebastian, and its subsequent rededication in 1482 to the Virgin and St Helena, make this suggestion improbable. AN 14, 106r, 5 July 1479. AALu, 11-12, 12 April 1480. AG, 207, 15. AN 1206, 32v, 11 December 1482. The documents for Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece for San Martino, Filippino’s for Santa Maria del Corso and Vincenzo Frediani’s for San Romano (see note 55 below), all stipulated delivery within 12 months, making September 1481 the most likely terminus ante quem for Magrini’s commission.

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the terminus for the completion of the Magrini Altarpiece.54 Given Magrini’s contacts with the woodworker Jacopo di Marco da Villa Basilicata, who had made the lavishly ornamented frame for Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece in Lucca cathedral,55 it is likely that Jacopo provided the same service for Magrini, rather than Filippino bringing the frame with him from Florence.56 The altarpiece was probably in situ by the end of 1482, when the altar had been re-dedicated yet again, this time to the Blessed Virgin and St Helena.57 The main panel, as stated in Magrini’s amendment to his will of July 1479, was to follow an established arrangement, as in Ghirlandaio’s Lucchese altarpiece, with pairs of saints flanking the Virgin and Child (fig. 4.4). This is manifestly not what Magrini got, the Virgin and Child never having formed part of Filippino’s altarpiece.58 It seems, therefore, that between July 1479 and the drafting of the contract in 1481, Magrini reconsidered its format, following discussions with the artist and his Lucchese and Florentine associates.59 At some 54 55

56

57 58

59

AN 747, 83v-84r, 29 September 1482, first published by Concioni, Ferri and Ghilarducci, op. cit. (note 2), 129-130. The contract of 14 August 1483, published in Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 557, which Magrini witnessed, specifies a splendid frame for an altarpiece for the Del Voglia family destined for the Dominican church of San Romano, to be ‘al paraghone e di colori e di disegno’ with Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece in San Martino, made by Jacopo di Marco da Villa Basilicata. Jacopo also worked in the cathedral in Pisa, with the specific instruction that his work should follow the example of the Florentine woodworker Francione: L. Supino, ‘I maestri di intaglio e di tarsie in legno della Primaziale di Pisa’, Archivio Storico dell’Arte, 6 (1893), 153-179, 159. He also worked at the Certosa of Pisa: A. Manghi, La Certosa di Pisa, Pisa 1911, 55, and at the Certosa di Galluzzo: A. M. Wilmering, The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation: II, Italian Renaissance Intarsia and the Conservation of the Gubbio Studiolo, New York 1999, 69. He must, therefore, have been well acquainted with artistic develop­ ments in Florence. AN 1206, 32v, 11 December 1482. The possibility that the panel has been cut, removing the Virgin and Child, was excluded following its restoration by Nicola MacGregor for the 2011-2012 exhibition Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze di ‘400 (Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2011-2012): Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 229. The original dedication of the Magrini altar to St James, the same dedicatory saint as the altar in the Cardinal of Portugal’s chapel in San Miniato al Monte, Florence, which since Ragghianti op. cit. (note 2) in 1960 has been cited as the precedent for the unusual format of the Magrini Altarpiece, may have contributed to the change in format, aligning it more closely to its Florentine precursor. Patrizia Zambrano has suggested that the figures of the four saints are pressed into the foreground of the panel to evoke painted sculpture: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 229, and in mood at least the abstracted St Helena is reminiscent of the St Ursula of Jacopo della Quercia’s marble altarpiece in the Trenta Chapel, San Frediano, of 1416-1420, which Magrini would certainly have known. A very different source, known to Magrini through family connections, may have been the Trenta Missal, BSL, Ms. 3122, commissioned by a member of the Trenta family in Paris

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point Magrini must also have made it clear to Filippino that one important function of the altarpiece was to memorialise his dead siblings, Girolamo and Elena, an instruction Filippino brilliantly executed by modulating the treatment of the two pairs of saints; the conventional plague saints, Roch and Sebastian, are closer to well-established Botticellian models, but the saints immediately relevant to Magrini, Jerome and Helena, are spatially privileged, more emotionally nuanced and more distinctively Filippinesque.60 The omission of the Virgin and Child from the central panel has caused scholars either to ignore or deny the existence of the Saints Julian and Eustace specified by Magrini in 1479. Archival sources make it clear, however, that these remained within Filippino’s brief, that they were still in situ after Magrini patronage of the altar lapsed in the mid seventeenth century, and remained so until the altar was appropriated by a member of the Gigli family between 1695 and 1700, when the Gigli replaced the old wooden frame with the present marble one. Since the main panel, considered ‘molto bello, ma antico,’ contained no overt reference to the Magrini, it was decided to incorporate it into the new structure. However, because the Magrini coat of arms was painted beneath Saints Julian and Eustace, it was decided to discard and sell these panels.61 That they were the work of Filippino is suggested by a document, written in 1655, describing them as painted in the pilasters of the frame at the same time, and by the same hand, as the esteemed altarpiece.62 The depiction of Magrini’s coat of arms may have resembled that of the Nerli family, shown in a drawing by Filippino of around 1490, for the stainedglass window of Tanai de’ Nerli’s chapel in Santo Spirito, Florence (fig. 4.5), illusionistically carved into the base of a niche beneath St Martin.63 A painting of St Eustace (fig. 4.6), sometimes attributed to Filippino, now in the

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around 1410, in Lucca since the early fifteenth century, and by the 1440s in the collection of Stefano di Federigo Trenta, Bishop of Lucca. Fol. 285v, depicts two pairs of saints at the extreme front edge of the miniature compressed within the tight boundary of its frame, an arrangement closely echoed in The Magrini Altarpiece. Millard Meiss recognised a stylistic distinction between the two pairs of saints, characterising it as a turning from the linearism of Botticelli ‘to color, light…and texture’: M. Meiss, ‘A New Monumental Painting by Filippino Lippi,’ Art Bulletin, 55 (1973), 480. AG, 207, 7. Ragghianti, op. cit. (note 2), 58-59, gives the relevant extract from AG 207, 7-10. The passage from AG 207 is an undated preface, written between 1695 and 1699, to an extensive collection of papers dating from the 1650s, concerning the benefices of the altar, and citing earlier documents dating back to 1470. AG, 207, 39, 1655 ‘…si aggiungeva il vedesti da ambe due paresti del med. altare dipinta l’arme della stessa famiglia, fatta come chiaro si conosce per mano dello stesso autore e nello stesso tempo che fu formato il quadro del med. altare que e estimato di qualche valore.’ C. Bambach, in: G. Goldner and C. Bambach, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his circle, cat. exh. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York, 1997, 246-247, cat. no. 70. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 4.5 Filippino Lippi, Niche with Saint Martin of Tours Dividing his Cloak and Two Centaurs holding the coat of arms of Tanai de’ Nerli, c. 1490, pen and brown ink and brown wash over traces of black chalk, 38.3 × 7.6 cm, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi ® Figure 4.6 Filippino Lippi, Saint Eustace (right pilaster panel of The Magrini Altarpiece), 1481-1482, tempera on panel, 100 × 30 cm. Ferrara, Pinacoteca Nazionale

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Figure 4.7 Detail of fig. 4.6, showing the trace of niche with egg and dart detail at the base

Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara, though cut along the base of the panel, retains traces of such a niche, the egg and dart pattern just visible immediately below the saint (fig. 4.7). First identified as St Eustace by Massimo Ferretti, 64 the panel was in the Strozzi Sacrati Collection by 1850, attributed then to an unknown artist, and to Filippino Lippi when sold by Sotheby’s in 1992.65 Subsequently, it has been given either to the school of Raffaellino del Garbo or to Vincenzo Frediani, a Lucchese follower of Filippino, and dated variously between 1485 and 1500.66 In her 2004 Burlington Magazine review of the Matteo Civitali exhibition, however, Patrizia Zambrano, without associating the panel directly with the Magrini Altarpiece, suggested that, ‘The beautiful St Eustace, despite being a mere shadow of its former self, is so ingenious and so freely painted that, rather than attributing it to Frediani, one might consider it the work of Filippino Lippi from the time of the now admirably restored Four Saints, one of the pearls of the exhibition.’67 This insight, set alongside the documentary and visual evidence presented above, argues strongly that the Ferrara St Eustace should not only be dated to the time of the Magrini Altarpiece, but identified as one of the panels discarded in 1695-1700, when Magrini’s altarpiece was dismembered. 64 65 66

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Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 452. Collezione Strozzi Sacrati, dipiniti antichi e arredi, sale cat. Milan, Palazzo Broggi, 15 December 1992, lot 302, 6. For the attribution to the school of Rafaellino, see J. K. Nelson in: G. Agostini, La Leggenda del Colleczionismo, le quadrerie storiche ferrarese, cat. exh. Ferrara (Pinacoteca Nazionale Palazzo Diamanti), Bologna 1996, 176, and G. Marcolini, La Collezione Strozzi Sacrati, i dipinti restitute a Ferrara, cat. exh. (Pinacoteca Nazionale Palazzo Diamanti), Milan 2005, 148; and to Vincenzo Frediani, M. Ferretti in: Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 452. Patrizia Zambrano, ‘Matteo Civitali’, exhibition review, The Burlington Magazine, 148 (2004), 637-639.

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It was probably the right hand panel, the unusual imagery of the wolf and lion beside St Eustace alluding to his legend as a protector of youthful victims from the plague, and therefore apposite for an altarpiece prompted by the death of Magrini’s daughters in 1479.68 The landscape of spiky trees and rounded bushes to the right of St Helena flows into the side panel behind St Eustace; his costume and pose echo the main figures, and the heavy, looping folds of his cloak, gathered in deep swathes around his waist, bears comparison with St Helena; the distinctive articulation of the hands is consistent with those of the main panel, notably St Sebastian. Eustace’s soft boots are like those of St Roch, his stance close to St Sebastian’s, and the shadows of all three saints fall at roughly the same angle across the bare ground. St Eustace, as might the lost St Julian, looks directly out of the picture, and as such establishes a dialogue between the altarpiece and the viewer, denied in the self-absorbed, mournful introspection of its main protagonists.69 Despite the contiguous landscape, the difference in scale between the St Eustace and the main figures is one reason why the saint has not heretofore been linked to the Magrini Altarpiece. This disparity, however, is not unique in Filippino’s oeuvre; the side panels, now in the Accademia, Florence, of the lost main panel of the Valori Altarpiece are also diminutive relative to the main figures, and like the St Eustace may have been cut at the base to remove a coat of arms.70 Another incongruity of scale in Filippino’s oeuvre is found in the panels flanking the Sudarium borne by Angels by the Master of the St Ursula

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Lucca was badly affected by plague around 1480. Francesco Magrini was present at a meeting of the Anziani that discussed another outbreak of the disease in 1481: ASL, Colloqui, 1, 112, 2 May 1481. A scene from the predella of an altarpiece by Vincenzo Frediani, The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Eustace, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalen and Vitus, in the church of Sant’ Eustachio in Montignoso, near Lucca, dated around 1495, depicts Eustace protecting two young girls from a wolf and a lion: M. Natale, ‘Maestri del quattrocento Lucchese,’ La Provincia di Lucca, 2 (1971), 105. The rocks behind St Roch in the Magrini Altarpiece, a visual pun on the saint’s name, probably continued behind St Julian in the left-hand panel. Below the main figures, Filippino has painted a meticulously observed praying mantis. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss this fascinating inclusion in detail, but it might be read in a similar way to Sarah Blake McHam’s interpretation of the ‘fantasia’ of the cricket in Piero di Cosimo’s Vulcan and Aeolus, as a reference to antiquity, with the suitably pious praying mantis replacing the secular cricket. See S. Blake McHam, ‘The “Fantasia” of the cricket in Piero di Cosimo’s “Vulcan and Aeolus”’, in: D. Geronimus and M.W. Kwakkelstein (eds.), Piero di Cosimo: Painter of Faith and Fable, Leiden/Boston 2019, 82-100. A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Qurinale), Milan 2011, 198-200, cat. no. 42.

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Figure 4.8 Hans Memling, Saint John the Baptist (left wing of the Pagagnotti Triptych), c. 1478-1480, oil on oak, 57.5 × 17.3 cm. London, National Gallery

Legend, the side panels in this instance retaining their fictive niches, though these bear inscriptions rather than the patron’s coat of arms (fig. 7.10).71 To meet Magrini’s stipulation for a pair of flanking saints in the, presumably, fixed pilasters of the frame, Filippino seems to have referred to the left wing of Memling’s Pagagnotti Triptych (fig. 4.8, and for the central panel, fig. 7.4) which reached Florence around 1480, and was then kept in the precincts of San Marco by Benedetto di Luca Pagagnotti, Bishop of Vaison,72 This was close to the palace of one of the Lucchese’s main contacts in the city, Bartolomeo Scala, and in a Dominican convent with close ties to the Dominican foundation in 71 72

Ibid. 204-205. M. Rohlmann, ‘Memling’s “Pagagnotti Triptych”,’ The Burlington Magazine, 137 (1995), 438445.

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Lucca, San Romano.73 It was a neighbourhood Magrini would have been familiar with, as an affiliate of the Lucchese embassies to Florence, through Florentine business associates, and through Lucchese members of the Compagnia dei Tessitori di Drappi. The Lucchese had founded this confraternity in 1405 and their chapel was located in the sacristy of San Marco until its move to Santa Maria Nuova in 1455, and in 1481 to the hospital in the Via San Gallo, known as the Loggia dei Tessitori.74 Perhaps most significantly, however, the owner of the triptych, Benedetto Pagagnotti, is likely to have had contacts with the Lucchese delegation in Florence; Benedetto traced his ancestry to Lucca, referring to himself in a letter to the Anziani of Lucca of 1486, postponing a visit to the city, as ‘vero Lucchese, discesso da uno chiamato Castruccio.’ This suggests a kinship with the family of Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli, the great Duke of Lucca at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it may well be that a few years previously he had shown his recently acquired Memling to members of the Lucchese delegation in Florence.75 Though posed frontally, St Eustace’s sharp features, the heavy folds of his robe and the knotting of the cloak around his shoulders, are closer to the Baptist of the Pagagnotti triptych than to contemporary Florentine examples. The original frame of the Magrini Altarpiece was probably akin to the richly ornamented structure detailed in the contract Francesco Magrini witnessed on 14 August 1483, between the Del Voglia family and the Lucchese painter Vincenzo Frediani.76 This was modelled on Jacopo di Marco da Villa Basilicata’s classicising frame for Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece in Lucca cathedral, with its gilded pillars, columns, architraves and frieze, picked out in ultramarine, reminiscent in its opulence of Filippino’s surviving frame of the Nerli Altarpiece 73

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As evidenced by Fra Bartolomeo’s gift of The Vision of St Catherine of Siena (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca) to San Romano in 1513: A. J. Elen and C. Fischer (eds.), Fra Bartolomeo: the Divine Renaissance, cat. exh. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), Rotterdam 2016, 113-121, cat. no. 6. Also known as the Compagnia di San Marco dei Lucchesi: J. Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, Chicago/London 1997, 426 and 462. The Lucchese established the Florentine silk industry in the mid fourteenth century and were still heavily involved at the end of the fifteenth century; see S. Tognetti, ‘La diaspora dei lucchesi nel Trecento e il primo sviluppo dell’arte della seta a Firenze’, Reti Medievali Rivista, 15 (2004), 41-91; A. Padoa Rizzo, ‘L’altare della Compagnia dei Tessitori in San Marco a Firenze: dalla cerchia di Cosimo Rosselli al Cigoli,’ Antichità Viva, 28 (1989), 17-24. ATL 534, 118v and 119c, 16 September and 30 September 1486. For earlier contacts between the Anziani and the Pagagnotti, see ATL, 534, 11v, 23 September 1480, and the recommendation from the future Pope Innocent VIII to have Sante de’ Pagagnotti appointed captain of the Lucchese contado. The Del Voglia Altarpiece was destroyed in 1945: Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 2), 113-114, and note 55 above..

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(fig. 7.9). In the case of the Magrini Altarpiece, to accommodate Saints Julian and Eustace the central panel may have been flanked by smaller, all’antica pilasters, perhaps anticipating the format Ghirlandaio used for the high altar of Santa Maria Novella, and as Filippino may have employed in the Valori Altarpiece a few years later.77 Francesco Magrini’s altarpiece almost certainly predates that of Filippino’s second Lucchese patron, Nicolao di Stefano Bernardi, and Filippino may have been in Lucca in September 1482 for two reasons, the delivery of the Magrini Altarpiece and, as documented in the Bernardi contract, to formalise the commission for their altarpiece. In September 1482 Francesco Magrini and Nicolao Bernardi were near neighbours, their houses about 50 metres apart at either end of what is now the Via Calderia.78 Magrini’s lawyer, Nicolao Vellutelli, was Nicolao Bernardi’s uncle and the brother-in-law of Giannino di Giovanni Bernardi, the abbot of San Salvatore a Sesto and the church of Santa Maria del Corso, for whom the Bernardi Altarpiece was made.79 Another uncle, Antonio di Giovanni Bernardi, was named in Magrini’s will of May 1470, as one of the tutors to his children in the event of his death. The Bernardi’s established centres of patronage were San Salvatore in Mustolio, near their palace; Sant’ Agostino, the convent of the Augustinian friars; and from 1442 the church of Sant’ Andrea di Croce di Brancoli, some four miles north of Lucca, near Ponte a Moriano.80 For the Augustinians, Nicolao’s grandfather and great-grandfather had funded the reconstruction of the nave of Sant’ Agostino, the building and decoration of the choir, and the refurbishment of the large funerary chapel where Nicolao Bernardi was buried in 1509.81 Giannino di Giovanni Bernardi became abbot of the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore and the church of Santa Maria del Corso in 1445. Six miles southeast of the city, by the lake at Sesto, the now vanished abbey stood on the 77 78 79 80 81

For a reconstruction of Ghirlandaio’s Santa Maria Novella Altarpiece: A. Schumacher et al., Florentiner Malerei, Alte Pinakothek: die Gemälde des 14. Bis 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2017, 394. BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1105, 6. The house was demolished to create the square in front of San Salvatore in Mustolio; only part of the tower, now known as the Torre della Veglia or dei Corbolani, has survived: V. Bartoli, Lucca, Guida alle architetture, Lucca 2000, 94. Vellutelli drafted Magrini’s wills of May 1470, and May 1479. For Antonio Bernardi as tutor: AN, 14, 6 May 1470, 41v. For the genealogy of the Bernardi: BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1105, 30r-32r. Paoli, op. cit. (note 3), 148-158 and F. Casella, ‘La chiesa di Sant’Andrea in Croce’ in P. Romboli (ed.), Brancoli uno, Sezione di Ponte a Moriano e Comune di Lucca, Lucca 1983, 37-39. In her will, Lippa di Cristoforo Trenta, Nicolao’s wife, asked to be buried with her husband in the Bernardi Chapel in Sant’ Agostino: AN 26, 16 January 1516, 232r.

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disputed border between Lucca and Pisa, and after 1406 with Florence.82 Though largely in ruins by the 1440s, after years of sporadic fighting across the frontier, its abbot still controlled the lucrative fishing rights to the lake and the extensive tracts of forest and agricultural land around its shores.83 The church of Santa Maria del Corso, originally a Carmelite foundation, stood just outside the walls of Lucca, between the Porta San Donato and the Porta San Pietro.84 It had fallen into ruin during the wars with Pisa at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and in 1341 was abandoned in favour of the more secure location of San Piero Cigoli, inside the city.85 In 1410, through the bequest of a rich widow, Santa Maria del Corso was rebuilt and given to the Armenian Hermits.86 In 1462 it returned briefly to the Carmelites. In 1464 it was brought under the administration of the abbey at Sesto, 87 and in May 1466 was taken over by the Benedictines.88 In 1471, Sixtus IV formally transferred the headquarters of the abbey from Sesto to Santa Maria del Corso.89 It was perhaps at this point, with the backing of his family and in memory of his father, that Giannino made the decision to refurbish Santa Maria del Corso, seemingly sparing no expense. In October 1474 the Florentine sculptor Matteo di Giovanni Ciudi da Settignano provided 82

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For an eighteenth-century account of the abbey at Sesto: BSL, Ms. 896, 468r-479r, which erroneously gives 1436 as the end of Giannino’s tenure: BSL, Ms. 896, 468r. He did not take holy orders until 1444: ASL, S. Ponziano, pergamena, 12 January 1444, and was already abbot early in 1445, ASL, S. Ponziano, pergamena, 23 March 1445. For the abbey’s estates: R. Pescaglini Monti, ‘Le dipendenze polironiane in diocese di Lucca,’ in: L’Italia nel Quadro della espansione europea del monachesimo cluniacense, Atti del Convegno internazionale di storia medioevale (Pescia, 26-28 November 1981), Cesena 1985 (Italia Benedettina 8), 143-172, especially 159-164: For its early history: A. Onori, L’Abbazia di San Salvatore di Sesto (una signoria ecclesiatica 1250-1300), Florence 2004. The abbey’s ruined state was already apparent in the 1430s, see ATL, 532, c. 105v., and Giannino Bernardi complained of the ruined state of the area as early as 1455, ASL, Recuperate, pergamena, 1455. In 1457 he asked to sell lands that he already had to pay punitive Florentine taxes on, ASL, S. Ponziano, pergamena, 9 April 1457. The lake at Sesto was the largest freshwater lake in Tuscany until drained by the Florentines in the seventeenth century; for a historical summary: S. Bongi, Inventario del R. Archivio di Stato in Lucca, 1, Officio Sopra i Palude di Sesto, Lucca 1872, 325-337. G. Mansi, Diario Sacro delle chiese di Lucca, Lucca 1856, 176-177. Paoli, op. cit. (note 3), 137. ASL, S. Ponziano pergamena, 7 December 1410. Ibid., 26 August 1462 and 22 November 1464. Ibid., 8 May 1466. The abbey at Sesto already had a long association with the other abbey of the Black Benedictines in Lucca, San Bartolomeo in Salice, see ATL, 531, c 190, 25 May 1434. BSL, Ms. 896, 469r. This seems to have brought about a change in the name of the abbey at Sesto from simply San Salvatore, to ‘San Salvatore e Maria extra et prope civitatis lucem’: AN 895, 35r, 7 December 1476, confirms this usage was ‘quem moderno tempore’.

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thirteen columns and capitals of Florentine pietra serena, rather than local stone, possibly for a new choir.90 A further impetus to Bernardi patronage may have come in September 1482, when the Benedictines finally decided to abandon the abbey at Sesto, having again seen its rich artistic patrimony stolen or destroyed by soldiers raiding across the border with Florence.91 Just before Giannino’s resignation as abbot, in October 1483, Nicolao Bernardi paid the Sienese woodworker and architect, Bonaventura di ser Giuliano Turi di Pilli, and his garzone for a gilded ceiling and cornice. If Bonaventura’s sumptuous decoration of the Oratorio di San Bernardino in the church of San Francesco in Siena of 1496 is any indication, this must have made Santa Maria del Corso one of the most visually arresting Renaissance interiors in Lucca.92 Commensurate with the architectural and decorative richness of their patronage, the Bernardi commissioned two great altarpieces for Santa Maria del Corso, paid for by Nicolao Bernardi on behalf of his profligate and volatile uncle, Giannino.93 In 1477 the Bernardi engaged the Sienese artist, Vecchietta, and after his death in 1480 his compatriot, Neroccio de’ Landi, to carve an exceptionally expensive wooden altarpiece, costing 285 gold ducats, for the high altar, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin; two surviving fragments, The Virgin in Glory and The Burial of the Virgin, are now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca.94 It was installed in September 1482, the same month that Nicolao Bernardi contracted Filippino Lippi and, through the agency of Filippino, Benedetto da Maiano, to produce a second altarpiece (fig. 4.2), and for Filippino to fresco its chapel, a commission he had completed by the end of September 1483, just a month before Giannino resigned as abbot.95 Given the Bernardi’s lavish patronage of Santa Maria del Corso between 1474 and 1483, it is not surprising that one of their arguments to Sixtus IV for the 90 91 92 93

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AN 3920, 165v, 7 November 1474. The order for an odd number of columns suggests a semicircular structure. A new choir is mentioned in a document dated 1498; AN 905, 196r-201v The losses are detailed in a papal bull from Sixtus IV to Nicola Guidiccioni, Bishop of Nicotera, and Nicolao Benedetti and Pietro da Collodi, canons of Lucca cathedral, ASL, Sant’ Agostino, pergamena, 15 June 1482. AN 1401, 231r-v, 11 October 1483. On the Oratorio di San Bernardino see D. Norman, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, 1260-1555, New Haven/London 2003, 259-267. Onori, op. cit. (note 82) 19. He had given up his rights to inherit from his father in 1455, in return for a cash lump sum: BSL, Ms. 1105, 9, perhaps to finance his lifestyle as ‘un uomo di bon tempo.’ He acknowledged his debts to his family in 1474: BSL, Ms. 1105, 11r, 28 August 1474. In 1466, Giannino was censured for punching another priest in the face: ASL, S. Ponziano pergamena, 8 May 1466. Caglioti, op. cit. (note 88), 1-44, and F. Caglioti in A. De Marchi and C Gnoni (eds.), Legati da una Cintola. L’Assunta di Bernardo Daddi e l’identità di una città, cat. exh. Prato (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio), Florence, 2017, 188-192, cat. no. 34. Giannino died soon after, and certainly before 23 September 1484: AN 904, 222r.

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succession of Giannino’s nephew, Bernardino di Stefano, was their transformation of the now ‘pulchris nobilis’ church.96 Despite this, however, in September 1484 Giannino was succeeded by Giorgio di Galeotto Franciotti, who was related through his half-brother to Sixtus, the family enjoying high status at the papal court in Rome.97 Giorgio Franciotti died in 1511, and in 1513 his relative and successor, Bartolomeo Arnolfini, sold the remaining assets of both the abbey and the church to the Olivetian monastery of San Ponziano in Lucca, in return for burial rights in the monastery and an annual pension of 300 scudi.98 This did not prevent him, however, from removing Santa Maria del Corso’s precious marbles, and possibly its gilded woodwork, to his villa at Vicopelago, just south of Lucca, and Matteo Ciudi’s pietra serena columns to his new palace, now the Palazzo Cenami in Lucca, where they can still be seen.99 After Franciotti’s appointment in 1484, Nicolao Bernardi attempted to retain the family’s rights to the abbey’s estates, and to the liturgical effects of Santa Maria del Corso, which included a ‘tabula pictam et ornatam proviente ecclesia sante maria soprascrite novam coro/Estimationis ducatoro septuaginta,’ recorded in 1486 in the house of the deceased Giannino and possibly identifiable

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ATL 534, 67r-v, 20 September 1483. Here the Anziani wrote to Sixtus IV and the Bishop of Parma, Giovanni Jacopo Sclafenati in support of Bernardino Bernardi’s candidacy. For these and other documents related to the Assumption: F. Caglioti, ‘Il Vecchietta, Neroccio e l’Assunta per l’altare maggiore di Santa Maria del Corso a Lucca,’ Studi di Memofonte, 20 (2018), 1-44, especially 22-44 and 36 for the above correspondence. The Bernardi also had their own connections with the della Rovere: another of Giannino’s nephews, Girolamo di Jacopo Bernardi, was already in the entourage of Giuliano della Rovere in the 1480s, and in 1503 was described as the ‘strettisimo amico’ of the newly elected pope, Julius II: BSL, Ms. 1105, 14. Lucchina della Rovere, Sixtus IV’s niece and Julius II’s sister, married Giorgio Franciotti’s half-brother, Gianfrancesco di Piero Franciotti in 1480, and he soon after became ‘depositario generale della Camera apostolica.’ By 1508, Franciotti was also Vicar of the Churches of Lucca and Apostolic Commissioner; ASL, Altopascio, Deposito Orsetti Cittadella, pergamena, 18 August 1508. Though Bernardino Bernardi failed to succeed his uncle, he was appointed prior of Santi Giovanni e Reparata in Lucca, where in 1486 he commissioned a new choir: BSL, Ms. 1105, 12r. BSL, Ms. 898, 469v. BSL, Ms. 898, 471r and ASL, S. Ponziano, pergamena, 20 December 1513. He waited until 1516 for the schedule of payments to be finalised: ASL, S. Ponziano, 9 January 1516. For the kinship of the Franciotti and the Arnolfini: L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, London, 1998, 192 and 196. The villa no longer exists. For the transfer of the abbey to the Olivetans of San Ponziano: S. Bongi, San Ponziano in: Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Inventario a stampa, 1, 1872, 17-19. For the acquisition of Santa Maria del Corso by Arnolfini: ASL, S. Ponziano pergamena, 14 December 1513. For Arnolfini’s use of its spolia, see BSL, 896, 475v-476r.

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with The Bernardi Altarpiece.100 However, with Nicolao’s failure to secure Bernardino’s succession, the raison d’être for the family’s continued patronage of the church effectively ceased.101 Perhaps as early as 1486, it had once again fallen into disrepair, and was finally demolished in or soon after 1513.102 Vasari records Filippino’s altarpiece in San Ponziano, when it was already in a degraded state, with some elements, such as the frame and half-tondo Annunciation already lost.103 100 Although the exact location of the Bernardi Altarpiece in Santa Maria del Corso is not known, if it was the ‘tabula pictam’ referred to in AN 905, 196r, 16 December 1486, amongst a number of ecclesiastical effects in the late Giannino Bernardi’s house, it would have been in the new choir of the church. That both Bartolomeo Arnolfini and Giorgio Franciotti were involved in their disposal suggests that Arnolfini may have already acquired Filippino’s altarpiece long before he installed it in San Ponziano after 1513. Alternatively, the reference may be to a third, otherwise undocumented, altarpiece commissioned for the new choir of Santa Maria del Corso by the Bernardi. Whether Filippino’s extended visit to Lucca in 1498 was in connection with his earlier Lucchese commissions is not known; see M. Fanucci Lovitch, Artisti attivi a Pisa fra XIII e XVIII secolo, Pisa, 1991, 106. The Vecchietta-Neroccio Assumption of the Virgin was still in situ in 1499, as implied in the will of Nicolao Micheli, AN 16, 183r-191r, 19 May 1499 and published in part in: Caglioti, op. cit. (note 96), 37. 101 For his repeated failures, see for example: ATL 534, 84v, 6 January 1485 and idem. 92r-92v, 1 June 1485. The final settlement between Nicolao Bernardi and Giorgio Franciotti did not come about until 1498: AN 905, 196r-201v. 102 Two other churches in the same area, San Donato and San Piero Fuori le Mura, were also demolished in 1513, to strengthen the vulnerable southwest corner of the city against a threatened Florentine attack: G. Bedini, R. Martinelli and G. Puccinelli, La Porta San Donato nelle mura di Lucca, Lucca 1988, 10, and G. Mansi, op. cit. (note 84) 48, 148-149 and 176-177. 103 Vasari wrongly attributed the carved St Anthony to Antonio da Sangallo, see G. Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, G. du C. de Vere and D. Ekserdjian (eds.), London 1996, 566. An idea of the original format of the Bernardi Altarpiece is evident in the panel attributed to Michelangelo di Pietro Membrini, of The Virgin and Child with Angels (fig. 12.8) in the central panel, flanked by two pairs of saints, with a lunette of The Annunciation with God the Father and Angels: see Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 532-533. However, the otherwise detailed Bernardi contract stipulates only the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin in the lunette. For this and other reasons related to size and composition, the so-called God the Father (fig. 12.9) discussed in P. Zambrano, ‘Un “Iddio Padre” di Filippino Lippi,’ in: A. Bacchi and L.Barbero (eds.), Studi in onore di Stefano Tumidei, Verona 2016, 81-88, now in a private collection, should not, in the opinion of this author, be identified as a fragment of the lunette. The fragment measures 56.3 × 49.5 cm., making the figure disproportionately large compared with the surviving elements of the altarpiece; his gaze is frontal rather than directed downwards as would be expected in an Annunciation lunette, and he is dressed in a manner closer to Filippino’s later work in the Carafa and Strozzi Chapels; though for a counter-argument, see Christopher Daly, Chapter 12 of this volume.

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Nicolao’s willingness up until 1483 to bankroll the patronage of Santa Maria del Corso, when his own centre of patronage was Sant’ Agostino, was no doubt motivated by his desire to enhance the family’s status within Lucca, to gain favour with the papacy, and to assert the cosmopolitan nature of their cultural networks by seeking out Florentine and Sienese artists rather than Lucchese. More practically, it probably served as a quid pro quo for Giannino’s ongoing willingness to rent the abbey’s valuable lands at preferential rates to the Bernardi clan.104 And by focussing on this aspect of the Bernardi’s interests, relating their particular concerns in Santa Maria del Corso and the lake at Sesto circa 1480 to the subject matter of Filippino’s altarpiece, a new interpretation of the Bernardi Altarpiece is possible. Just as the Bernardi had looked to Florence for the columns and capitals of Santa Maria del Corso, so the contract for the altarpiece stipulates that Filippino was to sub-contract the carving of the St Anthony to ‘the best master there was in the city of Florence’.105 In 1482 Benedetto da Maiano was an obvious choice. The effective patron of the altarpiece was Giannino Bernardi, his presence embodied in the abbot saints, Benedict in the left-hand panel and the carved St Anthony in the centre, who are the only figures directly to engage the viewer (fig. 4.2).106 St Benedict links Santa Maria del Corso with its mother church of the Black Benedictines in Lucca, San Bartolomeo in Silice, and St Anthony Abbot’s Tau staff associates him with pilgrimage and the great hospital of the Order of the Tau some fifteen miles east of Lucca along the Via Francigena at Altopascio.107 The early 1480s in Lucca marked a resurgence of the cult of St Anthony Abbot, with complaints that alms donated to his chapel in the church of San Giorgio were being spent outside the city.108 Benedetto da Maiano’s St 104 105 106 107

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For example, ASL, Tarpea, pergamena, 21 August 1482, where Giannino granted compre­ hensive rights to the exploitation of estates at Sesto to his nephew, just one month before Nicolao contracted Filippino Lippi. Concioni, Ferri and Ghilarducci, op. cit. (note 2), 129-130. There may also have been an established association between Santa Maria del Corso and St Anthony through the Armenian Hermits, whose main church was San Antonio di Spassavento in Pisa; ASL, San Frediano, pergamena, 4 August 1468. Meiss, op. cit. (note 60) 492. San Bartolomeo was itself a dependence of the important Lucchese hospital of San Luca and the Misericordia. For its transfer to the Ospedale di San Luca: ASL, Corte dei Mercanti, pergamena, 13 May 1473 and subsequently to the Olivetans: ASL, San Ponziano, pergamena, 1 July and 18 July 1488. For Altopascio: E. Emerton, ‘Altopascio – a Forgotten Order,’ The American Historical Review, 29 (1923), 1-23. ATL 534, 42v, 10 April 1482. The symbolism of the pig and bell, in a church located immediately outside the city gates, may not have been lost on its devotees, Lucca’s statutes banning pigs, often wearing bells around their necks, from entering the city because of the threat of infection.

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Anthony in Santa Maria del Corso, standing close to the Porta San Donato, where the Francigena entered Lucca, may have been an opportunistic attempt by Giannino to exploit the saint’s popularity, his commanding gaze and clearly legible book prompting the viewer to heed its text and seek his protection before entering the city. The lines, from Psalm 24 of the Latin Vulgate, ‘Shew, O Lord, thy ways to me, and teach me thy paths,’ must have resonated with pilgrims travelling along the Francigena, also known as the Via Romea, and entering Lucca through the nearby Porta San Donato. The significance of this text is underlined by the gesture of Filippino’s bishop saint in dialogue with St Paul, who points towards it, as the subject of their silent discourse. Given the appellation of the abbey as San Salvatore e Maria ‘Extra Porta San Donato’, and the location of Santa Maria del Corso ‘Presso Porta San Donato’ it would seem more likely, in the absence of any specific attribute, that this bishop saint, usually assumed to be St Frediano, is in fact St Donatus (fig. 4.9).109 The location of the church, outside the walls near the gate of San Donato on the road to Rome, may also explain the inclusion of St Paul, as an allusion to pilgrimage and deference to Rome, associating the small Lucchese church ‘fuori le mura’ with the great Roman basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls of Rome. The opulently dressed St Benedict, with his bejewelled orphreys and elaborate gilded crozier, speaks to Giannino Bernardi’s well-known love of worldly things, and evokes the wealth and status of his family.110 The sumptuous robes also evoke his nephew’s commercial interests as a manufacturer and purveyor of luxury fabrics, and the gold embroideries and gilded croziers reference the source of the Bernardi’s fortune as beaters of gold leaf. The fanciful whimsicality of their design, particularly in the eccentric figures seated around the head of St Benedict’s crozier, are akin to sketches by Filippino for gilded ornaments,

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Meiss, op. cit. (note 60), first suggested the identification with San Frediano, founder of the first cathedral in the city, now the church of San Frediano. It is located on the other side of Lucca, and neither Nicolao nor Giannino Bernardi had any special associations with it. St Paul may also have referenced the church of San Paolo in Lucca, which the Armenians had moved to from Santa Maria del Corso in 1462, and St Paolino, a Lucchese patron saint whose church was located immediately inside the Porta San Donato. The presence of St Apollonia, paired with St Benedict in the Bernardi Altarpiece, may relate to the interests of Nicolao’s brother, Bernardino, as the prior of Santi Giovanni e Reparata, who com­ missioned an altarpiece for the chapel of St Apollonia in that church. Bernardino was regarded as an ‘esperto’ in painting, acting as an arbiter in a dispute over an altarpiece for the church of San Jacopo at Crasciana, by Davide di Pietro di Pistoia in 1481, see AN, 983, 12, 26 February 1481.

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Figure 4.9 Filippino Lippi, Saints Benedict and Apollonia (left panel of The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, tempera and oil on panel, 157.8 × 59.7cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum

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Figure 4.10 Filippino Lippi, Saints Paul and Donatus (right panel of The Bernardi Altarpiece), 1482-1483, tempera and oil on panel, 157.5 × 60 cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum

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usually associated with the 1490s,111 and anticipate the grotesque gilded ornament of later Lucchese painting.112 The prominence of elaborate goldsmiths’ work may have been influenced by contacts between Filippino and the leading contemporary Lucchese goldsmith, Francesco di Leonardo Marti, who acted as the guarantor for both the Bernardi and the Del Voglia altarpieces, and was a neighbour and longstanding associate of the Bernardi and the Magrini.113 The eye-catching croziers of Sts Benedict and Donatus (fig. 4.9 and 4.10), the more elaborate one carried by the abbot rather than the bishop saint, also serve to frame the structures on the far left and right of the panels: a city gate, and a watermill (figs. 4.11 and 4.12). Filippino adapts the architecture of Memling’s northern city in the central panel of the Pagagnotti Triptych (fig. 7.4) melding it with elements from Baldassare di Biagio’s earlier depiction of the Porta San Donato (fig. 4.3). He re-orientates Memling’s obliquely facing gate directly towards the viewer, thereby highlighting its function, not only iconographically but also topologically, as the entry and egress point of the city. St Benedict stands outside the city gate, and perched in his crozier directly above it is the gilded figure of a female saint, which might be identified as the Virgin. This grouping, therefore, references Giannino Bernardi, himself a Benedictine abbot; the Porta San Donato, the gate out of the city to Giannino’s abbey at Sesto, ‘Extra Porta San Donato’, and adjacent to Santa Maria del Corso, ‘Presso Porta San Donato,’ both foundations, literally, under the protection of the Virgin. Similarly, the watermill behind St Donatus (fig. 4.10), its architecture translated from the Flemish to the Tuscan vernacular, may allude to the Bernardi’s interests in the lucrative revenues derived from the lake at Sesto and the lands around it. Just as St Benedict’s crozier features the Virgin, the seated figure on St Donatus’s crozier is St Paul, symbolically placed ‘outside the walls’ on the way to the Bernardi-controlled estates around the abbey of San Salvatore. Filippino’s reworking in the Bernardi Altarpiece of Memling’s landscape in the 111 112 113

Compare for example the sketches for a decorative frieze of Sea Creatures and Tritons, in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi: Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (note 63), 225-229, cat. nos. 60-62. For example, the Annunciations attributed to Michele Angelo di Pietro in the Servite church in Lucca and in the Bode Museum in Berlin (fig. 12.5), both perhaps influenced by the work of the Lucchese goldsmith, Francesco di Marti. Marti was also a close neighbour of Nicolao Bernardi, Francesco Magrini and Jacopo di Marco da Villa Basilicata. Marti and Francesco Magrini were longstanding associates, for example both were involved in the commissioning of the Frediani altarpiece in August 1483: Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 1), 557. Marti witnessed a Magrini business transaction on November 4th, 1488: AN 907, 133v; eighteen years later he witnessed Magrini’s will: AN 25, 62r, 25 April 1506.

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Figure 4.11 Detail of fig. 7.4, central panel of The Pagagnotti Triptych

Figure 4.12 Detail of fig. 7.4, central panel of The Pagagnotti Triptych

Pagagnotti Triptych, from city gate on the left to the watermill on the right, may thus be read as the journey out of the city through the Porta San Donato, past Santa Maria del Corso and across the Lucchese countryside to the abbey’s rich estates on the lake at Sesto. The lake at Sesto, called the lake of Bientina by the Florentines, loomed large not only in Bernardi affairs of the early 1480s, but also in Florentine-Lucchese diplomacy.114 In 1471 Florence and Lucca agreed to partition the lake, leaving the Lucchese with the larger northern portion.115 This did not, however, 114

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Lorenzo de’ Medici himself was engaged in a parallel dispute over his watermill (now the Molino Grassotti) constructed in 1475 at Ripafratta, on the border between Lucca and Florence. The dispute was the subject of a representation to Lorenzo in May 1477; ATL, 532, Reg. 34, 206v, 11 May 1477. For Lucchese interests in the area: ASL, Officio sopra Palude di Sesto, especially Ms. 46, 5556, 59 and 61. For a contemporary summary of the 1471 arbitration talks: ibid., Ms. 61, 19-22.

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deter the Florentines from syphoning off its waters to mills at Vicopisano and Bientina, much to the detriment of Bernardi controlled farms, forests and fisheries along its shores.116 The Anziani of Lucca attempted to support the Bernardi in the preservation of their rights to the lake, but the issue was still unresolved in October 1476, when they reiterated their complaints to Bartolomeo Scala.117 In 1480, they complained again to the Florentine governor of Vicopisano, Luigi Guicciardini, specifically about the damage done to the watermills around the lake, hoping that the issues could be resolved amicably.118 In July 1481 Girolamo di Jacopo Bernardi, Nicolao’s cousin, visited Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence as part of these discussions.119 The treaty negotiations signed in May 1482 set out the basis of this hoped for agreement, and Filippino’s painting, formally contracted in September 1482, may reflect not only the interests of the Bernardi in the lake at Sesto and its watermills, but also the wider concerns of the Lucchese and Florentine governments in restoring political and economic stability along their borders.120 Contemporary with the frescos by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and other Florentine painters in the Sistine Chapel, and a few years before his own dispatch to Rome to paint the Carafa Chapel, the history of Filippino’s Lucchese altarpieces can likewise be read as Florentine art in the service of Medician diplomacy, at a time when it was vital for Lorenzo de’ Medici to retain the neutrality of Lucca in the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. And it is in the altarpieces he executed for his Lucchese patrons that Filippino found his own voice, emerging in The Magrini Altarpiece from the shadow of Botticelli, and in The Bernardi Altarpiece, unequivocally asserting his own artistic identity. 116

For examples of Giannino Bernardi’s exploitation of the estates around the lake between 1455 and 1484: ASL, S. Ponziano, pergamena, 7 December 1475; 6 October 1477; 9 July 1484. 117 ASL, Tarpea, pergamena, 19 October 1476. 118 ATL, Ambasciate, 616, 124v, 10 October 1480. 119 ATL, 534, 48v, 28 July 1481. Giannino’s brother Antonio became head of the Bernardi clan in 1474 (BSL, Baroni, Ms. 1105, 31r) and represented their interests before the Anziani during the deliberations over the ratification of the treaty with Florence and the implementation of its terms: ASL, Colloquio, 1, 659, 20 April 1482; 663-665, 7 May 1482; 674, 15 July 1482. 120 Whether these wider concerns also explain the apparent inclusion of Francesco Giamberti, the Florentine father of the architect Giuliano da San Gallo, in the guise of St Donatus in The Bernardi Altarpiece is beyond the scope of this chapter to investigate. For the portrait of Francesco Giamberti by Piero di Cosimo, which closely resembles Filippino’s St Donatus, see D. Bull, The Architect and the Musician, Piero di Cosimo’s Portraits of Giuliano da Sangallo and His Father, Amsterdam 2013, and D. Carl, ‘New documents for Piero di Cosimo’s portrait of Francesco di Bartolo Giamberti’, The Burlington Magazine (157), 2015, 4-8.

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Acknowledgements The research for this chapter was made possible through the generosity of the NIKI, its director Professor Michael Kwakkelstein, and the assistance of his colleagues at the Dutch Institute. It could not have drawn on the rich documentation of the Archivio di Stato, the Archivio Archivescovile and the Biblioteca di Stato in Lucca without the patience and kindness of their directors and staff. Thanks are also due to Marcello Tofanello of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara, who kindly facilitated a viewing of St Eustace, to Massimo Ferretti for reading an earlier draft of this chapter, and to Giulio Dalvit for his assistance in the Sienese archives. My fellow chairs, speakers and attendees at the Filippino conference and colleagues at the Courtauld Institute gave invaluable feedback, and I am especially grateful to Paula Nuttall, Francesco Caglioti, Christopher Daly and Caroline Elam. Abbreviations AG AN ATL ASL AALu BCS BSL GPG

Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Archivio Guinigi Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Archivio Notarile Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Anziani Tempo della Libertà Archivio di Stato di Lucca Archivio Archivescovile di Lucca Bibliotenca Communale di Siena Biblioteca Statale di Lucca Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Governo di Paolo Guinigi

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Benozzo, F., ‘Toponimi orali di area alto-italiana: una stratigrafia semantico-motivazionale,’ Quaderni di Semantica 1 (2015), 219-276. Blake McHam, S., ‘The “Fantasia” of the cricket in Piero di Cosimo’s “Vulcan and Aeolus”’, in: D. Geronimus and M.W. Kwakkelstein (eds.), Piero di Cosimo: Painter of Faith and Fable, Leiden/Boston 2019, 82-100 Bongi, S., Inventario del R. Archivio di Stato in Lucca, Vol. 1, Lucca 1872 Brown, A., Bartolomeo Scala (1430-1497), Cancelliere di Firenze. L’umanista nello Stato, Florence 1990. Bull, D., The Architect and the Musician, Piero di Cosimo’s Portraits of Giuliano da Sangallo and His Father, Amsterdam 2013. Caglioti, F., ‘Matteo Civitali e i suoi committenti nel Duomo di Lucca,’ in: A. d’Aniello and M. T. Filieri (eds.), Matteo Civitali nella cattedrale di Lucca; studi e restauri, Lucca 2011, 21-112 and 381-411. Caglioti, F., in: A. De Marchi and C. Gnoni (eds.), Legati da una Cintola. L’Assunta di Bernardo Daddi e l’identità di una città, cat. exh. Prato (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio), Florence 2017, 188-192. Campbell, L., National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, London, 1998. Carl, D., ‘New documents for Piero di Cosimo’s Portrait of Francesco di Bartolo Giamberti’, The Burlington Magazine (157), 2015, 4-8. Casella, F., ‘La chiesa di Sant’Andrea in Croce’ in: P. Romboli (ed.), Brancoli uno, Sezione di Ponte a Moriano e Comune di Lucca, Lucca 1983, 37-39. Cecchi, A. (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Qurinale), Milan 2011. Collezione Strozzi Sacrati, dipiniti antichi e arredi, sale cat. Palazzo Broggi, Milan, 15 December 1992. Concioni, G., Ferri, C. and Ghilarducci, G., I Pittori Rinascimentali a Lucca: Vita, Opere e Committenza, Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Memorie e Docu­ menti per servire alla Storia di Lucca) 4, Lucca 1988. Elen, A. J. and Fischer, C. (eds.), Fra Bartolomeo: the Divine Renaissance, cat. exh. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), Rotterdam 2016. Emerton, E., ‘Altopascio – a Forgotten Order,’ The American Historical Review 29z (1923), 1-23. Fanucci Lovitch, M., Artisti attivi a Pisa fra XIII e XVIII secolo, Pisa 1991. Gagliardi, I., I Trofei della Croce, l’esperienza Gesuata e la società Lucchese tra medioevo ed età moderna, Rome 2005. Goldner, G. and Bambach, C., The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997. Henderson, J., Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, Chicago/London 1997.

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Chapter 5

The Virgin at the Well in Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation Joost Joustra

Everett Fahy described Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation in San Gimignano as ‘bizarre’, ‘a document of neurotic frenzy’ full of ‘abnormal distortions’ and expressing ‘surrealistic intensity’, ‘indicative of a crisis in one artist’s private emotions’.1 Fahy’s characterisation is somewhat hyperbolic, especially for two paintings of a very traditional subject in a building that also houses some highly unusual Trecento wall paintings.2 That said, Filippino’s early but accomplished depiction of Gabriel and the Virgin Mary is an intriguing and very original handling of this traditional subject (figs. 5.1 and 5.2).3 Divided between two large round panels each reserved for one of the Annunciation’s protagonists, the viewer is first struck by the overall simplicity of the composition. Gabriel takes up almost the entirety of the left panel, and his powerful gesticulating action is harmonised by the Virgin Mary’s humble and receptive motion on the right. Indicating further divine presence, golden rays emanate from behind the angel and cross over to the second tondo, emphasising the spiritual connection between these disparate beings. The two figures are striking in their yin- and yang-like balance, set off by Filippino’s bold colouring against the rigid geometric floor pattern. 1 E. Fahy, ‘A Lucchese follower of Filippino Lippi’, Paragone 16 (1965), no. 185, 13-14. 2 For the remarkable decorations of the Communal Palace’s tower room, see C. Jean Campbell, The Game of Courting and the Art of the Commune of San Gimignano, 1290-1320, Princeton 1997, 107-190. 3 For Filippino’s Annunciation, see P. Zambrano in P. Zambrano and J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 344-345 (cat. no. 30) and 26-29, 225-226; A. Cecchi, Filippino Lippi, L’Annunciazione di San Gimignano, cat. exh. San Gimignano (Pinacoteca), Florence/Milan 2015, esp. 31-51; J.K. Nelson in A. Cecchi, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011, 132-135 and J.K. Nelson in D. Arasse, P. De Vecchi and J.K. Nelson, Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth- Century Florentine Painting, cat. exh. Paris (Musée National du Luxembourg), Milan 2004, 160-161. For the documents surrounding the commission and the framing of the tondi, see D.L. Krohn, ‘Civic Patronage of Art in Renaissance San Gimignano’, unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University 1992, 226-235 and 358-363 and D.L. Krohn, ‘The Framing of Two Tondi in San Gimignano Attributed to Filippino Lippi’, The Burlington Magazine 136 (1994), no. 1092, 160-163. ← Filippino Lippi, The Angel Gabriel, detail of fig. 5.1 Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 5.1 Filippino Lippi, The Angel Gabriel, 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 110 cm (unframed diameter), San Gimignano, Pinacoteca

It is only when the viewer starts following the floor pattern into the recession of the composition that a plethora of details appear, especially abundant in the Virgin’s space. Filippino seems to have taken delight in painting these details. Looking closely at this panel reveals his originality to its fullest extent. Indeed, far from being indicative of a personal ‘crisis’, as Fahy saw it, the Annunciation reveals itself to be a thoughtful and inventive work that operates on a number of sophisticated conceptual levels. In San Gimignano, one only needs to cross the street to the church of the Collegiata to compare the tondi

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Figure 5.2 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 110 cm (unframed diameter), San Gimignano, Pinacoteca

with a much more traditional depiction of the Annunciation, painted only a year before, to see how radically original Filippino’s rendition was.4 Benozzo Gozzoli had already been approached to paint the encounter between Gabriel and Mary in the Palazzo del Comune in 1466, when he was asked for a ‘pittura di nostra Donna Annunziata dall’Angelo’ at the top of the stairs of 4 For this fresco dated 1482 and attributed to Davide Ghirlandaio (instead of Sebastiano Mainardi), perhaps from a design by Domenico Ghirlandaio, see J.K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan, New Haven/London 2000, 159 and 320-321.

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the renovated Council Hall while he was working there primarily on the restoration of Lippo Memmi’s Maestà, although this rendition was either never exe­ cuted or is now lost.5 Possibly with Benozzo’s earlier commission still in mind, the younger painter Filippino Lippi was approached in 1483 to execute an Annunciation ‘… in two panels either round or square’.6 Filippino certainly had a good pedigree when it came to painting Annunciations. Fra Filippo had been an immensely prolific painter of this subject, producing at least eleven different Annunciations of various shapes and sizes throughout his career. In his pioneering Les Deux Lippi, Urbain Mengin considered it obvious that Filippino must have thought of his father’s last Annunciation in the Cathedral in Spoleto when he painted his own version in San Gimignano.7 One would be hardpressed to deny any such paternal borrowings – although the monumental Spoleto fresco might not be the most obvious template – yet some of the most original features in the San Gimignano Annunciation are entirely Filippino’s own, and possibly the result of Filippino trying to emulate his father. Looking further into the background of the tondi, a viewer encounters Filippino’s originality at its fullest, specifically in the landscape detail at the top left of the Annunciate panel. Whereas the various objects in the Virgin’s ‘bedroom’ have been discussed at length, most frequently the mechanical clock and the inscription ‘BENEdictas dom…’ (Luke 1:68) on the cartellino to its left, the landscape section has not attracted any detailed scholarly analysis.8 It has been 5 6

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See Krohn 1992, op. cit. (note 3), 222 and D. Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, New Haven/London 1996, 148, 257-258, 274. Ibid., Krohn, 227. Although the tondo-shape is a defining characteristic of these paintings for the modern viewer, it did not seem to be for the commissioning party in the 1480s. For Filippino’s paintings in the context of other tondi, see R.J.M. Olson, The Florentine Tondo, Oxford 2000, 67-71 and 247-248. For Filippino’s paintings in the context of other tondi depicting the Annunciation, see R.J.M. Olson, ‘Lost and Partially Found: The Tondo, a Significant Florentine Art Form, in Documents of the Renaissance’, Artibus et Historiae 14 (1993), no. 27, 60 (note 88). For a useful exploration of the Annunciation painted or sculpted on separate tondi or in roundels (not including Filippino’s), see M. Skubiszewska, ‘Franciabigio’s two Tondi with Annunciation’, Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 16 (1975), 84-96. U. Mengin, Les Deux Lippi, Paris 1932, 123. For these objects and their possible symbolism, see S. Stanbury, ‘The Clock in Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation Tondo’, Studies in Iconography 25 (2004), 197-219; Olson 2000 op. cit. (note 6), 247-248 and G.L. Geiger, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Carafa “Annunciation”: Theology, Artistic Conventions, and Patronage’, The Art Bulletin 63 (1981), no. 1, 72-73. Sarah Stanbury sees the clock in Botticelli’s 1480 St. Augustine fresco in the Ognissanti as Filippino’s inspiration. In a recent lecture (The Arnolfini Portrait: Discoveries and Reconsiderations, The National Gallery, London, 19 April 2018), Lorne Campbell showed contemporary Burgundian manuscript illuminations from dedication miniatures by Loyset Liédet and his workshop that depict similar mechanical clocks in a domestic setting (Brussels, KBR,

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discussed as an example of what Patrizia Zambrano calls ‘la fase nordica’, exemplary of Filippino’s work of the 1480s, and other scholars have noted the Netherlandish appropriations in the landscape and architectural detail, especially in relation to the work of Hans Memling.9 But a closer look at these details reveals the Annunciate’s background landscape as key to Filippino’s conception of the Annunciation in these tondi. The root of this relative neglect might be the display of the two paintings in San Gimignano’s Pinacoteca, both currently and historically. Today, what are arguably the gallery’s masterpieces are relegated to a low position on the wall, close to each other, partly blocked by a crucifix but primarily obscured by the reflective surface of their casing. On the two recent occasions that the paintings were part of an exhibition, the hang was closer to how they would originally have been viewed.10 The tondi are currently not far from where they were in the 1480s. Down the stairs from the largest room in the picture gallery is the Council Hall, where in 1300 Dante himself had delivered an address as Florentine ambassador to the Guelf league. Here, underneath Lippo Memmi’s great Maestà, a door leads into the Communal Palace’s Audience Hall. Originally in this room, following the documentary evidence, were ‘[…] placed and arranged in the said audience hall, with hooks and rings in the proper way, according to what seems best […]’, the two tondi by Filippino (fig. 5.3).11 In this hang, the corbel of the vault would have acted as a physical barrier through which Gabriel’s immaterial Word had to pass before it reached the Virgin Mary. Although it has been suggested that the hooks still visible in the Audience Hall were those that once held the tondi, their difference in height would suggest otherwise. The distance between these hooks, however, does give an approximation of the distance between the tondi. What also stands out immediately, besides the large gap between the paintings, is the distance between the paintings and the viewer, compared to how they are displayed in the Pinacoteca’s gallery upstairs. Physical distance between the Annunciation’s protagonists had already been explored to great effect in some earlier Annunciations in the Sienese tradition. Ambrogio

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MS 10986, Gilbert de Lannoy, Les enseignements paternels and Paris, BNF MS fr 12574, Olivier de Castille). I would like to thank Lorne Campbell for sharing these with me. See Zambrano op. cit. (note 3), 253-254 and P. Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500, New Haven/London 2004, 147. Jonathan Nelson sees the arrival of Hugo van der Goes’ Portinari Altarpiece as a possible impetus for this scene, see Nelson 2004, op. cit. (note 3), 161. For these exhibitions, see the Paris and Rome catalogues, op. cit. (note 3). I would like to thank Jonathan Nelson for providing me with a photo of the tondi as they were displayed in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, where they travelled after the Musée du Luxembourg exhibition. See Krohn 1992, op. cit. (note 3), 228-229.

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Figure 5.3 The Audience Hall, Palazzo Comunale, San Gimignano

Lorenzetti’s fresco in the church of San Galgano in Montesiepi is a beautiful example, with Gabriel to the left of a church window, and the Virgin Mary positioned to the right (fig. 5.4).12 In Montesiepi, the light coming in through this window adds another highly symbolic charge to Ambrogio’s Annunciation. San Gimignano had close ties to Siena before the Florentine takeover of 1353, so there might be some artistic kinship with the Sienese tradition exemplified by Lorenzetti. The corbel separating the angel and Mary in Filippino’s Annunciation panels lacks the visual drama of the window in Montesiepi, but the distance between the panels acknowledges the Incarnation’s immaterial aspect: The Word, before it was miraculously made Flesh. At the same time, due to their distance from the viewer quite high up on the wall of the Audience Hall, the smaller details painstakingly rendered by Filippino would be lost to most,

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For Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle in the church of San Galgano, see A. Bagnoli, R. Bartalini and M. Seidel, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, cat. exh. Siena (Santa Maria della Scala), Milan 2017, 198227.

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Figure 5.4 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation, 1334-1336, fresco, 238 × 441 cm. Montesiepi, San Galgano

although known by the select few privileged to have seen the panels in close proximity. The right tondo’s background deserves close scrutiny (figs. 5.5 and 5.9). The view from the Annunciate Virgin’s room is dominated by a steep hill on the right with a path leading down from it and a few scattered buildings, and on the left a city in a valley. A body of water divides the two, and Filippino used a tree in the foreground to emphasise distance through the difference in scale. Three figures are present in this landscape, one drawing water from a well, and two other figures closer to the viewer, who point across the body of water towards the city. In another charming detail, a fourth, and possibly fifth figure can just be made out in a tiny boat crossing the water towards the city. The city is dominated by towers and spires that lead the eye towards misty mountains set in the furthest perspectival recession of the tondo. The closest of the spires is definitely a church, identified by a simple cross illuminated by the pink and golden hues of the cloudy evening sky, and its adjacent cloister (fig. 5.9). Filippino clearly delighted in painting this passage of the Annunciate tondo.

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Figure 5.5 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, detail of fig. 5.2, background landscape and figures

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Although difficult to see, the detail here is astonishing, for example the definition of the individual leaves of the slightly discoloured foliage, the trees reflected in the water, and the subtle atmospheric perspective.13 A world of carefully rendered detail unfolds in the background of Filippino’s Annunciate Virgin, but one that was and is inaccessible to most.

The Virgin at the Well

Although most people are familiar with the scriptural Annunciation as famously narrated in the Gospel of Luke, culminating in Mary’s ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word’, there is another text that recounts the extended episode in far greater detail.14 In the ProtoGospel of James, an apocryphal text about the infancy, upbringing, and early life of Mary that had an impact on the faith and piety of the church to rival that of the canonical gospels, the Annunciation narrative differs from that found in the Gospel of Luke:15 13

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This autumnal flora does not accord with the date of the Annunciation on 25 March, an important day in Florence and its territories (San Gimignano was incorporated in 1353) traditionally celebrated as New Year’s Day. See S.Y. Edgerton, ‘Mensurare temporalia facit Geometria spiritualis: Some Fifteenth-Century Italian Notions about When and Where the Annunciation Happened’, in: I. Lavin and J. Plummer (eds.), Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, New York 1977, 115-130, esp. 118. The full text of Luke 1:26-38 reads: ‘And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: Because no word shall be impossible with God. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.’ D.R. Cartlidge and J.K. Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha, London/New York 2001, 21. Cartlidge and Elliott state that ‘The degree to which the tales that become the Christian apocrypha have contributed to the iconography of Jesus and the Jesus-event can hardly be over emphasized’, see p. 77.

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Mary took a pitcher and went out to fetch some water. And behold, she heard a voice saying, ‘Greetings you who are favoured! The Lord is with you. You are blessed among women.’ Mary looked around, right and left, to see where the voice was coming from. She then entered her house frightened and set the pitcher down. Taking up the purple she sat on her chair and began to draw it out. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before her and said, ‘Do not fear, Mary. For you have found favour before the Master of all. You will conceive a child from his Word.’16 The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a Latin reworking of the originally Greek Proto-Gospel of James, narrates the angel ‘physically’ appearing to Mary at a water source: On the next day while Mary was standing beside the fountain to fill her small pitcher, an angel appeared to her and said, ‘You are blessed, Mary, for you have prepared a dwelling place for God in your spirit. Behold, a light will come from heaven in order to dwell in you, and through It you will enlighten all the world.’17 Could the tiny figure in the furthest background of Filippino’s painting indeed be the ‘Virgin at the Well’ that originated in the Proto-Gospel of James? In a monochrome palette of earthish tones, possibly due to the current condition of the paint surface, the detail in this figure is nevertheless quite pronounced (fig. 5.5). Decidedly female, she appears to be looking up from her slightly bent pose. She is holding two buckets, of which one is dangling above the water source. Did Filippino have the popular apocryphal story of the Annunciation in mind when he painted this detail? The proximity of the full-size Mary and the miniature figure in the back, directly in the line of sight of the former, could indicate a meaningful bond between the two (fig. 5.2). If Filippino indeed painted the Virgin’s aural encounter with the angel Gabriel, he did so with great subtlety. The well from the Proto-Gospel of James is still a real place in Nazareth, much celebrated in the Eastern Church to this day as both a site of miracle, and a continuous water supply in these dry lands for over two millennia.18 The alternative Annunciation story with the well at its centre also gave rise to an 16 17 18

See the Proto-Gospel of James (31-71) in B.D. Ehrman and Z. Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, Oxford 2011, 53. Ibid., 93. C.F. Emmett, Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth (The University of Chicago Geography Research Paper, 237), Chicago/London 1995, 81.

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Figure 5.6 Unknown artist, Baptistery wall painting showing a woman at a well, c. 232, paint on plaster, 99 × 61 cm. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery

iconography, albeit one that is much rarer than the familiar account set out by the Evangelist Luke. It is purely coincidental that Filippino’s background figure resembles what some scholars of Early-Christian art have recognised as possibly the first ever depiction of the Virgin Mary, from about 232 A.D. (fig. 5.6). This Mary, now in the Yale University Art Gallery, came from the baptistery of an ancient Christian house-church in Dura-Europos, in modern-day Syria. As in Filippino’s Annunciation, we see Mary looking up slightly startled in the midst of drawing water from a well, glancing ‘right and left, to see where the voice was coming from’.19 Besides the textual transmission of the Proto-Gospel and derivative texts such as the one by Pseudo-Matthew, imagery related to the 19

For this wall painting now in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, see M. Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria, New Haven/London 2016, 155-201.

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Dura-Europos wall painting found its way to the Italian peninsula very early on through pilgrimage tokens such as the ones found in the treasury of Monza Cathedral and the Abbazia di San Colombano in Bobbio.20 Eventually an iconography would develop that conflated the apocryphal Annunciations of James and Matthew at the well, ultimately also with the more familiar Annunciation from Luke’s Canonical Gospel.21 A fifth-century ivory diptych in Milan Cathedral treasury shows Mary kneeling at a water source holding a pitcher, glancing over her right shoulder while Gabriel appears behind her.22 On a monumental scale, the scene appears in a similar vein in one of the twelfthcentury transept mosaics in Venice’s San Marco, this time as Mary stands next to a well.23 Although the well would remain a rare presence in Annunciations – cases in point being Paolo Uccello’s small panel at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (fig. 5.7) and Zanobi Strozzi’s National Gallery Annunciation – its narrative significance would ultimately decline as the water source turned into something entirely more symbolic.24 In Filippino’s father’s well-known Annunciation in the Martelli Chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence, the water source is an 20

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See Ibid. 187-188 for a relevant early example from Monza, catalogued in A. Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza – Bobbio), Paris 1958, 3 and fig. XXXI. The presence of the angel on this token means a stronger kinship of this example to Pseudo-Matthew than James. For the development of Mary and the Annunciation’s apocryphal iconographies, see Cartlidge and Elliott, op. cit. (note 15), 21-46 and 78-87; Peppard, op. cit. (note 19), 155-201; G.M. Gibson, ‘The Thread of Life in the Hand of the Virgin’, in: J.B. Holloway, C.S. Wright and J. Bechtold (eds.), Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, New York 1990, 46-54; C. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Zacharias, or the Ousted Father: Nuptial Rites in Tuscany between Giotto and the Council of Trent’, in: idem, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renais­ sance Italy, Chicago 1985, 178-212, esp. 196-209; W.M. Zucker, ‘The Representation of the Invisible: Reflections on Christian Iconology’, in: M. Henle, Vision and Artifact (to Rudolf Arnheim), New York 1976, 153-168, esp. 161 ff; Y. Hirn, The Sacred Shrine: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church, Boston 1912, 271-293. Peppard, op. cit. (note 19), 166. Ibid., 177 and 179. For Uccello’s relatively understudied Annunciation at the Ashmolean Museum, see C. Volpe, ‘Paolo Uccello a Bologna’, Paragone 31 (1980), no. 365, 3-28 and H. Hudson, ‘A Knight in Shining Armour, a Virgin: Uccello’s Melbourne “Saint George and the Dragon” and Oxford “Annunciation”’, The Annual Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria 46 (2006), 6-15. Neither Volpe nor Hudson discuss the well in this painting, a detail kindly brought to my attention by Andrea De Marchi. For Zanobi Strozzi’s painting, see D. Gordon, The Fifteenth-Century Italian Paintings, Volume I (National Gallery Catalogues), London 2003, 406-421. Gordon mentions the gospels of James and Matthew and the presence of the well as a symbol of ‘the Virgin’s purity’, but she does not connect the well to these apocryphal narratives, see 415.

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Figure 5.7 Paolo Uccello, The Annunciation, early 1420s, tempera and gilding on panel, 65 × 48 cm. Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

illusionistic glass vase close to the picture plane, suggesting that the angel Gabriel took the lily from it only moments ago.25 Ultimately, the Virgin would become the well, as a symbolic representation in the vein of the Hortus Conclusus and other more familiar Marian symbols of which many can be found in the Litany of Loreto.26 An Italian example of this type of Annunciation – accompanied by a background containing a plethora of Marian symbols including the now familiar well – could have been found in a lost fresco by Federico Zuccaro for the appropriately named church of Santa Maria Annunziata in Rome, fortunately engraved by Cornelis Cort.27 And although the prominence 25 26 27

See J. Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, London 1993, 115126, 399-403. L. Lüdicke-Kaute, ‘Lauretanische Litanei’, in: E. Kirschbaum, Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, Freiburg im Breisgau 1971, 27-31. The author describes how an iconography evolved from this Litany in the later fifteenth century, see 29. For the engraving, see M. Bury, The Print in Italy, 1560-1620, London 2001, 114-115, cat. no. 74. A drawing associated with this commission exists in the Louvre (Inv. 4539). For the lost

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of the well would decline in later centuries, it would remain a symbol of the Annunciation and of the Virgin’s ‘purity’ together with the more familiar vase of lilies. Both symbols are paired in a 1654 marble relief on the façade of Milan Cathedral by the sculptor Francesco Bono, removed from any indication of an Annunciation narrative.28 The story-telling significance of the well has completely disappeared in imagery such as this. If the diminutive figure at the well in the San Gimignano Annunciation is indeed a subtle visual reference to the miraculous event’s immediate apocryphal prehistory, it reveals a certain ‘ad fontes’ attitude in the young painter and his patrons, going back to the Proto-Gospel of James and texts and images that developed from it to embellish the Annunciation. In this particular case ‘ad fontes’ is used in the original sense, as it is found in Psalm 42: ‘As the hart panteth after the fountains of water [ad fontes aquarum]; so my soul panteth after thee, O God.’ As his father Fra Filippo had never painted the Annunciation in the same way twice in the many versions he produced, the young Filippino too had a hunger for originality, and it seems he also shared a certain theological aptitude with his friar father. Georges Didi-Huberman wrote about fifteenthcentury painters of the Annunciation somewhat scathingly in what is otherwise a compelling study of the subject: ‘The apocryphal Gospels certainly attempted to enhance the picturesque in this exchange of words: they invented a few details, doubled the number of encounters between the angel and the Virgin, dramatized it a bit, set out a few props: a veil Mary is weaving, a spindle, a fountain, a jug.’29 For Filippino, it was exactly such a detail that provided an opportunity to make his painting of a familiar biblical episode both more original and more meaningful.

A Prophetic Presence?

What about the two other figures in the background of Filippino’s tondo (fig. 5.5)? Are they merely ‘travellers on a hilly path’, as Jonathan Nelson suggests?30

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fresco and the possible sources of its iconography including the Litany of Loreto, the Song of Songs, the Book of Proverbs, and Ezekiel’s prophecies, see W. Körte, ‘Verlorene Frühwerke des Federico Zuccari in Rom’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 3 (1932), 518-529. For this marble relief see G. Benati, and A.M. Roda, ‘De sacrae aedis fronte. Note per l’iconografia della facciata’, in: E. Brivio and F. Repishti (eds.), ... e il Duomo toccò il cielo: i disegni per il completamento della facciata e l’invenzione della guglia maggiore tra conformità gotica e razionalismo matematico 1733 – 1815, Milan 2003, 62. G. Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration, Chicago/London 1995, 106. Nelson 2004, op. cit. (note 3), 161.

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The traveller, wayfarer, or homo viator was a significant trope in the visual arts that carried meaningful connotations until and beyond Filippino’s time, and was sometimes depicted at a crossroads.31 Although highly ambiguous, the inclusion of these figures near the woman at the well, their striking attire, and most of all their emphatic gesticulation, hint at a significance beyond that of the traveller: they are actors, rather than extras. Could they possibly even be prophets, or perhaps a prophet and a sibyl, depending on the gender of the figure in red? Both Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, building on the authority of St. Ambrose himself, were adamant that Mary was reading from Isaiah’s prophecies just before the angel Gabriel appeared to her, specifically Isaiah 7:14: ‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.’32 Filippino possibly envisioned one of the two codices in use in the painting, precariously balanced on Mary’s wooden furnishings atop of three closed books, to be a copy of the Old Testament opened at Isaiah. The inclusion of embodied prophets – more often than not including Isaiah – in painted Annunciations was far from uncommon. Examples can be found in the roundels of Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi’s prototypical Annunciation for Siena Cathedral, or similarly in Lorenzo Monaco’s closely-related later altarpiece in the Bartolini-Salimbeni Chapel in the Florentine church of Santa Trinita.33 The four prophets in the earlier painting are easily identifiable through their scriptural scrolls, each containing prophetic passages pertaining to the Annunciation that was to come: Jeremiah (31:22), Ezekiel (44:2), Isaiah (7:14), and Daniel (7.13). Only the central of Lorenzo Monaco’s prophets is identifiable as Isaiah through a similar device, while the identity of the other two remains ambiguous.34 This ‘prophetic ambiguity’ is even more pronounced for Filippino’s two figures, reminiscent of the perceived ‘prophecy’ in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue.35 31

32

33 34 35

See Y. Pinson, ‘Hieronymus Bosch: Homo viator at a Crossroads: A new Reading of the Rotterdam tondo’, Artibus et Historiae 26 (2005), no. 52, 57-84. The classic study is E. Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 18, Leipzig 1930. For Mary reading Isaiah at the Annunciation, see K. Schreiner, ‘Marienverehrung, Lese­ kultur, Schriftlichkeit: Bildungs- und frömmigkeitsgeschichtliche Studien zur Auslegung und Darstellung von “Mariä Verkündigung”’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 24 (1990), esp. 324-325. For the prophets in the Sienese Annunciation, see A. Martindale, Simone Martini, Oxford 1988, 188. For the prophets in Lorenzo Monaco’s altarpiece (rooted in this Sienese tradition), see M. Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco, Princeton 1989, 134-136. Eisenberg, op. cit. (note 33), 42. ‘Ours is the crowning era foretold in the prophecy: Born of time, a great new cycle of centuries begins. Justice returns to earth, the Golden Age returns, and its first-born comes

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A different type of prophetic presence in the guise of a sibyl would also make perfect sense in the context of the Annunciation. Charles Dempsey has explored how these ancient Greek oracles appeared in Florence in the context of a sacra rappresentazione devised by the poet Feo Belcari during the San Giovanni celebrations in 1454.36 Before the Annunciation play, and a play of the Purification of the Virgin, a prologue was performed consisting of speeches by a number of Old-Testament prophets and a number of sibyls predicting the Incarnation, based on a liturgical spectacle called the Ordo Prophetarum. The sibyls and their prophetic epigrams on the Incarnation emerged in a popular visual format in a series of twelve engravings attributed to Baccio Baldini and dated to 1471-75, partly based on an earlier series of paintings for Cardinal Giordano Orsini in Rome, destroyed between 1482 and 1485, that established the first iconography of the sibyls.37 Together with their visual proliferation, the rappresentazioni were performed into the 1470s, and it is telling that the young Filippino together with Botticelli painted two panels depicting ten sibyls instead of Orsini and Baldini’s twelve – a number specified by Lactantius – in the same decade.38 The gesticulation of the two figures in the tondi is in fact reminiscent of the sibyls’ gestures in what must be one of Filippino’s earliest works, depicting the Samian, Cumaean, Hellespontine, Phrygian, and Tiburtine Sibyls (fig. 5.8). The prophecies recorded in the inscriptions on this and its companion panel come from Lactantius’ Divinae Institutiones, and instead of the Incarnation all relate to the Last Judgement, adding an eschatological emphasis and looking ahead even further.39 Could the fact that the two figures in the tondi are pointing towards the city in the left background have any further bearing on their prophetic identity (fig. 5.9)? Are they pointing to the Heavenly Jerusalem, as recorded in the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel (40:2) – ‘In the visions of God he brought me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain: upon which there was as the building of a city, bending towards the south’ – and therefore to that which the Incarnation would ultimately lead to? The scene also recalls the Psalms as they were narrated by the Church Father Maximus the Confessor in his influential Life of the Virgin: ‘She is the impregnable wall of the city of the faithful, about

36 37 38 39

down from heaven above.’ See Virgil, ‘Eclogue IV’, in: The Eclogues – The Georgics, Oxford 1999, 18. C. Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture (The Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance), Cambridge Mass./London 2012, 117-316. Ibid., 120-123, and for the engravings and their epigrams 269- 316. Ibid., 168 and Zambrano, op. cit. (note 3), 308-309, cat. nos. 4a and 4b. For this identification, see C. Gilbert, Michelangelo: On and off the Sistine Ceiling, New York 1994, 76-77 and 109 n. 34.

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Figure 5.8 Filippino Lippi, Five Sibyls, c. 1472-1475, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 74.3 × 140.5 cm. Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery

which David said, “Who will lead me to the fortified city?”, which is the assembly of the faithful, gathered from the nations.’40 In other words, this city, with its Northern borrowings and fanciful towers and spires might actually be Zion. Unsurprisingly, Maximus’ Life of the Virgin also contains an account of the Annunciation: ‘And when, how, and where did the Annunciation take place?’, the theologian rhetorically asks himself, before he answers that ‘The Virgin was fasting and standing in prayer near a fountain, because she conceived the fountain of life.’41 In Maximus’s text too, the announcement of the Incarnation was inextricably linked to the apocryphal water source, but set in a context of Old Testament prophecy. A certain temporal ambiguity is at play in the background space of Filippino’s tondo with the Virgin Annunciate. Annunciations were often painted in a typological relationship, where the events of the Old Testament foretell those of the New Testament. Fra Angelico was especially prolific in painting such a type. The Annunciation he painted for the Armadio degli Argenti for Santissima Annunziata gives the scriptural version. Above Gabriel and the Virgin, one can read the now familiar Isaiah 7:14: ‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.’ Below, the textual typology is completed with a citation 40 41

Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin, New Haven/London 2012, 151. Ibid., 50.

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Figure 5.9 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin Annunciate, detail of fig. 5.2, background landscape with city

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from the Gospel of Luke: ‘And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus’.42 Although the relationship between background and foreground is not strictly typological, Filippino did explore the possibilities of compressing biblical time. Part of the temporal relationship explored in this tondo exists within literal minutes of the narrative set out in the apocryphal Proto-Gospel of James. Before the angel Gabriel physically appeared to the Virgin Mary, she heard what could be called a ‘pre-Annunciation’ at the well, a detail diminutively but carefully depicted in the landscape background. This well would ultimately become symbolically charged as a signifier for the Virgin, but also for Christ, as Maximus the Confessor exegetically referred to him as ‘the fountain of life’. The two ambiguous prophetic figures between the apocryphal and scriptural Annunciation episodes vastly expand the temporal range of Filippino’s two paintings. In a way, they exist before and outside the narrative, pointing towards what has yet to happen, the Incarnation. Whereas Mary’s angelic vision at the well is part of a specific story, the possible prophetic presence in Filippino’s paintings is altogether loftier and alludes to an ambiguous and complex spectrum of meaning related to the Incarnation of Christ and what this means for mankind. Matthew Champion has recently explored the poetics of what he calls ‘Marian time’ in his erudite study of time (in the broadest sense) in the fifteenth-century Low Countries.43 As in Champion’s analysis, the people in fifteenth-century San Gimignano might have experienced ‘Mary’s body, pregnant with time and eternity, enfolding communities in her protective embrace, there at the beginning and the end of things – in sound, in images, architecture, liturgy, music, texts, burial practices, civic processions …’44 The mechanical clock behind Filippino’s Annunciate Virgin becomes an explicit marker of a more quotidian time, a counterpoint to the visionary longue durée of the two prophetic figures in the landscape background. Filippino’s interpretation of what happened just before and what will happen after the Annunciation, is akin to the central panel of Carlo Braccesco’s triptych now in the Louvre, both intellectually and compositionally (fig. 5.10).45 42 43 44 45

For typology in Fra Angelico’s paintings, see L. Hodne, ‘Reading and Viewing Words in Fra Angelico’s Typological Paintings’, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 24 (2011), 243-263. M.S. Champion, The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries, Chicago/London 2017, esp. 12-24. Ibid., 24. For Braccesco’s Annunciation and its background, see R. Argenziano, ‘Il “trittico” con l’Annunciazione di Carlo Braccesco del Louvre: una rilettura sulla strada per Gerusalemme’, Iconographica XIII (2014), 108-133.

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Figure 5.10 Carlo Braccesco, The Annunciation, c. 1490-1500, oil on panel, 158 × 107 cm, detail of central panel. Paris, Musée du Louvre

In possession of exceptional eyesight, a viewer might be able to discern a church in the background, next to the Virgin’s raised arm. Beyond that church lies a city, possibly Jerusalem (heavenly or not), and in between city and church a cross is erected, surrounded by minuscule figures. Braccesco paired Christ’s Incarnation with his Crucifixion, the beginning and the temporary end. Slightly later is Francesco Bianchi Ferrari and Giovanni Antonio Scacceri’s Annunciation, now in the Galleria Estense in Modena (fig. 5.11).46 A viewer in possession of binoculars would be able to identify the scene in the background as the meeting of Anne and Joachim at the Golden Gate, a significant moment between Mary’s parents that would lead to her birth. The source for this 46

D. Benati, Francesco Bianchi Ferrari e la pittura a Modena fra ’4 e ’500, Modena 1990, 108113, 151-152.

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Figure 5.11 Francesco Bianchi Ferrari and Giovanni Antonio Scacceri, The Annunciation, 1506-1512, oil on panel, 291 × 176.5 cm, detail of background. Modena, Galleria Estense

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particular prehistory of the Virgin is in fact again the Proto-Gospel of James, the exact same source as the Annunciation at the Well, although this episode was depicted much more frequently as it was popularised through Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend and painted by Giotto in the Arena Chapel among other scenes in the Life of the Virgin cycle.47 Inclusion of such small details, in the paintings of Braccesco, Ferrari and Scacceri, and Filippino, implies an audience that was ‘in the know’. Whereas the visitor to San Gimignano’s Audience Hall could easily discern that the Annunciation was in fact the subject of the two tondi above; the miniscule ‘Virgin at the Well’ and the two prophetic figures were there for the commissioning body and the painter, Filippino; a hierarchical model of viewership for those that would have had the pleasure of inspecting the two panels close up and took part in their formulation. Filippino would continue experimenting with such small details throughout his career. In his so-called Pala Lomellini in Genoa, a group of archers and assorted men carrying weaponry is visible in the far-right background, a small scene either intended as the prequel or aftermath to the martyrdom of St. Sebastian tied to a column in the foreground, flanked by St. John the Baptist and St. Francis.48 The fact that details such as these would have been indiscernible for most is exactly their point. They enlivened and complicated these paintings for a select few only. In setting up a relationship between foreground and an apocryphal background, Filippino might have had in mind a painting by his father: a tondo that shows an equally ambitious spatial construction conflating different temporalities. In the panel that Filippo painted for Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni, now in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti, the painter employed a threefold structure (fig. 5.12).49 In the foreground, the Virgin and Child are enthroned, almost extending into the actual space of the viewer. In the middle ground, on a raised plateau, the Virgin is born. And in the far background a meeting takes place between Anne and Joachim, the moment that initiates the narrative. A viewer, looking at Fra Filippo’s pioneering tondo would be able to deduce a certain temporal narrative, be it with big gaps, from the background to the foreground of the painting. This threefold structure ultimately connects a more obscure apocryphal story in the background to a very recognisable Virgin and Child in front. 47 48 49

See Klapisch-Zuber, op. cit. (note 21), p. 197 ff. for a similar trajectory for the iconography of the Marriage of the Virgin. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 3), 61 and 605-606. See Ruda op. cit. (note 25), 453-455 and J. Joustra, “Pictorial Space and Sacred Subject Matter in Florentine Painting, 1425-1466”, unpublished PhD thesis, The Courtauld Institute of Art 2017, 191-236.

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Figure 5.12 Fra Filippo Lippi, The Virgin and Child with the Birth of Mary and the Meeting of Joachim and Anne (The Bartolini Tondo), mid to late 1460s, tempera on panel, 135 cm (unframed diameter). Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina



Pictorial Space and the Viewer

So far, this chapter has considered Filippino’s Annunciation ‘back to front’. Filippino innovated by adding an apocryphal preamble and an ambiguous but ambitious prophetic presence to his Annunciation, both barely visible to the visitor stepping into the Audience Hall of San Gimignano’s Palazzo del Comune. What this visitor would see was a recognisable Annunciation as narrated in the Gospel of Luke, an encounter between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Mary that announced and set in motion the Incarnation of Christ – a subject both immediately recognisable, and theologically complex. The hierarchical model of viewership at play in the tondi is structured spatially, using the threedimensional illusion of perspectival recession. Next to his Bartolini Tondo, Fra Filippo Lippi had experimented with spatial structure in many of his numerous Annunciations. Daniel Arasse analysed the way in which Filippino’s father employed pictorial space in these paintings, praising Filippo because he never exercised perspective ‘mechanically’, but always considered the subject, specific circumstances, and function of the painting in which he employed it.50 Arasse noticed a familiar thoughtful application of perspective in the San Gimignano tondi: ‘… il utilise la géométrie pour élaborer une construction perspective sophistiquée, qui disloque la perception cohérente du lieu où se déroule la scène, et instaure, sur son axe central, une relation de regard singulière entre l’œuvre et son spectateur.’51 More specifically, Filippino used inverse perspective, as noted by Arasse, most obviously noticeable by looking at the floor pattern.52 The viewer in a more ‘traditional’ application of linear perspective – if there was such a thing in the 1480s – usually follows the parallel receding converging lines towards a single vanishing point, but in the tondi the parallel receding lines diverge, emanating from the viewer.53 Beside this, the painter also collapsed the three-dimensional illusion of the receding inverse perspective in certain places, highlighting how these panels are in fact two-dimensional objects: The light falling on the floor and the outside ledge in front of Mary becomes a marker; an arrow of light that points directly at the Virgin’s womb (fig. 5.2). The same can be said about the line of sight of the Virgin Annunciate: Following her gaze, it is as if she looks at her diminutive self at the well, just 50 51 52 53

D. Arasse L’Annonciation italienne: une histoire de perspective, Paris 2010, 143-157. Ibid., 181. The author’s discussion of the Annunciation is best known for its interpretation of the marble column behind Gabriel and the clock behind the Virgin as temporal opposites, i.e. the eternal and the temporary, see 183. Ibid., 183. For the concept of inverse perspective, see W. Prinz, ‘Die umgekehrte Perspektive in der Architekturdarstellung des Mittelalters’, in: G. Rohde and O. Neubecker (eds.), Edwin Redslob zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin 1955, 253-262. ‘umgekehrte Perspektive’ was coined by Oskar Wulff, see O. Wulff, ‘Die umgekehrte Perspektive und die Niedersicht: eine Raumanschauungsform der altbyzantinischen Kunst und ihre Fortbildung in der Renaissance’, in: H. Weizsäcker (ed.), Kunstwissenschaftliche Beiträge: August Schmarsow gewidmet zum fünfzigsten Semester seiner akademischen Lehrtätigkeit, Leipzig 1907, 1-40. The way in which Arasse uses an idea of inverse perspective in the context of Filippino is different from Prinz and Wulff, in that it purely considers the receding parallel lines. For Prinz and Wulff before him, inverse perspective also meant that figures and objects closer to the picture plane are smaller than those removed from the picture plane, i.e. a total reversal of ‘regular’ linear perspective.

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moments before Gabriel appears, although this happens in the far recession of the painting. Because we are used to seeing images in perspective, we are first inclined to perceive details as three-dimensional, but Filippino simultaneously used the flat surface of the tondo to highlight certain relationships two-dimensionally. Fra Filippo collapsed the planes of illusory recession in similar ways in many of his paintings, including his Annunciations. In the Annunciation in the collection of Lord Methuen at Corsham Court in Wiltshire for instance, it is not only the lily’s stem that connects Gabriel’s outstretched hands with the right hand of the Virgin.54 It is the square column behind this, in the recession of perspectival space, that intensifies this visual relationship. The Annunciation’s painted architecture enforces the moment of the Incarnation. Not surprisingly, it was Sandro Botticelli who would also build on this slippage between three and two-dimensionality in the Cestello Annunciation painted only a few years after Filippino’s paintings in San Gimignano.55 In this altarpiece the doorframe behind Gabriel and Mary connects their hands beautifully, again emphasising the invisible Incarnation miracle that happens somewhere in the space between them. Returning to the diverging lines that structure the middle ground of Filippino’s San Gimignano Annunciation, these create a recession of space that is theoretically limitless, whereas the space closest to the picture plane is measurable and tangible. Here Filippino painted a drop in the floor level, neatly contained by a pietra serena step (figs. 5.1 and 5.2). It is this foreground section of the pair of tondi that is most accessible to the viewer. In the foreground, connecting both paintings across the physical void between them, Filippino painted this opening to allow what looks like a stepped point of entry into the scene. This opening functions as a liminal space between the real space of the Audience Hall and the illusory space of the two tondi. The bottom of Gabriel’s lavish mantle just tips over the edge of this opening, suggesting the Angel’s proximity, yet compositionally Gabriel is one step above the viewer. André Chastel brilliantly analysed this pictorial device, labelling it ‘abisso’.56 The abisso allowed painters to integrate donor portraits into their compositions, while maintaining a suitable distance between human and sacred subjects. Cosimo Rosselli’s Canigiani Altarpiece is a good example of such a hierarchical division of space, almost contemporary with Filippino’s Annunci54 55 56

For this painting, see Ruda, op. cit. (note 25), 466-467. R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, London 1978, 69-71. A. Chastel, ‘Le donateur “In Abisso” dans les “Pale”’, in: L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt 1977, 273- 283.

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ation.57 This cunning pictorial device allowed Cosimo to paint the donor Bartolomeo Canigiani almost within the sacred realm of Virgin, Child, and saints, while at the same time highlighting a hierarchical difference between these figures. Filippino would employ it similarly a few years later when he integrated Piero del Pugliese in his Vision of St. Bernard (fig. 7.3) in the Badia. Fra Filippo Lippi was the true innovator of the abisso, always experimenting with it in novel ways and creating the prototypes that many, including his son, would follow. He painted it to great effect in two of his most elaborate Annunciations, the aforementioned painting at Corsham Court in Wiltshire, and an Annunciation now in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.58 John Shearman analysed how the ‘endlessly inventive’ Filippo managed to integrate a portrait of the donor and canon of Pistoia Cathedral Jacopo Bellucci into the sacred space of the Cor­sham Court Annunciation, and those of the two unknown donors in the Barberini Annunciation (fig. 5.13).59 Referring to these donor portraits, Shearman rightly remarked that their position is ‘… at once very close, and privileged, and also separated from the Virgin’s private chamber; the spectator seems to be but one step further removed.’60 The Annunciation in Rome does not only position the two donors in its sacred space, but also allows an abisso for the viewer on the foreground edge of the painting, just above the frame. Similarly, Filippino used the foreground of his tondi as a point of reference for his viewers looking up at the panels in the Audience Hall, while this device simultaneously emphasises the spatial continuity between the two panels and the connection between Gabriel and the Virgin. Front to back, Filippino composed his two-part Annunciation with great prowess, continually bearing in mind what Leo Steinberg called the ‘expressibility of its mystery’ by engaging with both the relationship between the painted protagonists and those of flesh and blood looking at the tondi.61 A viewer in the Audience Hall ‘gained access’ to the paintings via the abisso in what was a stepped model, creating a clear hierarchy between the sacred and the worldly.62 57

For Cosimo Rosselli’s (and workshop) altarpiece, see E. Gabrielli, Cosimo Rosselli, catalogo ragionato, Turin 2007, 231-233. 58 For the Barberini Annunciation, see See Ruda, op. cit. (note 25), 403-404. 59 J. Shearman, Only Connect… Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton 1992, 75. 60 Ibid. 61 L. Steinberg, ‘“How Shall This Be?” Reflections on Filippo Lippi’s “Annunciation” in London, Part I’, Artibus et Historiae 8 (1987), no. 16, 32. 62 For a thorough analysis of a comparable although much more elaborate model of viewership, see P. Rubin, ‘Hierarchies of Vision: Fra Angelico’s “Coronation of the Virgin” from San Domenico, Fiesole’, Oxford Art Journal 27 (2004), no. 2, 139-153. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 5.13 Fra Filippo Lippi, The Annunciation, early 1440s, tempera on panel, 155 × 144 cm. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini

A small circle of people around San Gimignano’s Podestà, including men such as the captain of the Guelf party Angelo Romeo de Salvucci, who was in charge of hanging the tondi, enjoyed a different type of access to these paintings.63 This exclusive group of course included Filippino. For them, a world of detail existed, behind the narrative action of the Incarnation, barely visible and definitely not identifiable for the ‘common’ viewer; a world of detail em63

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phasised by the paintings’ diverging perspective, quite literally opening up the panels the further one recedes into the background. Here, the tiny Mary at the well added a subtle apocryphal dimension for those in the know. What I have called the tondi’s ‘prophetic presence’ revealed the meaning of the paintings further, mirroring how the inverse perspective opens up the space of the tondi. The presence of both the Virgin at the well and the two prophets adds a barely perceptible intellectual dimension to the painting that was likely to have been recognised by its patrons. Filippino’s spatio-temporal construction of meaning hinges on small details, something Alfred Acres, in his thoughtful analysis of Rogier van der Weyden’s St Columba Altarpiece (fig. 3.10), described as ‘… the temporal rhetoric of elements that have been considered either forthright iconographic details or matters of scenic filler, and thus have been treated lightly or passed over without remark ...’.64 An element of paternal emulation might have been an impetus for Filippino, and possibly some competition with Botticelli too. Filippino painted a spatially complex Annunciation, following in the footsteps of Fra Filippo who had been both an expert in renditions of the subject, and a master in creating complex pictorial spaces in his paintings. Yet Filippino added details that were his own, bearing on the Annunciation’s theological complexities. ‘The devil is in the detail’ goes a popular saying, but the tondi in San Gimignano suggest something else. As Aby Warburg often remarked, ‘Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail’.65 ‘The dear God dwells in the detail’, and Filippino proved this in his Annunciation. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Paula and Geoffrey Nuttall, Scott Nethersole, Andrea De Marchi, and Lorne Campbell for their invaluable comments and advice. Bibliography Acres, A., ‘The Columba Altarpiece and the Time of the World’, The Art Bulletin 80 (1998), no. 3, 422-451. Arasse, D., L’Annonciation italienne: une histoire de perspective, Paris 2010. 64 65

A. Acres, ‘The Columba Altarpiece and the Time of the World’, The Art Bulletin 80 (1998), no. 3, 423. Quoted in E. H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, London 1970, 13-14 (note 1).

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Arasse, D., De Vecchi, P., and Nelson J.K., Botticelli and Filippino: Passion and Grace in Fifteenth Century Florentine Painting, cat. exh. Paris (Musée National du Luxem­ bourg), Milan 2004. Argenziano, R., ‘Il “trittico” con l’Annunciazione di Carlo Braccesco del Louvre: una rilettura sulla strada per Gerusalemme’, Iconographica XIII (2014), 108-133. Bagnoli, A., Bartalini, R., and Seidel, M., Ambrogio Lorenzetti, cat. exh. Siena (Santa Maria della Scala), Milan 2017. Benati, D., Francesco Bianchi Ferrari e la pittura a Modena fra ’4 e ’500, Modena 1990. Benati, G., and Roda, A. M., ‘De sacrae aedis fronte. Note per l’iconografia della facciata’, in: E. Brivio and F. Repishti (eds.), ... e il Duomo toccò il cielo: i disegni per il completamento della facciata e l’invenzione della guglia maggiore tra conformità gotica e razionalismo matematico 1733 – 1815, Milan 2003, 49-72. Bury, M., The Print in Italy, 1560-1620, London 2001. Cadogan, J.K., Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan, New Haven/London 2000. Campbell, C. J., The Game of Courting and the Art of the Commune of San Gimignano, 1290-1320, Princeton 1997. Cartlidge, D.R. and Elliott, J. K., Art and the Christian Apocrypha, London/New York 2001. Cecchi, A., Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011. Cecchi, A., Filippino Lippi, L’Annunciazione di San Gimignano, cat. exh. San Gimignano (Pinacoteca), Florence/Milan 2015. Champion, M.S., The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries, Chicago/London 2017. Chastel, A., ‘Le donateur “In Abisso” dans les “Pale”’, in: L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt 1977, 273- 283. Cole Ahl, D., Benozzo Gozzoli, New Haven/London 1996. Dempsey, C., The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture (The Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge Mass./London 2012. Didi-Huberman, G., Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration, Chicago/London 1995. Edgerton, S.Y., ‘Mensurare temporalia facit Geometria spiritualis: Some FifteenthCentury Italian Notions about When and Where the Annunciation Happened’, in: I. Lavin and J. Plummer (eds.), Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, New York 1977, 115-130. Eisenberg, M., Lorenzo Monaco, Princeton 1989. Ehrman, B.D and Pleše, Z., The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, Oxford 2011. Emmett, C.F., Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth (The University of Chicago Geography Research Paper, 237), Chicago/London 1995. Fahy, E., ‘A Lucchese follower of Filippino Lippi’, Paragone 16 (1965), no. 185, 9-20. Gabrielli, E., Cosimo Rosselli, catalogo ragionato, Turin 2007.

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Geiger, G.L., ‘Filippino Lippi’s Carafa “Annunciation”: Theology, Artistic Conventions, and Patronage’, The Art Bulletin 63 (1981), no. 1, 62-73. Gibson, G.M., ‘The Thread of Life in the Hand of the Virgin’, in: J.B. Holloway, C.S. Wright and J. Bechtold (eds.), Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, New York 1990, 46-54. Gilbert, C., Michelangelo: On and off the Sistine Ceiling, New York 1994. Gombrich, E.H., Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, London 1970. Gordon, D., The Fifteenth-Century Italian Paintings, Volume I (National Gallery Catalogues), London 2003. Grabar, A., Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza – Bobbio), Paris 1958. Hirn, Y., The Sacred Shrine: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church, Boston 1912. Hodne, L., ‘Reading and Viewing Words in Fra Angelico’s Typological Paintings’, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 24 (2011), 243-263. Hudson, H., ‘A Knight in Shining Armour, a Virgin: Uccello’s Melbourne “Saint George and the Dragon” and Oxford “Annunciation”’, The Annual Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria 46 (2006), 6-15. Joustra, J., ‘Pictorial Space and Sacred Subject Matter in Florentine Painting, 1425-1466’, unpublished PhD thesis, The Courtauld Institute of Art 2017. Klapisch-Zuber, C., ‘Zacharias, or the Ousted Father: Nuptial Rites in Tuscany between Giotto and the Council of Trent’, in: ibid., Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Chicago 1985, 178-212. Körte, W., ‘Verlorene Frühwerke des Federico Zuccari in Rom’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 3 (1932), 518-529. Krohn, D.L, ‘Civic Patronage of Art in Renaissance San Gimignano’, unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University 1992. Krohn, D.L., ‘The Framing of Two Tondi in San Gimignano Attributed to Filippino Lippi’, The Burlington Magazine 136 (1994), no. 1092, 160-163. Lightbown, R., Sandro Botticelli, London 1978. Lüdicke-Kaute, L., ‘Lauretanische Litanei’, in: E. Kirschbaum, Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, Freiburg im Breisgau 1971, 27-31. Martindale, A., Simone Martini, Oxford 1988. Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin, New Haven/London 2012. Mengin, U., Les Deux Lippi, Paris 1932. Nuttall, P., From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500, New Haven/London 2004. Olson, R.J.M., ‘Lost and Partially Found: The Tondo, a Significant Florentine Art Form, in Documents of the Renaissance’, Artibus et Historiae 14 (1993), no. 27, 31-65. Olson, R.J.M., The Florentine Tondo, Oxford 2000.

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Panofsky, E., Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 18, Leipzig, 1930. Peppard, M., The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria, New Haven/London 2016. Pinson, Y., ‘Hieronymus Bosch: Homo viator at a Crossroads: A new Reading of the Rotterdam tondo’, Artibus et Historiae 26 (2005), no. 52, 57-84. Prinz, W., ‘Die umgekehrte Perspektive in der Architekturdarstellung des Mittelalters’, in: G. Rohde and O. Neubecker (eds.), Edwin Redslob zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin 1955, 253-262. Rubin, P., ‘Hierarchies of Vision: Fra Angelico’s “Coronation of the Virgin” from San Domenico, Fiesole’, Oxford Art Journal 27 (2004), no. 2, 139-153. Ruda, J., Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, London 1993. Schreiner, K., ‘Marienverehrung, Lesekultur, Schriftlichkeit: Bildungs- und frömmig­ keits­geschichtliche Studien zur Auslegung und Darstellung von “Mariä Verkün­ digung”’, Frümittelalterliche Studien 24 (1990), 314-368. Shearman, J., Only Connect… Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton 1992. Skubiszewska, M., ‘Franciabigio’s two Tondi with Annunciation’, Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 16 (1975), 84-96. Stanbury, S., ‘The Clock in Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation Tondo’, Studies in Iconography 25 (2004), 197-219. Steinberg, L., ‘“How Shall This Be?” Reflections on Filippo Lippi’s “Annunciation” in London, Part I’, Artibus et Historiae 8 (1987), no. 16, 25-44. Virgil, The Eclogues – The Georgics, Oxford 1999. Volpe, C., ‘Paolo Uccello a Bologna’, Paragone 31 (1980), no. 365, 3-28. Wulff, O., ‘Die umgekehrte Perspektive und die Niedersicht: eine Raumanschauungs­ form der altbyzantinischen Kunst und ihre Fortbildung in der Renaissance’, in: H. Weizsäcker (ed.), Kunstwissenschaftliche Beiträge: August Schmarsow gewidmet zum fünfzigsten Semester seiner akademischen Lehrtätigkeit, Leipzig 1907, 1-40. Zambrano, P and Nelson, J.K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004. Zucker, W.M., ‘The Representation of the Invisible: Reflections on Christian Iconology’, in: M. Henle (ed.), Vision and Artifact (to Rudolf Arnheim), New York 1976, 153-168.

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‘... Di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola.’ Filippino Lippi pittore di ritratti Patrizia Zambrano

Nel descrivere la figura di Piero del Pugliese nella pala con la Apparizione della Vergine a San Bernardo (fig. 7.3), oggi nella chiesa della Badia a Firenze, anticamente in quella di Santa Maria del Santo Sepolcro alle Campora, nel monastero suburbano dei benedettini a Marignolle, Giorgio Vasari scrive che Filippino lo ritrasse ‘di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola’, un elogio del Lippi ritrattista che affianca quelli espressi per le effigi dei contemporanei dipinte nella Cappella Brancacci nella chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine a Firenze.1 Benché questo testo non voglia trattare la questione del donatore-committente nelle pale d’altare o nei cicli murari realizzati dal pittore (e già ampiamente discussa da Jonathan K. Nelson)2 ma quello dei suoi ritratti indipendenti, è solo a partire dal lavoro nella cappella e dal confronto con Masaccio che è possibile comprendere come il Lippi abbia affrontato il tema del ritratto, e specie di quello indipendente. * Il testo rispecchia una parte di quello presentato al convegno fiorentino a cui è stato aggiunto un sintetico corredo di note. Non vi è alcuna pretesa di completezza sul tema e non sono menzionati alcuni importanti ritratti del pittore sui quali sarò felice di ritornare prossimamente. Un particolare grazie va a Paula e Geoffrey Nuttall per avere creato una speciale occasione di collaborazione e di scambio ‘attorno a Filippino’. All’Istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia dell’Arte di Firenze per l’accoglienza. Grazie ad Alessandro Cecchi, Ana Debenedetti, Cristina Gnoni Mavarelli, Lorenza Melli, Jonathan K. Nelson, Daniela Parenti, Aidan WestonLewis per le informazioni e la collaborazione fornite. 1 G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, testo a cura di R. Bettarini, commento secolare a cura di P. Barocchi, vol. 6, Firenze 1966-1987, ‘Vita di Filippo Lippi’, III, Testo, 1987, 561; P. Zambrano, Filippino Lippi, Apparizione della Vergine a San Bernardo (Pala di Badia), in P. Zambrano e J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milano 2004, 256-261 (‘Piero del Pugliese donatore “in abisso”’), 346-348, cat. n. 32. 2 J.K. Nelson in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit (nota 1) 451-481, (XI ‘La posizione dei ritratti nelle pale d’altare’); J. K. Nelson, ‘L’astrologo e il suo astrolabio. L’“Adorazione dei Magi” di Filippino Lippi del 1496’, in: Il cosmo magico di Leonardo. L’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, 2017), a cura di E.D. Schmidt, M. Ciatti, D. Parenti, Firenze 2017, 74-91. ← Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Musician, detail of fig. 6.9

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Filippino non occupa ancora un posto significativo nella storia dello sviluppo di questo genere; nella grandiosa mostra di Berlino e New York (2011-2012) dedicata al ritratto rinascimentale, la sua presenza era segnalata da due disegni di teste maschili, quella magnifica di Lipsia3 e quella di Chatsworth4, considerata un ritratto di Mino da Fiesole perché nella Vita dello scultore Vasari utilizzò questa immagine (o una molto simile) per il medaglione introduttivo. Certamente Filippino non ha avuto il privilegio di essere al centro degli interessi di una personalità come Aby Warburg che già nel 1902 consacrò Ghirlandaio ritrattista in un saggio carismatico.5 Se il ristrettissimo numero di ritratti indipendenti su tavola sino ad oggi identificati e riconducibili al Lippi con qualche attendibilità può in parte giustificare una certa mancanza di attenzione, è curioso che neppure la sua imponente opera di ritrattista nella Cappella Brancacci abbia però suscitato un interesse parallelo a quello che ha riguardato i ritratti dipinti da Masaccio, che sono stati accanitamente studiati, soprattutto nei numerosi tentativi di identificarne i soggetti effigiati. Per avere una brutale valutazione quantitativa di questa sotto-valutazione basta un veloce calcolo: nel classico volume di John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance del 1966, sono illustrati sette ritratti di Filippo Lippi, otto di Sandro Botticelli, mentre solo tre menzioni sono riservate a Filippino e riguardano la Pala Nerli in Santo Spirito a Firenze, il dettaglio della figura di Pier Francesco de’ Medici nella Adorazione dei magi delle Gallerie degli Uffizi, l’effige del cardinal Carafa nella Annunciazione della cappella in Santa Maria sopra Minerva 3 Filippino Lippi, Studio per testa maschile volta a destra con gli occhi abbassati, punta metallica con rialzi a biacca, carta preparata rosa pallido, 150 × 113 mm, Lipsia, Museum der Bildenden Künste, inv. NI. 246. C. Bambach, in: G. Goldner and C. Bambach (eds.) The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, catalogo della mostra, New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1997, 134-135, n. 19; Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 209-201, 333, cat. n. 21.d.1 (con bibliografia); per l’identificazione della figura ritratta in Domenico Bonsi si veda Nelson in ibid., 478; R. Rebmann in: The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, catalogo della mostra, Berlin (Bode Museum) and New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), a cura di K. Christiansen e S. Weppelmann. New Haven/London 2011, 135-137, n. 28. 4 Filippino Lippi (attribuito), Studio per testa maschile (Mino da Fiesole), punta metallica su carta preparata blu, biacca, tagliato ovale, 190 × 140 mm, Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees, Chatsworth, inv. 705. G. Goldner, in Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (nota 3), 136-137, n. 20 (Lippi, ‘early to mid-1480s’); P. Zambrano, recensione a ‘New York, Filippino Lippi drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, 140 (1998), 151 (‘not in my view by Filippino’); E. Fahy, in Christiansen and Weppelman, op. cit. (nota 3), 137-139, n. 29 (Lippi, c. 1495) 5 A. Warburg, ‘Arte del ritratto e borghesia fiorentina. Domenico Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita. I ritratti di Lorenzo de’ Medici e dei suoi familiari’, (1902), in: La rinascita del paganesimo antico. Contributi alla storia della cultura, a cura di G. Bing, trad. it. E. Cantimori, Scandicci (Firenze) 1966, 109-146.

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a Roma.6 Tutte e tre le opere sono inserite nel capitolo ‘Donor and Participant’, in cui l’autore ricostruisce l’evoluzione della figura del donatore nel corso del XV secolo, nel suo divenire progressivamente ‘partecipante’ e attore della scena sacra. Proprio per avere attivamente coinvolto i committenti, presentati dai santi alla Vergine, Pope-Hennessy considera Filippino il primo artista, nella Pala Nerli (fig. 7.9), ad avere reagito, nel campo del ritratto, alle sollecitazioni imposte a Firenze dall’arrivo del Trittico Portinari (1483) (fig. 7.5). Egli anticipa, allo stesso tempo, gli sviluppi del genere: ‘Filippino Lippi is a progressive artist whose work often foreshadows High Renaissance style, and it does so in this donor portrait, which must have been familiar to Raphael when he produced the donor portrait of Sigismondo de’ Conti in the Madonna di Foligno’.7 Ma tornando all’apprezzamento di Vasari, citazioni ed elogi riguardano i ritratti di donatori; oltre alle parole dedicate all’effige di Piero del Pugliese, andrà almeno ricordata l’integrazione alla ‘Vita’ giuntina (1568) relativa alla presenza dei Medici nella Adorazione dei magi dipinta per i frati di San Donato a Scopeto, in cui il Lippi ritrasse ‘in figura d’uno astrologo che ha in mano un quadrante Pier Francesco Vecchio de’ Medici, figliuolo di Lorenzo di Bicci, e similmente Giovanni, padre del signor Giovanni de’ Medici, et un altro Pier Francesco di esso signor Giovanni fratello, et altri segnalati personaggi’.8 Se il riconoscimento da parte di Vasari può avere un valore documentario e storico, rientrando nel suo personale utilizzo, anche sottilmente ‘politico’, della ritrattistica quattrocentesca (come segnalato da Enrico Castelnuovo e da Alessandro Nova),9 un’attestazione più immediata viene dal ricordo della commissione di un ritratto, oggi perduto o non rintracciato, da parte di Mattia Corvino il quale, secondo alcune ipotesi, ne avrebbe posseduto un altro di mano di Andrea 6 J. Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, London/New York 1966, 264-265. 7 Ibid., 265-267. 8 Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1) 1568, 567. Per l’opera e l’identificazione dei ritratti, Nelson in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1). 9 E. Castelnuovo, ‘Il significato del ritratto pittorico nella società’, in: Storia d’Italia, vol. V, I documenti, tomo 2, Torino 1973, 1043-1045; ora pubblicato come: E. Castelnuovo, Ritratto e società in Italia. Dal Medioevo all’avanguardia, a cura di F. Crivello e M. Tomasi, Torino 2015. Sul ruolo del ritratto come documento storico nell’edizione Giuntina delle Vite: A. Nova, ‘Vasari e il ritratto’, Horti Hesperidum, VI (2016), I, 115-178: ‘Esplicito è qui il rimando al ruolo giocato da questi personaggi nella storia di Firenze, ragion per cui è doveroso celebrarne il nome. Altrettanto sfrontato è il modo in cui il Vasari, nel 1568, ingrossa, a ogni possibile occasione, la grande famiglia dei Medici. Tralasciando i numerosi riferimenti al potere consolidato di Cosimo I e della sua famiglia, basti ricordare come il biografo abbia riscritto il passo in cui descrisse l’Adorazione dei Magi eseguita da Filippino Lippi per i frati di San Donato a Scopeto, la tavola, oggi agli Uffizi, che sostituì quella lasciata incompiuta da Leonardo: mentre nel 1550 si era soffermato solo sui mori, gli indiani, gli abiti stranamente acconciati e la capanna bizzarrissima, sui parerga dipinti da Filippino, nel 1568 aggiunse altri dettagli’ (p. 140).

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Mantegna.10 Tale incarico si deve collocare nel corso degli anni ottanta e conferma che la competenza e l’eccellenza di Filippino ritrattista dovevano ormai essere riconosciute ben fuori Firenze, alla corte ungherese dove il pittore era stato invitato e ‘non volle andarvi; ma in quel cambio lavorò in Firenze per quel re due tavole molto belle, che gli furono mandate, in una delle quali ritrasse quel re secondo che gli mostrarono le medaglie’.11 La svolta di Filippino ritrattista verso la fama ‘internazionale’ e le lodi che, come si vedrà oltre, gli verranno tributate da poeti ed umanisti, prese corpo nel corso del periodo di attività condotta nella Cappella Brancacci del Carmine, a partire dall’inizio degli anni ottanta del Quattrocento, quando egli si accinse al lavoro, completando l’opera di Masolino e Masaccio.12 Certamente il committente o meglio i committenti dovettero porre la questione delle capacità e della competenza del pittore, allora poco più che ventenne, anche nel campo del ritratto oltre che, ovviamente, in quello della ‘storia’. A prendere le decisioni furono probabilmente i consorti del Drago Verde (oggi quartiere di Santo Spirito), membri della Compagnia di Sant’Agnese, legati al Carmine, ed eminenti figure della comunità del sestiere d’Oltrarno. Tra loro Tommaso Soderini, Piero del Pugliese, Piero Guicciardini, tutti ritratti nel gruppo delle dodici figure realizzate dal Lippi al centro della parete sinistra ed ai quali non dovette mancare il ‘consiglio’ di Lorenzo de’ Medici, pure membro della Compagnia.13 È da dare per scontato che i committenti considerassero l’abilità ritrattistica del pittore

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13

Sulla complessa vicenda, si rimanda a G. Agosti, Su Mantegna I. La storia dell’arte libera la testa, Milano 2005, 165, 187-188, specie nota 51. Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1) 1568, 562-563. Per le opere realizzate dal Lippi per Mattia Corvino: Zambrano, in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 36-39, 226-227, 302 nota 135; si veda anche L. A. Waldman, ‘Commissioning Art in Florence for Matthias Corvinus: The Painter and Agent Alexander Formoser and His Sons, Jacopo and Raffaello del Tedesco’, in: Italy & Hungary. Humanism and art in the Early Renaissance, a cura di P. Farbaky e L.A. Waldman, Milano 2011, 438-439; alla nota 18 sono i riferimenti alle diverse ipotesi per identificare la medaglia di Mattia Corvino che Filippino potrebbe avere utilizzato come modello. Per l’attività del Lippi nella cappella si rimanda a Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 181-223 e 327-334, cat. n. 21, per la committenza 181-189, per l’uso dei disegni 204223; P. Zambrano, ‘“Gloria e fama grandissima”. Filippino Lippi al Carmine’, in: Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, catalogo della mostra, Roma (Scuderie del Quirinale), a cura di A. Cecchi, Milano 2011, 27-39, per la committenza, specie 30-33. Per la committenza della cappella, il ruolo di Tommaso Soderini e quello di Lorenzo de’ Medici, l’identificazione dei ritratti si rimanda a Zambrano, in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 181-189 (‘La committenza’) e 194-198. Non concorda su questa proposta N.A. Eckstein, Painted Glories. The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florence, New Haven/ London 2014, 200-208, ‘the Carmelites, in consultation with their principal donors, decided themselves to finish the decorative programme in the Chapel’ (202).

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come decisiva dal momento che questo aspetto riguardava direttamente la loro immagine. Che alla Brancacci il tema del ritratto fosse sin dal principio un banco di prova e che gli artisti ne fossero consapevoli, lo fa capire bene Vasari scrivendo di Masaccio, quando riferisce che: ‘prima che mettesse mano, fece come per saggio il San Paulo che è presso alle corde delle campane per mostrare il miglioramento che egli aveva fatto nell’arte. E dimostrò veramente infinita bontà in quella pittura, conoscendosi nella testa di quel Santo ‒ il quale è Bartolo di Angiolino Angiolini ritratto di naturale ‒ una terribilità tanto grande che e’ pare che la sola parola manchi a questa figura’.14 Appare significativo che Vasari parli di ‘pruova’ nell’edizione Torrentiniana delle Vite, del 1550 e di ‘saggio’ nell’edizione Giuntina del 1568, segnalando che la ‘pruova’‒‘saggio’ era legata anche alle capacità che il pittore poteva dimostrare come ritrattista. Al tempo stesso conta sottolineare che Masaccio fece una figura di San Paolo come fosse un ‘ritratto di naturale’, rendendola riconoscibile come persona nota ai frati e al committente e cioè come ritratto di Bartolo di Angiolino Angiolini e non come un tipo ideale legato genericamente alla tradizione iconografica del santo. Non sappiamo se anche a Filippino venisse richiesta una ‘pruova’‒‘saggio’ ma è evidente che la partita della Brancacci, come Masaccio aveva compreso molto bene, fu giocata anche sul fronte del ritratto e della capacità (e bravura) che i pittori potevano dispiegare in questo campo. Non sono ad oggi noti ritratti ascrivibili al Lippi per la fase della sua attività che precede l’impegno al Carmine ‒ su questo si tornerà ‒ ma la sua primissima formazione era avvenuta a Spoleto, dove, nell’abside della cattedrale, Filippo Lippi, prima di morire nel 1469, aveva incastonato uno dei più accattivanti ritratti di gruppo del Quattrocento italiano, dando di sé e della propria brigata di pittori un’immagine molto ben caratterizzata. Benché i ritratti indipendenti dipinti da Filippo e giunti sino a noi, quello di New York e quello di Berlino, mostrino figure femminili di profilo, sia a Spoleto sia a Prato, nella cattedrale, nei cicli ad affresco così come nelle tavole, dall’Incoronazione della Vergine degli Uffizi al Transito di San Gerolamo (Opera del Duomo, Prato), egli dimostra di potere dipingere, come già aveva fatto Masaccio, ritratti di profilo, di tre 14

Vasari, op. cit. (note 1), 128-129. L’opera-saggio di Masaccio, dipinta a fresco, era forse collocata accanto alla Cappella dei Serragli e venne forse distrutta in occasione dei lavori di trasformazione della chiesa, nel 1675. Antonio Manetti ne fa menzione nelle “Vite dei XIV uomini singhulari”, definendola ‘figura maravigliosa’; A. Manetti, Vite di XIV uomini singhulari in Firenze dal MCCCC innanzi, in: G. Milanesi, Operette storiche edite e inedite di Antonio Manetti, Firenze 1887, 165. Una eco del San Paolo di Masaccio si coglie, forse, in un disegno degli Uffizi (GDSU, 73E) segnalato da P. Joannides in: Masaccio e Masolino. A Complete Catalogue, London 1993, 447-448, cat. n. L4.

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Figure 6.1 Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1470, tempera on panel, 51.2 × 35.2 cm, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina

quarti e frontali e dunque perfettamente orientati nello spazio. Come in altri generi, anche in quello del ritratto il giovane Lippi dovette perciò essere ben cosciente e padrone dell’eredità paterna. Nella Firenze degli anni settanta ebbe poi modo di rendersi conto degli svolgimenti in corso e soprattutto di quelli legati alla ritrattistica indipendente, in primo luogo nella frequentazione di Sandro Botticelli, il quale stava operando una radicale trasformazione che porterà, tra le altre cose, al superamento della posa di profilo per la figura femminile e alla creazione di un tipo di ritratto in cui la figura istituisce con chi guarda un rapporto diretto e immediato, come dimostra in modo paradig­ matico il Ritratto di giovane uomo della Galleria Palatina di Firenze (fig. 6.1). La competenza del giovane Filippino dovette perciò apparire adeguata ai Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 6.2 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1485, tempera and oil on panel, 52.1 × 36.5 cm. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection

committenti della Brancacci e all’inizio degli anni ottanta egli doveva avere di già acquisito una certa esperienza e dato qualche prova. Il Ritratto di giovane oggi a Washington15 (fig. 6.2) è probabilmente l’opera che meglio esprime tali capacità a queste date, presentando alcuni dati visivi che fanno ancora riferimento a Botticelli (al quale il dipinto è stato attribuito, 15

Segnalo qui un divertente falso che ibrida questo ritratto con quello su embrice degli Uffizi (inv. 1890, n. 1711) che raffigura Filippino Lippi. Non conosco l’attuale collocazione dell’opera, già nella collezione di Frédéric Battelli (1867-1941) a Ginevra (ma non giunse al Musée d’Arte con il resto della raccolta), illustrata in I. Payot, ‘Frédéric Battelli (1867-1941)’, in: L’art d’imiter, catalogo della mostra, Genève (Musée d’art e d’histoire), a cura di M. Natale, Ginevra 1997, 306-309. Dal ritratto di Washington deriva anche quella che appare come una copia ottocentesca passata da Freeman’s Auction, 5 dicembre 2010, lotto 2 (‘Manner of Filippino Lippi’, Portrait of a Young Man, tavola, 61 × 42.9 cm), in

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Figure 6.3 Filippino Lippi, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Saint Peter Disputing with Simon Magus before Nero, 1482-1485, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

da ultimo da Miklós Boskovits),16 per esempio lo sguardo spavaldamente rivolto allo spettatore e la brillante gamma cromatica che Filippino lascerà poi, a

16

coppia con ritratto femminile di analoghe misure (medesimo lotto); le due figure sono inserire entro uno sfondo di paesaggio di sapore vagamente raffaellesco. Nel 2004, pur con qualche dubbio, ho preferito mantenere la tavola nel catalogo di Botticelli sulla scorta della proposta di Miklós Boskovits, il quale si era espresso in questo senso non ravvisando nel ritratto le caratteristiche di quelli di Filippino nella Brancacci che, scriveva lo studioso, hanno sempre qualcosa di ‘harsh, irregular, even anguished’, si veda M. Boskovits in: M. Boskovits and D. A. Brown, National Gallery of Art. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century (The Collections of The National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue), Washington 2003, 166-170 (la citazione a pagina 168), con bibliografia precedente (attribuito a Botticelli, circa 1480). Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 363, cat. n. R 18 (a Botticelli, ma il ritratto ‘pone una questione che per ora resta aperta’); A. Rühl, in Botticelli. Likeness · Myth · Devotion, catalogo della mostra, Frankfurt am Main (Städel Museum), a cura di A. Schumacher, Frankfurt am Main 2009, 196-197, n. 18 (a Botticelli); mentre la Galleria mantiene l’attribuzione a Filippino. Così anche: A. Kranz, in Florence and its Painters from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, catalogo della mostra, Munich (Alte PInakothek), a cura di A. Schumacher, Munich 2018, 300-301 (come Filippino Lippi, c. 1480-85).

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Figure 6.4 Filippino Lippi, Saint Peter Liberated from Prison, 1482-1485, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

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favore di una tavolozza dai toni più sfumati e talvolta quasi monocroma. In questa fase della sua carriera, che precede dunque l’incontro con Masaccio al Carmine e resta in parte legata al mondo di Sandro, il Lippi non ha ancora recepito né le istanze più intime del naturalismo fiammingo né le sottili sperimentazioni di Leonardo rivolte alla resa di moti, attitudini e gesti più complessi e aderenti all’espressione dell’individuo. Il ritratto di Washington costituisce perciò un tassello importante ed è anche un ‘campione’ utile a capire cosa potessero avere sotto gli occhi i committenti della Brancacci quando incaricarono il pittore del completamento degli affreschi. Ed infatti linee di continuità legano questa figura ad alcune di quelle dipinte nella cappella, come evidenzia il confronto con il giovane al centro della parete destra (Disputa con Simon Mago e Crocifissione di San Pietro) (fig. 6.3) e con l’angelo del San Pietro liberato dal carcere sul pilastro destro dell’arco di ingresso (fig. 6.4). Uno studio della composizione accurato ed al tempo stesso tormentato dovette impegnare Filippino come dimostra la presenza, sul supporto, di numerose incisioni (non da leggere in relazione con quanto realizzato), visibili anche a occhio nudo al di sotto degli strati pittorici. Si tratta delle linee di un piccolo arco lungo il bordo superiore della tavola e di quelle di un doppio riquadro tracciato attorno alla testa del giovane. Tali incisioni corrispondo probabilmente ad una prima idea della posizione della finestra che doveva essere inizialmente assai più piccola dell’attuale nella quinta architettonica del fondo. Alcune modifiche apportate dal pittore appaiono come qualcosa di più di semplici pentimenti e segnalano che Filippino lavorò alla posa della figura e alla sua collocazione nello spazio sino alle ultime fasi esecutive, come indicano l’ingrandimento della spalla sinistra, il rimpicciolimento di quella destra, l’intervento su tutta la lunghezza del braccio destro, che fu reso più voluminoso sul lato, quello nella zona sommitale destra del berretto. Con queste ‘correzioni’ Filippino imprime al busto una minore rotazione nello spazio, conferendogli una maggiore frontalità che lo avvicina ad un ritratto in scultura. Al tempo stesso il processo operativo, divenuto oggi visibile, rivela un lavorio che non stupisce in un pittore giovane e che stava sperimentando nuove formule compositive, linguistiche e formali, un profilo che difficilmente può corrispondere al Botticelli della fine degli anni settanta e che meglio si attaglia al Lippi prima che entrasse al Carmine. Come è noto, il lavoro di Filippino nella cappella cominciò dalla parete sinistra, dove Masaccio si era interrotto. Sia nel caso dell’avvenuta damnatio memoriae delle figure dei più antichi donatori, sia in quello, che ritengo più probabile, che l’affresco con la Risurrezione del figlio di Teofilo fosse rimasto incompiuto, è nell’area centrale della scena che si concentrano le immagini dei nuovi donatori (fig. 6.5) ed è nella prima fase del lavoro ‒ su queste figure e su queste teste ‒ che dovette prodursi un deciso sviluppo delle capacità e Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 6.5 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, The Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned, 1426 and 1482, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

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Figure 6.6 Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, The Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned, detail, 1426 and 1482, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

dell’interesse di Filippino per il ritratto.17 Dopo l’esecuzione della prima parete, passando a lavorare alla scena con la Disputa e la Crocifissione (fig. 6.6 e 6.7), il Lippi poté alleggerire la presenza dei ritratti dato che la maggior parte dei committenti e dei loro ‘amici’ doveva già essere stata effigiata.18 Che poi l’attitudine ad affollare le scene sacre di ritratti di cittadini non fosse del pittore (e dei pittori) ma dei committenti, lo ricordano sia Enrico Parlato sia Andrea De Marchi; nella più tarda cappella in Santa Maria Novella, prevarrà infatti la sobrietà 17

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Per il lavoro di Filippino e le diverse ipotesi relative alla parete sinistra della cappella, si rimanda a Zambrano, in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 327-334, cat. n. 21. Il crescente interesse del Lippi per la ritrattistica in relazione alla commissione degli affreschi della Cappella Brancacci è sottolineato anche da G. Goldner, ‘Filippino as a Draftsman’, in: Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (nota 3), 17. Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 198-200; Zambrano, op. cit. (nota 12), 37.

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165 Figure 6.7 Filippino Lippi, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Saint Peter Disputing with Simon Magus before Nero, 1482-1485, detail, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

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degli Strozzi in contrasto con la caotica presenza dei Tornabuoni nella cappella adiacente.19 Come è stato notato, ‘Lo studio del testo pittorico masaccesco ‒ con il quale vi è una evidente e necessaria ricerca di sintonia, per esempio nella Visita di s. Paolo a s. Pietro in carcere ‒ ebbe un peso notevole nel percorso stilistico’ del Lippi, segnando ‘il distacco irreversibile dai modi botticelliani’.20 In quali termini si concretizzò l’incontro con Masaccio? Proprio perché questi aveva conferito a molte figure, e anche a quelle sacre, carattere ritrattistico, il confronto con lui avvenne quasi con ogni figura dipinta. Probabilmente nessuna immagine può essere più eloquente della testa bifronte (fig. 6.6) posta in uno dei cruciali punti di innesto della nuova parte condotta dal Lippi accanto a quella più antica.21 Il raffronto tra le due teste mostra, sin nella tecnica impiegata, quanto e come Filippino seppe essere mimetico, quasi in modo miracoloso, all’uso così tipico di Masaccio delle lunghe pennellate più scure che scorrono sotto l’incarnato del volto, nel tratteggio incrociato a creare l’ombra e l’effetto di chiaroscuro e quindi di rilievo plastico, nel prodigioso accordo dei pigmenti e nella densità della materia dell’affresco, riuscendo nell’impresa di non opprimere la figura già dipinta ma di farla risaltare, ponendo la sua testa su un piano solo leggermente più avanzato, semplicemente marcando la linea posteriore del collo con un solo segno del pennello, più scuro e denso, a segnare lo stacco e la separazione tra le due teste. Un tipo di intervento che, al di là della capacità tecnica, presuppone una tale profonda cognizione dell’opera che Masaccio aveva lasciato, che possiamo immaginare si sia prodotta non in ore e giorni, ma in lunghissimi periodi di osservazione, di studio e di riflessione che si dovettero tradurre in esercizio e pratica e quindi in una fitta produzione di 19

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E. Parlato, ad vocem ‘Lippi, Filippino’, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 65, Roma 2005, 195: ‘scompare la consuetudine fiorentina di inserire ritratti di personaggi contemporanei, uso al quale Lippi si era attenuto sia nella Brancacci sia nella Carafa, una scelta che probabilmente fa seguito a una precisa richiesta della committenza ed è del tutto coerente con la funzione funeraria e privata del sacello’. A. 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, 2. Dalla “Trinità” di Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, a cura di A. De Marchi, Firenze 2016, 216. Parlato, op. cit. (nota 19), 193. Riguardo all’importanza dell’attività di Filippino presso la Cappella Brancacci per la sua maturazione come ritrattista, si veda anche: G.J. van der Sman, ‘Studi di teste della Firenze del Quattrocento’, in: From Pattern to Nature in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo, a cura di M.W. Kwakkelstein e L. Melli, Firenze 2012, 137-151 e specie 140-144, anche per i disegni legati alla realizzazione degli affreschi nella cappella. La testa bifronte corrisponde alla giornata 17 di Masaccio e alla giornata 49 di Filippino; i dati sono tratti da: O. Casazza, ‘La Cappella Brancacci’, in: La Cappella Brancacci. La scienza per Masaccio, Masolino, Filippino Lippi, Milano 1992, 19-22.

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disegni, certamente molte teste, di cui restano oggi solo pochi fogli.22 Uno di questi, con Studio di testa maschile a Lipsia, viene alternativamente collegato alla terza figura della parete sinistra (Risurrezione del figlio di Teofilo) o a quella della medesima persona che ricompare, anni dopo, nella Adorazione dei magi degli Uffizi.23 Credo che sia da legare al lavoro preparatorio per le figure della prima parete anche il disegno con Testa di ragazzo di profilo con lo sguardo rivolto a sinistra di Roma, uno degli studi per il figlio di Teofilo inginocchiato (secondo l’identificazione di Vasari, il giovane Francesco Granacci).24 Lorenza Melli ha inoltre messo in relazione con alcune figure presenti nella parete con la Disputa e la Crocifissione un foglio del Louvre con uno studio per testa maschile con un berretto, una suggestione utile e che pare più pertinente del riferimento dello stesso foglio al Doppio ritratto di Denver, pure proposto dalla studiosa.25 Se da un lato, nel confronto con Masaccio al Carmine, Filippino allineò quanto più possibile il proprio registro linguistico a quello degli affreschi più antichi, al tempo stesso egli andò ben oltre l’operazione di cucitura. Come osserva Enrico Parlato, nella cappella il Lippi ‘si misura con il ritratto, nell’inevitabile confronto con quelli masacceschi, dando prova di grandissima abilità nel rinnovare il genere: la fedeltà al modello si coniuga, di volta in volta, con il 22 23 24

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Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 208-210 (‘Il passaggio tra gli anni settanta e gli anni ottanta. Teste’). Per i riferimenti di questi due fogli si vedano le note 3 e 4 sopra. Filippino Lippi, Studio di testa di giovane di profilo, punta metallica, rialzi a biacca, carta preparata verde, 208 × 149 mm, Roma, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, inv. n. 130455. C. Bambach in: Goldner and Bambach, op. cit. (nota 3), 252-253, n. 73; Zambrano, op. cit. (nota 4), 151; Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 219, 333, cat. n. 21.d.3 (con bibliografia precedente). Dissente dall’attribuzione a Filippino, A. Cecchi, ‘Considerazioni su una recente monografia di Filippino Lippi’, Paragone, 59 (2008) 3, 80, 62-63: ‘a causa della assenza di tensione grafica che connota i fogli del Lippi e, per converso, la presenza di un segno tagliente e di preziose e fini lumeggiature a biacca che lo delimitano e lo torniscono, come nei disegni del Ghirlandaio o del suo entourage’. A. Schumacher in: Schumacher, op. cit. (nota 16), 208-209, n. 23, dubita del legame con la figura del figlio di Teofilo. Preparando la lezione ‘Disegni di Filippino Lippi dell’Istituto Nazionale della Grafica di Roma. Una rilettura’, Roma, 14 Maggio 2015, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, ho avuto modo di studiare nuovamente il foglio in cui il pittore si esercita sul tema del profilo, ricorrente in numerose opere (angeli della Pala di Badia, Annunciazione di San Gimignano, ecc). L. Melli, in: Schumacher, op. cit. (nota 16), 210-211, n. 25, fa riferimento alla figura del ragazzo con la testa inclinata nel gruppo della Disputa ed ai due così detti autoritratti del Lippi, al centro ed all’estrema destra dell’affresco. La studiosa collega altresì il foglio con il Doppio ritratto di Filippino Lippi e Piero del Pugliese di Denver ed in particolare con l’autoritratto del pittore nella tavola.

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carattere e la modernità dell’effigiato’.26 Non c’è forse ambito nel quale, con più fondatezza, sia possibile valutare tale carattere e modernità dell’effigiato che quello delle immagini degli artisti amici e compagni del pittore. È Vasari a testimoniare la presenza di questi ritratti che egli stesso utilizza per realizzare i medaglioni silografici posti come incipit delle biografie di Antonio Pollaiolo, Sandro Botticelli e Lippi stesso. Nella Giuntina (1568), Vasari identifica i nomi dei personaggi presenti: ‘Nella figura del qual fanciullo ignudo ritrasse Francesco Granacci, pittore allora giovanetto, e similmente messer Tommaso Soderini cavaliere, Piero Guicciardini, padre di messer Francesco che ha scritto le Storie, Piero del Pugliese e Luigi Pulci poeta, parimente Antonio Pollaiuolo e se stesso, così giovane come era; il che non fece altrimenti nel resto della sua vita, onde non si è potuto avere il ritratto di lui d’età migliore. E nella storia che segue ritrasse Sandro Botticello suo maestro e molti altri amici e grand’uomini’.27 Nella Torrentiniana (1550) si trovano informazioni integrative circa l’estensione dell’intervento relativamente alla Disputa e Crocifissione dove: ‘ritrasse sé et il Pollaiuolo’.28 Negli anni in cui Filippino lavorava alla Brancacci, Antonio Pollaiolo (fig. 6.7) aveva poco più di cinquanta anni e nel novembre 1485 sarebbe partito per Roma per eseguire la tomba di Sisto IV, tornando però saltuariamente a Firenze (per esempio nel 1489 e nel 1491). È perciò probabile che il suo ritratto ‒ è la figura dietro al braccio di Nerone, volta di tre quarti, con il cappello rosso ‒ sia stato realizzato prima del trasferimento. Non si può escludere che Filippino utilizzasse tuttavia disegni di cui poteva già disporre, visto l’antico rapporto che legava i due artisti e che risaliva almeno al 1468, quando Antonio aveva fatto visita a Spoleto a Filippo Lippi malato.29 Per quanto riguarda l’autoritratto posto all’estrema destra della scena (fig. 6.7) (simmetrico a quello di Masaccio sulla parete di fronte), Vasari lamenta di avere dovuto utilizzare questa effige giovanile perché non gli era stato possibile trovarne una di età più matura, notazione che consiglia prudenza nell’ipotizzare l’esistenza di altri ritratti del pittore. Vasari usò come sua fonte anche il ritratto di Botticelli da identificare, come dimostra proprio il confronto con quello presente nelle Vite, nella figura centrale, posta quasi di profilo con l’ampio mantello rosso ed il berretto grigio (fig. 6.3). Anche questo dato, vista l’attenzione quasi maniacale di Vasari per l’esattezza dei ritratti, fa supporre che non esistessero, quanto meno a Firenze, 26 Parlato, op. cit. (nota 19), 193. 27 Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1), 561. 28 Ibid. 29 Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 17-18, 623, sub ‘1469’, 618-619, doc. 2, sub. ‘1469, 27 dicembre’.

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altre immagini del pittore o che Vasari non giudicasse di pari qualità o altrettanto adeguate quelle esistenti (nell’autoritratto dell’Adorazione dei magi degli Uffizi appariva forse troppo giovane), o se pure esistenti, non fossero a lui accessibili. Alessandro Cecchi ha contestato che la figura del giovane accanto a Sandro, al centro esatto della scena (fig. 6.3) possa essere un secondo autoritratto di Filippino, come ho proposto anni fa, sulla scorta di studi precedenti.30 Questa seconda effige, di cui spiccano la centralità, la prossimità a Botticelli e la posa della testa volta verso lo spettatore, fa parte della seconda scena raffigurata, con la Crocifissione di San Pietro e potrebbe corrispondere ad una fase leggermente successiva di esecuzione. Non è ovviamente da escludere l’ipotesi formulata da Cecchi che in realtà si tratti semplicemente di un garzone della bottega. Queste effigi, così come molte delle teste presenti, specie nella parete di destra della cappella, mostrano già pienamente raggiunto lo stile ritrattistico di Filippino alla metà degli anni ottanta del Quattrocento. Le teste sono ruotate rispetto al busto, gli occhi si portano sempre in una direzione diversa, tendendo ad evitare un rapporto troppo diretto con chi guarda. La connotazione psicologica appare sospesa senza però perdere la caratterizzazione che anzi risulta rafforzata. Si osserva perciò una sorta di dinamica dell’elusione degli sguardi che tecnicamente assume le forme di lievi ma sensibili rotazioni di busto e testa di cui è evidente riscontro anche nel Ritratto di giovane del Louvre (fig. 6.8), un’opera che dà la misura del percorso compiuto dal pittore in pochi anni.31 Collocando la figura di tre quarti, di fronte ad un’apertura architettonica in pietra serena, le cui modanature sono sagomate in profondità e scolpite dalla luce che giunge da sinistra, Filippino crea uno spazio intermedio, oltre il primo piano, in modo ben più articolato rispetto al ritratto di Washington (fig. 6.2). Le 30 31

Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 196, 201-203; Cecchi, op. cit. (nota 24), 62; Zambrano, op. cit. (nota 12), 34-35 (specie nota 76). Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 361, cat. R15 (a Botticelli, con bibliografia precedente); A. Cecchi, Botticelli, Milano 2005, 118 (a Botticelli); A. Cecchi in: Cecchi, op. cit. (nota 12), 86-87, n. 4 (a Botticelli con datazione all’inizio degli anni settanta); D. Thiébaut in Foucart-Walter, E., Catalogue des peintures italiennes du musée du Louvre. Catalogue sommaire, Paris 2007, 21 (come Botticelli). Una copia novecentesca della tavola è presso la National Gallery of Scotland (inv. 1792), si veda H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2nd ed., Edinburgh 1993, 42-43. E. K. Waterhouse, recensione, H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1978, Italian Studies 35 (1980), 100, diede notizia che l’opera fosse una ‘copia moderna’ del quadro del Louvre, eseguita da M. Philippot che avrebbe ammesso di averla realizzata. La fonte di questa notizia non è però indicata dall’autore della recensione. Ringrazio Aidan Weston-Lewis per le informazioni gentilmente fornite.

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Figure 6.8 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1482-1483, tempera on panel, 57 × 39.8 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre

tonalità della pietra grigia colorano anche il fondo del cielo; lame di luce, scivolando sulle gole delle cornici, accendono e fanno risaltare il monocromo della quinta di fronte alla quale è incardinata la figura del giovane volto a sinistra e che guarda verso lo spettatore senza in realtà guardarlo. I volumi della testa sono modellati plasticamente di chiari e scuri ma sul collo le pennellate bianche prendono corpo con un bagliore chiarissimo nel colletto di una camicia che stacca la giubba nera. Se la testa è ruotata rispetto al busto, il naso è ruo­tato rispetto al mento secondo un sistema di ‘correzioni’ o meglio leggere distorsioni operate da Jan van Eyck da Botticelli e da Holbein per meglio individualizzare il soggetto ritratto e renderne la somiglianza.32 Come sarà anche nel 32

Per un approfondimento riguardo tale processo di individualizzazione si rimanda a L. Campbell, Renaissance Portraits. European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, New Haven/London 1990, 9-14.

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Figure 6.9 Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Musician, c. 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 51.1 × 36.9 cm. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland

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Musico di Dublino (fig. 6.9) di cui questo ritratto anticipa la posa, i chiari sono dati sul volto con pennellate sottili e filate di bianco, che sottolineano le palpebre e i margini degli occhi, quelli della bocca, addensandosi chiare a illuminare la fronte, la punta del naso e il mento. Con pennellate appena più scure sono modellate le parti in ombra della mascella, della guancia, del collo, a destra. È questa una tecnica molto caratterizzata, in parte mutuata da Masaccio ed ampiamente utilizzata nelle teste dipinte a fresco nella Cappella Brancacci, e che Filippino comincia ad impiegare anche nella ritrattistica su tavola. Si tratta di un sistema particolare, usato per costruire i volumi, creare chiaroscuro e produrre rilievo con una tessitura di tratti lunghi del pennello e un reticolo di velature sottili date, come lumeggiature, in superficie. Proprio la peculiarità e riconoscibilità di tale tecnica esecutiva, che si sviluppa con il procedere del lavoro nella cappella (che va perciò tenuta sempre come riscontro), rende difficile condividere la recente attribuzione di Alessandro Cecchi relativa al ritratto maschile con abito di foggia nordica degli Uffizi.33 Nel corso degli anni ottanta gli esiti del confronto con Masaccio si stratificano sull’eredità di Filippo. Al tempo stesso Filippino osserva le novità fiamminghe e medita molto profondamente su quella che, in pochi anni, sarebbe diventata l’eredità di Leonardo, il quale aveva lasciato Firenze alla fine del 1481 o poco dopo. Compaiono nelle sue opere sia ritratti sia figure sacre ‒ la testa del San Domenico nella Pala Rucellai della National Gallery di Londra o quella di San Bernardo della Pala della Badia ‒ che risultano, rispetto alla pittura precedente, come ‘potenziate’ nelle possibilità espressive, nella concentrazione, nella capacità di rendere disposizioni psicologiche. Sono questi i caratteri nuovi e moderni che connotano il Ritratto di Musico (fig. 6.9) di Dublino e il Doppio ritratto di Filippino Lippi e Piero del Pugliese (fig. 6.11) oggi a Denver. 33

Ritratto di giovane uomo, tavola, 34 × 24 cm, Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Collezione Feroni, inv. S. Marco e Cenacoli n. 42. U. Middeldorf, ‘Ein deutsches porträt in Florenz’, Pantheon, 5 (1930), 170; poi: U. Middeldorf, ‘Un ritratto tedesco a Firenze’, in: Raccolta di Scritti: That is, Collected Writings I 1924-1938, Firenze 1979-1980, 93-94 (‘piccolo capolavoro del pennello teutonico’, ‘si cerca l’autore nelle file dei maggiori pittori tedeschi della fine del XV secolo’); C. Caneva, in: La Collezione Feroni. Dalle Province Unite agli Uffizi, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Galleria degli Uffizi), a cura di C. Caneva, Firenze 1998, 129, cat. n. 89; tavola sinottica a p. 144, n. 42 (pittore fiorentino influenzato dallo stile nordico); A. Cecchi, in: Botticelli and the Search for the Divine. Florentine Painting between the Medici and the Bonfire of the Vanities, catalogo della mostra, Williamsburg (Muscarelle Museum of Art) and Boston (Fine Arts Museum), a cura di J.T. Spike e A. Cecchi, Firenze 2017, 106107, n. 12, ha proposto l’attribuzione al Lippi, avvicinando la figura al San Giovanni Battista della Pala di Palazzo Vecchio (Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi) e datando 1486-1490. Credo l’autore possa essere cercato tra gli artisti fiorentini che guardano più fedelmente di Filippino a modelli nordici, oppure, come suggeriva Middeldorf, tra i maggiori pittori tedeschi del fine del Quattrocento.

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Tecnicamente il Musico34 appare vicinissimo alle figure della seconda parete della Cappella Brancacci. È realizzato cioè (come già il ritratto di Parigi) addensando le ombre con tratti bruni ma non neri, lunghi e filamentosi, che talvolta si incrociano inspessendosi. La plastica della testa è affidata ad un gioco molto abile di parti più scure e luci, queste ultime ottenute con un uso dolce del bianco che non è nel corpo del colore ma è dato sulla superficie, grazie a pennellate sottili ma materiche che velano gli strati sottostanti con un effetto trasparente, quasi fosse una rete leggera, come ben visibile nelle mani pur nelle condizioni non ottimali della tavola. L’ambientazione del ritratto, per cui viene spesso evocato, a proposito, l’influsso fiammingo, specie per la presenza degli strumenti musicali, dei libri, del foglio di uno spartito (non leggibile), si giustifica con la scelta del personaggio ritratto ‒ probabilmente anche il committente della tavola ‒, che volle essere effigiato con gli oggetti legati al suo mestiere, anche se non è detto che questa sia la chiave di lettura esclusiva dell’opera come tuttavia pare suggerire l’evidenza data alla lira da braccio, mostrata in primo piano grazie al gesto eloquente del personaggio che sta verificando la tensione della quinta corda, detta di bordone, muovendo, con la mano destra, uno dei piroli.35 Il musico tiene elegantemente l’archetto con il braccio sinistro piegato, una soluzione ingegnosa per illuminare, con una sottile lama di luce, la giubba scura. Una seconda lira da braccio e un liuto con un archetto, con due piccoli strumenti a fiato sono posati su due mensole di legno. Come notato da Timothy McGee, si tratta di strumenti destinati ad essere suonati in interno mentre non sono presenti trombe o pifferi, di solito suonati per la strada e nelle piazze.36 Filippino crea così un’immagine che racconta l’atmosfera raccolta della camera o dello studio del musico con gli oggetti che ne identificano la personalità ed anche il ruolo sociale. Benché le condizioni di conservazione rendano oggi un po’ disarticolato lo spazio e le mensole sembrino quasi sospese nel nulla, la presenza di un tracciato di incisioni al di sotto degli strati pittorici dimostra che il Lippi lavorò attentamente proprio a questa parte, creando una grigia molto semplice, con due muri perpendicolari, in cui 34

35 36

Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 261-270, 342-344, cat. n. 29 (con bibliografia precedente); J. K. Nelson, in: Botticelli e Filippino: l’inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura fiorentina del Quattrocento, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Palazzo Strozzi), a cura di D. Arasse, P. De Vecchi, J. K. Nelson, Milano 2004, 228-231, n. 37; T. J. McGee, ‘Filippino Lippi and Music’, Renaissance and Reformation 30, (2006-2007) 3, 5-28; J. K. Nelson, in: Cecchi, op. cit. (nota 12), 136-137, n. 21, accoglie con prudenza l’ipotesi di T. McGee che il Ritratto di Musico possa essere un autoritratto di Filippino (che si dilettava di musica); T. J. McGee, ‘Filippino Lippi’s Allegory of Sound and Silence’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 44 (2013) 3, 329-338. Per una precisazione tecnica su questo gesto, si veda Nelson, op. cit. (nota 34) 228. McGee, ‘Filippino and Music’, op. cit. (nota 34), 7.

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la figura è collocata con una sorprendente rotazione che si contrappone all’andamento dell’architettura, non inserendosi nella nicchia formata dall’angolo. Il musico dà le spalle alla finestra ma è comunque investito da una luce chiara che proviene da sinistra, si riflette nelle sue pupille e mette in rilievo lo strumento, le mani (le dita, le nocche, il polso del braccio sinistro, il pollice rivoltato della mano destra), una parte del volto e il bordo dell’archetto. É impegnato nel minuto ma complesso movimento di verificare le condizioni del suo strumento, forse poco prima di accordarlo per poi suonarlo, ma sarebbe una forzatura volere legare solo a questo momento, che precede l’esecuzione, il senso dell’iscrizione presente sulla lira, il verso 36 ‒ ‘e ‘l cominciar non fia per tempo omai’ ‒ della meravigliosa canzone 264 del Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca I’ vo pensando, et nel penser m’assale.37 L’esigenza di ritrarre non una posa fissa ma l’attività del musico costringe Filippino a includere nel taglio dell’immagine le braccia e le mani del soggetto, una sfida che i pittori dell’epoca tendevano a evitare con ogni possibile escamotage, viste le difficoltà che tale inserimento comportava; al tempo stesso proprio la descrizione di una ‘azione’ permette al Lippi di articolare mani e braccia in modo che esse appaiano funzionali alla figurazione.38 Accanto al carattere iconico, il ritratto ne acquista così anche uno narrativo, oggi non del tutto intellegibile ma che doveva risultare lineare per i contemporanei. Il confronto tra alcune delle teste dipinte dal Lippi nel corso degli anni ottanta mostra che tipo di ritrattistica egli stesse sviluppando in parallelo con il lavoro nella Cappella Brancacci. Sia nel Musico (fig. 6.9) sia nel giovane al centro della Disputa e Crocifissione (fig. 6.3), cogliamo sguardi obliqui, appena posati, che sfuggono. Il soggetto pare guardare lo spettatore, come fanno i personaggi ritratti da Botticelli, ma in realtà gli occhi eludono il contatto e la posa stessa evita frontalità e centralità. Analoghe e parallele forme di elusione notiamo nei disegni di teste, magnifiche testimonianze grafiche che fissano nell’immediatezza del foglio proprio la fuggevolezza di sguardi distratti da qualcosa o intenti ad altro, di cui è esempio il foglio degli Uffizi con la testa di un Giovane con berretto (fig. 6.10)39, riportato recentemente all’attenzione da 37 38 39

‘Mentre che ’l corpo è vivo, / ài tu ’l freno in bailia de’ penser’ tuoi: / deh stringilo or che pôi, / ché dubbioso è ’l tardar come tu sai / e ’l cominciar non fia per tempo omai’; F. Petrarca, Canzoniere, 264, 32-36. Campbell, op. cit. (nota 32), 95-98 (il Musico è qui attribuito a pittore ‘working in a style close to Filippino Lippi’s’, circa 1500). L. Melli, ‘I disegni a due punte metalliche di Filippino Lippi: una scelta funzionale’, in: Mitteillungen des Kunsthistorischen Instututes in Florenz, 52, 2/3, atti del convegno (Le tecniche del disegno rinascimentale: dai materiali allo stile, Firenze, 22-23 settembre 2008), 2008, 88-108 (con bibliografia precedente).

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Figure 6.10 Filippino Lippi, Head of a Youth Wearing a Cap, c. 1483-1484, metalpoint, heightened with white gouache on grey prepared paper, 22.5 × 17.9 cm., inv. no. 226 Ev, Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi

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Figure 6.11 Filippino Lippi, Double Portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino Lippi, c. 1483-1484, tempera on panel, 37.5 × 56.4 cm. Denver, Denver Art Museum Collection/The Simon Guggenheim Memorial Collection

Lorenza Melli la quale, notando che il volto è connotato come un ritratto che ‘conserva una espressione riflessiva e malinconica accentuata con sapienza dall’opposizione dello sguardo all’inclinazione della testa’40, ne ha collegato l’intensità al Musico ed al Doppio ritratto di Filippino Lippi e Piero del Pugliese di Denver (fig. 6.11).41 L’amicizia tra committente e pittore, di cui dà notizia Vasari42 e di cui proprio il Doppio ritratto è testimonianza visiva inequivocabile deve risalire agli anni ottanta del secolo quando il Lippi raffigura Piero del Pugliese (1428-1498) nel già menzionato ritratto ‘in abisso’ della Pala della Badia dove il committente appare di un’età solo leggermente più matura rispetto al volto, abraso e danneggiato, che si identifica nel gruppo centrale degli astanti nella 40 41 42

Ibid., 102. Filippino Lippi, Doppio ritratto di Filippino e Piero del Pugliese, tempera e olio su tavola (parchettato), 37,5 × 56,4 cm, Denver (Colorado), Denver Art Museum, The Simon Guggenheim Memorial Collection, inv. E-it-18-XV-390 (1955.88). Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1); 563, ‘e a Piero del Pugliese amico suo lavorò una storia di figure piccole’.

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Resurrezione del figlio di Teofilo della Brancacci (fig. 6.5). A quanto ho avuto modo di scrivere sulla tavola oggi a Denver43 si sono sommate le riflessioni di Jonathan K. Nelson, Jill Burke, Hanna Baader e altri colleghi44 ma un contributo decisivo alla comprensione dell’opera viene ora dalle ricerche di Tommaso Salvatore il quale ha ricostruito il profilo culturale di Piero come bibliofilo, collezionista di libri e intellettuale.45 L’analisi filologica condotta ha permesso infatti di decifrare e identificare il testo scritto nel codice aperto alle spalle delle due figure come i versi 93-105 de Le dolci rime d’amor ch’io solea della Canzone 4 delle Rime di Dante, la terza lirica del Convivio.46 Proprio il Convivio era contenuto in un importate codice autografo di Boccaccio, noto come 43 44

45

46

Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit (nota 1), 261-270, 334-335, cat. n. 22 (con bibliografia precedente). J. Burke, Changing Patrons. Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park 2004, 86-94; in relazione al Doppio ritratto, sulla distinzione tra ‘art patronage’ e ‘sincere’ affection nei rapporti tra artista e committente come esplicitato da Burke, si veda l’osservazione formulata da D. Kent, recensione a ‘Changing Patrons’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 37, 4 (2007), 627; J. K. Nelson, recensione a J. Burke, ‘Changing patrons. Social Identity & de Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence’, The Burlington Magazine, 148 (2006), 39-40; D. Kent, Friendship, love, and trust in Renaissance Florence, Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2009, 144; A. Cecchi, ‘Filippino, un pittore per tutte le stagioni’, in: Cecchi, op. cit. (nota 12), 17-18; Nelson, op. cit. (nota 34), 136; M. O’Malley, Painting under pressure: fame, reputation, and demand in Renaissance Florence, New Haven/ London 2013, 75-77; H. Baader, Das Selbst im Anderen. Sprachen der Freundschaft und die Kunst des Porträts 1370-1520, Paderborn 2015, 235-249; S. Padovani, in Piero di Cosimo 14621522: pittore eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Galleria degli Uffizi), a cura di E. Capretti, A. Forlani Tempesti, S. Padovani, D. Parenti, Firenze/ Milano 2015, 260-262, n. 27. T. Salvatore, ‘Un manoscritto dantesco ‘nascosto’ in un dipinto di Filippino Lippi’, Medioevo e Rinascimento, 29 (2015), 43-60 (= op. cit. A); T. Salvatore, ‘Una nota sulla storia dell’autografo Chigiano del Boccaccio’, Studi di filologia italiana, LXXIII (2015), 465-476 (= op. cit. B); T. Salvatore, ‘Ancora su Dante, Piero del Pugliese e Filippino Lippi’, Studi danteschi, LXXXI (2016), 357-368(= op. cit. C). T. Salvatore, op. cit. A (nota 45), 47-50; Rime, 4 [LXXXII]; testo iscritto nel Doppio ritratto: ‘da sempre / che perme / conuegnon / Dunque / uegna / ma se / [...]tanto / [...] / E Gentile / ma / si com / [...] / [...]’. Dante, Le dolci rime d’amor ch’io solea (vv. 93-105): ‘dà sempre altrui di sé buono intelletto; / per che in medesmo detto / convegnono amendue, ch’en d’uno effetto. / Dunque convien che d’altra vegna l’una, / o d’un terzo ciascuna; / ma se l’una val ciò che l’altra vale / ed ancor più, da lei verrà più tosto. / Ciò ch’i’ ho detto qui, sia per supposto. / È gentilezza dovunqu’è vertute, / ma non vertute ov’ella: / sì com’è ’l cielo dovunqu’è la stella, / ma ciò non e converso. / E noi in donna ed in età novella’. Le varianti presenti nel quadro corrispondono alla lectio data nel gruppo di codici detto ‘famiglia b’; questi i passi corrispondenti: ‘che per medesmo detto’; ‘Dunque convien che l’una’; ‘vegna da l’altra o d’un terzo ciascuna’; ‘cotanto perverrà da lei più tosto’; il testo citato da T. Salvatore è tratto da: Dante Alighieri, Rime, a cura di D. De Robertis, III: Testi, Firenze 2002, 63-79.

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‘Chigiano’, che lo studioso è riuscito a ricondurre a Piero del Pugliese grazie al riscontro dello stemma della famiglia, retto da due puttini.47 Senza voler qui ripercorrere la ricostruzione della personalità di Piero del Pugliese come cultore di Dante, vale però la pena tener presente che egli deteneva anche il manoscritto oggi detto ‘Parigino’ contenente sia il volgarizzamento quattrocentesco anonimo della Monarchia sia il Convivio, così che si può dire che egli avesse ‘fatto incetta di tutto Dante, in prosa e in versi’.48 Come è noto, anche Filippino possedeva ‘uno libro del Chonvivio di Dante’, come risulta dall’inventario dei beni presenti nella sua bottega, stilato alla morte, nel 1504.49 Tuttavia, come ha notato Salvatore, la presenza del testo di Dante nel quadro deve riferirsi specificamente al testimone delle Rime di proprietà di Piero (il ‘Chigiano’) e non è perciò da leggere solo come una generica, se pur importante, indicazione culturale.50 Questo aspetto non è tuttavia secondario e la scelta di riportare nel dipinto i versi della così detta ‘canzone della gentilezza’ pone proprio il Doppio ritratto all’interno del ‘contemporaneo dibattito de nobilitate, identificando l’ontologia della vera nobiltà con l’esercizio della virtù’.51 Ma va ricordato, data la professione e l’origine del committente ‒ un mercante di tessili e non di antica schiatta ‒ che la nobiltà ‘che Piero rivendica a sé, con l’avallo della massima auctoritas della poesia volgare, è un bene individuale e spirituale, che poggia eticamente su meriti morali, e certamente dati gli interessi culturali del personaggio, su quelli intellettuali’.52 In una curiosa circolarità che non deve essere però casuale nella Firenze degli anni ottanta del Quattrocento, anche Cristoforo Landino è tra i protagonisti dell’allora attualissima disputa sulla nobiltà a cui dedicò, dopo il 1486, il dialogo De vera nobilitate in cui sono citati gli stessi versi danteschi che

47 48 49 50

51 52

Ms. Chigiano L.v. 176, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Parigi, Bibliothèque National, ms Italien 536; Salvatore, op. cit. C (nota 45), 363. Nelson in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit. (nota 1), 53, 626-627 doc. 24. Salvatore, op. cit. B (nota 45), 475, ‘difficilmente ci si può limitare a ritenere che i manoscritti rappresentati sugli scaffali del Doppio ritratto siano dei generici volumi con funzione esornativa. Al contrario, a mio giudizio, osservando il dipinto non si sfuggirà all’impressione che quelli che il mecenate ha voluto far raffigurare siano i suoi manoscritti’. Su questo anche Salvatore op. cit. C (nota 45), 367; inoltre, ‘La tabella filippinesca è probabilmente l’unico caso in tutto il Rinascimento in cui il prelievo attinge a un’opera diversa dalla Commedia: un’opera, la canzone 4, di cui si rivela per altro una ricezione consapevole e aggiornata, che tiene conto delle contemporanee riflessioni dei dantisti fiorentini, come risulta dal dialogo che il dipinto ingaggia col trattato De nobilitate del Landino’, 360. Salvatore, op. cit. B (nota 45), 474. Salvatore, op. cit. A (nota 45), 51.

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appaiono nel ritratto di Filippino.53 Non è da sottovalutare il fatto che proprio a Landino erano intitolati, cioè indirizzati espressamente, in una stesura predefinitiva, i Carmina di Alessandro Braccesi, composti dopo il 1484 e prima del 1487, dedicati poi a Guidobaldo da Montefeltro nella versione definitiva e che contengono due famosi epigrammi iconici che consacrano, in tono umanistico e con parole alte, proprio il Doppio ritratto di Filippino.54 Tutti i dati via via emersi collocano perciò la tavola di Denver all’interno di una complessa e non del tutto districata rete di rapporti, amicizie, contatti, ma più ancora interessi e contesti umanistici comuni e salienti che ne indicano la centralità sia nel dibattito culturale (se è vero che il dipinto, come ancora nota Salvatore, ingaggia un implicito ma vivo confronto con le riflessioni di Landino de nobilitate55) sia nella storia della ritrattistica moderna di cui fu una tappa celebrata. A differenza di un noto carme di Ugolino Verino che menziona il solo ritratto di Piero del Pugliese56, gli epigrammi di Braccesi fanno esplicito riferimento alla presenza delle due figure di Pietro e Filippino e quindi ad un doppio ritratto a cui il pittore volle dare un’impostazione inedita che si stacca con decisione dalla tradizione iconografica del dittico con ritratti (da Piero della Francesca, a Piero di Cosimo, per non dire degli esempi nordici), mentre è difficile valutare se potesse in qualche modo avere recepito qualcosa del doppio ritratto (perduto) di Galeotto Marzio e Giano Pannonio di Mantegna.57 La forma originale dell’impaginazione con le due figure entro una stanza, accostate tra loro ma su piani differenti e in pose diverse, sullo sfondo lineare 53

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La disputa ed il ruolo di Landino sono ricostruiti, con relativa bibliografia, da Salvatore, op. cit. A (nota 45), 52-59. La presenza dei medesimi versi danteschi nel trattato di Landino e nel dipinto spinge lo studioso a ipotizzare che la corrispondenza non sia casuale e che riveli un rapporto diretto, nella dinamica del quale Piero del Pugliese e Filippino Lippi saranno da vedere come debitori nei confronti dell’eminente com­ mentatore dantesco. Dal momento che il trattato è da datare a dopo il 1486, il riferimento non deve essere al testo ma a conversazioni e colloqui intercorsi. Si tratta degli epigrammi LV e LVI; A. Perosa, ‘Un’opera sconosciuta di Filippino Lippi nella testimonianza di un poeta umanista’, Rivista d’arte, s. II, 24 (1942), 193-199; A. Braccesi, Alexandri Braccii Carmina, a cura di A. Perosa, Firenze 1943 (datato in copertina 1944), 122. Sul rapporto dei due epigrammi con il dipinto si veda anche: Salvatore, op. cit. A (nota 45), 57-58, il quale precisa che nel genere dell’epigramma ‘la dedica è il titolo’ ed essa ‘orienta il senso e la destinazione del componimento,’ 57. Salvatore, op. cit. A (nota 45), 58. Per i riferimenti al carme di Ugolino Verino Laus eiusdem pictoris ed al suo rapporto con il doppio ritratto e con l’effige di Piero del Pugliese nella Pala della Badia si rimanda a: U. Verino, Epigrammi, a cura di F. Bausi, Messina 1998, 569-571; Zambrano in Zambrano e Nelson, op. cit., (nota 1), 334-335, cat. n. 22. A. Ritoók-Szalay, ‘Andrea Mantegna e Giano Pannonio’, in: Italy & Hungary. Humanism and art in the Early Renaissance, a cura di P. Farbaky e L.A. Waldman, Milano 2011, 151-170.

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di una parete solcata solo dal profilo di una nicchia che forma un ripiano su cui sono appoggiati i volumi, e quindi l’esigenza di comporre le due teste nel medesimo e limitato spazio, spiega la scelta, quasi obbligata, di collocare l’autoritratto di profilo e giustifica in parte il piccolo scarto proporzionale tra le figure. Con la soluzione adottata Filippino evita la dispersione narrativa e l’effetto dello ‘studiolo arredato’ di norma allestito a caratterizzare la figura di Girolamo e degli altri santi studiosi, isolando ed evidenziando invece il tema del colloquio tra i due protagonisti nel rapporto con i libri, cioè il vero soggetto del quadro. Se pur lo scarto proporzionale tra le due figure è dovuto anche alle condizioni di conservazione della tavola, parchettata e impoverita nei volumi, fenomeni analoghi si osservano tuttavia sia nella parte all’estrema destra dell’affresco con le Prove di Cristo della Cappella Sistina di Botticelli sia nell’allineamento non sempre felice delle teste del gruppo centrale di figure nella Risurrezione del figlio di Teofilo della Brancacci (fig. 6.5), affresco al quale credo sia da sincronizzare la cronologia del Doppio ritratto.58 Il leggero scarto proporzionale non era tuttavia così visibile o percepito nel Quattrocento o, se lo era, non dovette turbare Alessandro Braccesi che ammira la somiglianza tra le figure dipinte e quelle vive così che ‘pictis nisi vox et aura desit’. Più di mezzo secolo dopo, l’antico topos risuonava ancora, con la voce di Giorgio Vasari, in lode di Filippino ritrattista di Piero del Pugliese: ‘di naturale tanto bene che non pare che gli manchi se non la parola’. Bibliografia Agosti, G., Su Mantegna I. La storia dell’arte libera la testa, Milano 2005. Alighieri, D., Dante, Rime, D. De Robertis (ed.), III: Testi, Firenze 2002. Arasse, D., De Vecchi, P. and Nelson, J.K. (eds.), Botticelli e Filippino: l’inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura fiorentina del Quattrocento, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Palazzo Strozzi), Milano 2004. 58

Riguardo allo scarto proporzionale, di diverso avviso è Nelson, op. cit. (nota 44), 40, ‘Filippino’s autograph works never exhibit similar problems, and contemporary painters never depicted themselves in profile. Perhaps this awkward adaptation of Filippino’s selfportrait in the Brancacci chapel in the Carmine was made by a collaborator (Vincenzo Frediani?) and juxtaposed with an image of Piero who, given his high status, appeared full face and in front of the painter’. L’ipotesi a favore di Frediani è ribadita in Nelson, op. cit. (nota 34), 136. Salvatore, op. cit. C (nota 45), 367, ipotizza che la postura anomala che qualcuno riscontra nell’autoritratto di profilo sia legata all’esigenza di dare la maggiore visibilità possibile ai volumi della biblioteca del committente il quale, a differenza del pittore, si muove nel proprio spazio.

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Baader, H., Das Selbst im Anderen. Sprachen der Freundschaft und die Kunst des Porträts 1370-1520, Paderborn 2015, 235-249. Boskovits, M. and Brown D. A, National Gallery of Art. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century (The Collections of The National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue), Washington D.C. 2003. Braccesi, A., Alexandri Braccii Carmina, A. Perosa, (ed.) Firenze 1943 (datato in copertina 1944). Brigestocke, H., Italian and Spanish paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1993. Burke, J., Changing Patrons. Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park 2004. Campbell, L., Renaissance Portraits. European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, New Haven/London 1990. Caneva, C. (ed.), La Collezione Feroni. Dalle Province Unite agli Uffizi, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Galleria degli Uffizi), Firenze 1998. Capretti, E., Forlani Tempesti, A., Padovani, S., Parenti, D. (eds), Piero di Cosimo 14621522: pittore eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, catalogo della mostra, Firenze (Galleria degli Uffizi) Firenze/Milano 2015. Casazza, O., ‘La Cappella Brancacci’, in: La Cappella Brancacci. La scienza per Masaccio, Masolino, Filippino Lippi, Milano 1992, 1-24. Castelnuovo, E., Il significato del ritratto pittorico nella società, in: Storia d’Italia, vol. 5, I documenti, tomo 2, Torino 1973, 1031-1094; ora pubblicato come: E. Castelnuovo, Ritratto e società in Italia. Dal Medioevo all’avanguardia, F. Crivello and M. Tomasi (eds.), Torino 2015. Cecchi, A., Botticelli, Milano 2005. Cecchi, A., ‘Considerazioni su una recente monografia di Filippino Lippi’, Paragone 59 (2008) 3, 80, 60-67. Cecchi, A., ‘Filippino, un pittore per tutte le stagioni’, in: A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, cat. exh. Roma (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milano 2011, 17-26. Cecchi, A. (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, catalogo della mostra, Roma (Scuderie del Quirinale) MIlano 2011. Christiansen, K. and Weppelman, S. (eds.), The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, catalogo della mostra, Berlin (Bode Museum) e New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) New Haven/London 2011. De Marchi, A., ‘“… 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: A. De Marchi (ed.), Santa Maria Novella, 2. Dalla “Trinità” di Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, Firenze 2016, 207-237.

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Eckstein, N. A., Painted Glories. The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florence, New Haven/London 2014. Foucart-Walter, E., Catalogue des peintures italiennes du musée du Louvre. Catalogue sommaire, Paris 2007 Goldner, G., ‘Filippino as a Draftsman’, in: G. Goldner and C. Bambach (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, catalogo della mostra. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997, 15-19. Goldner, G. R. and Bambach, C. C. (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, catalogo della mostra, New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997. Kent, D., review of ‘Burke, Jill, Changing Patrons Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (2007), 4, 626-627. Kent, D., Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence, Cambridge, MA/London 2009. Joannides, P., Masaccio e Masolino. A Complete Catalogue, London 1993. Manetti, A., Vite di XIV uomini singhulari in Firenze dal MCCCC innanzi, in: G. Milanesi, Operette storiche edite e inedite di Antonio Manetti, Firenze 1887. McGee, T. J., ‘Filippino Lippi and Music’, Renaissance and Reformation 30 (2006-2007), 3, 5-28. McGee, T. J., ‘Filippino Lippi’s Allegory of Sound and Silence’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 44 (2013), 3, 329-338. Melli, L., ‘I disegni a due punte metalliche di Filippino Lippi: una scelta funzionale’, in: Mitteillungen des Kunsthistorischen Instututes in Florenz, 52, 2/3, atti del convegno (Le tecniche del disegno rinascimentale: dai materiali allo stile, Firenze, 22-23 settembre 2008), Firenze 2008, 88-108. Middledorf, U., ‘Ein deutsches porträt in Florenz’, Pantheon 5 (1930), 170. Middledorf, U., ‘Un ritratto tedesco a Firenze’, in: Raccolta di Scritti: that is, Collected Writings I, 1924-1938, Firenze 1979-1980, 93-94. Nelson, J. K., review, ‘Burke, Jill, Changing Patrons. Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence’, The Burlington Magazine, 148 (2006), 39-40. Nelson, J. K., ‘L’astrologo e il suo astrolabio. L’Adorazione dei Magi di Filippino Lippi del 1496’, in: E. D. Schmidt, M. Ciatti, D. Parenti (eds.), Il cosmo magico di Leonardo. L’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata, cat. exh.. Firenze (Gallerie degli Uffizi), Firenze 2017, 74-91. O’Malley, M., Painting under Pressure: Fame, Reputation, and Demand in Renaissance Florence, New Haven/London 2013. Nova, A., ‘Vasari e il ritratto’, Horti Hesperidum, 6 (2016), I, 115-178. Parlato, E., ad vocem, ‘Lippi, Filippino’, in: Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, 65, Roma 2005, 189-198. Payot, I., ‘Frédéric Battelli (1867-1941)’, in: M. Natale (ed.), L’art d’imiter, cat. exh., Genève (Musée d’art ed d’histoire), 1997, 306-309.

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Perosa, A., ‘Un’opera sconosciuta di Filippino Lippi nella testimonianza di un poeta umanista’, Rivista d’arte, s. II, 24 (1942), 193-199. Pope-Hennessy, J., The Portrait in the Renaissance, London/New York 1966. Ritoók-Szalay, Á., ‘Andrea Mantegna e Giano Pannonio’, in: P. Farbaky e L. A. Waldman (eds.), Italy & Hungary. Humanism and art in the Early Renaissance, Milano 2011, 151-170. Salvatore, T., ‘Una nota sulla storia dell’autografo Chigiano del Boccaccio’, Studi di filologia italiana 73 (2015), 465-476. Salvatore, T., ‘Un manoscritto dantesco ‘nascosto’ in un dipinto di Filippino Lippi’, Medioevo e Rinascimento 29 (2015), 43-60. Salvatore, T., ‘Ancora su Dante, Piero del Pugliese e Filippino Lippi’, Studi danteschi 81, (2016), 357-368. Schumacher, A. (ed.), Botticelli. Likeness · Myth · Devotion, catalogo della mostra, Frank­ furt-am-Main (Städel Museum), Frankfurt-am-Main 2009. Schumacher, A. (ed)., Florence and its Painters from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, catalogo della mostra. Munich (Alte Pinakothek), Munich 2018. Sman, G.J. van der, ‘Studi di teste della Firenze del Quattrocento’, in: M.W. Kwakkelstein e L. Melli (eds.), From Pattern to Nature in Italian Renaissance Drawing: Pisanello to Leonardo, Firenze 2012, 137-151. Spike, J.T. and Cecchi, A. (eds.), Botticelli and the Search for the Divine. Florentine Painting between the Medici and the Bonfire of the Vanities, catalogo della mostra, Williamsburg (Muscarelle Museum) and Boston (Fine Arts Museum), Firenze 2017. Vasari, G., Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, testo a cura di R. Bettarini, commento secolare a cura di P. Barocchi, vol. 6, Firenze 1966-1987, ‘Vita di Filippo Lippi’, III, Testo, 1987, 558-568. Verino, U., Epigrammi, F. Bausi (ed.), Messina 1998. Waldman, L. A., ‘Commissioning Art in Florence for Matthias Corvinus: The Painter and Agent Alexander Formoser and His Sons, Jacopo and Raffaello del Tedesco’, in: P. Farbansky and L.A. Waldman (eds.), Italy & Hungary. Humanism and art in the Early Renaissance, Milano 2011. Warburg, A., Arte del ritratto e borghesia fiorentina. Domenico Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita. I ritratti di Lorenzo de’ Medici e dei suoi familiari (1902), in: G. Bing (ed.; trad. it. E. Cantimori), La rinascita del paganesimo antico. Contributi alla storia della cultura, Scandicci (Firenze) 1966, 109-146. Waterhouse, E. K., review, H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1978, Italian Studies, 35 (1980), 99-100. Zambrano, P., ‘New York. Filippino Lippi drawings’, review, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle (New York, The Metropolitan Museum), The Burlington Magazine, 140 (1998), 149-151. Zambrano, P. e Nelson, J. K., Filippino Lippi, Milano 2004.

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Zambrano, P., ‘“Gloria e fama grandissima”. Filippino Lippi al Carmine’, in: Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, A. Cecchi (ed.), cat. exh., (Roma, Scuderie del Quirinale), Milano 2011, 26-39.

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Chapter 7

From Reiteration to Dialogue: Filippino’s Responses to Netherlandish Painting Paula Nuttall

Filippino’s career, spanning the last three decades of the fifteenth century, coincides with the years when Florentine interest in Netherlandish painting was at its height. From about 1470, as is now widely recognised, Netherlandish paintings on panel and cloth were increasingly available in Florence, through the agency of merchants and collectors, including Filippino’s patrons Lorenzo de’ Medici, Filippo Strozzi and Francesco del Pugliese.1 This chapter explores Filippino’s relationship with Netherlandish painting, often noted but rarely discussed in detail, suggesting how it evolved over the course of his career, and what it reveals about his working process and his artistic intelligence. While he was still in Botticelli’s workshop and perhaps aged no more than about fifteen, Filippino faithfully reproduced elements from an image of St Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Jan van Eyck or one of his close collaborators, in the National Gallery Adoration of the Magi no. 592, a work he painted jointly with Botticelli (figs. 7.1 and 7.2).2 Significantly, it is in those parts of the work now widely acknowledged to be by Filippino that the citations from the Eyckian image occur, notably the distinctive rock formation on the right; the small stream emanating from an opening at its base; the verdant slopes and foreshore on the left; and the background details of the city, water and small boat.3 More of the Eyckian background at the top of the painting has recently been 1 On the reception of Netherlandish painting in Italy see P. Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500, New Haven/London 2004. 2 See P. Zambrano in P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 107-114 for a detailed analysis of the division of hands, and for earlier opinions. 3 First noted by G. Panhans, ‘Florentiner Maler verarbeiten ein Eyckisches Bild’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 27 (1974), 188-198, esp. 191; see also M. Rohlmann, ‘Zitate flämischer Landschaftsmotive in Florentiner Quattrocentomalerei’ in: J. Poeschke (ed.), Italienische Frührenaissance und nordeuropäisches Mittelalter, Munich 1993, 235-258; P. Nuttall, ‘Jan van Eyck’s Paintings in Italy’ in: S. Foister, S. Jones and D. Cool (eds.), Investigating Jan van Eyck, Turnhout 2000, 169-182, esp. 175-176; Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), Zambrano and Nelson: op. cit. (note 2), 115-116, cat. 3, 306-307. ← Filippino Lippi, The Strozzi Virgin, detail of fig. 7.8

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Figure 7.1 Jan van Eyck, St Francis Receiving the Stigmata, c. 1435-41, oil on panel, 29.3 × 33.4 cm. Turin, Galleria Sabauda

revealed as a result of removing frame mouldings added in the nineteenth century.4 Filippino’s referencing of the Eyckian work is one of the most precocious citations of a Netherlandish painting in Florentine art, both in terms of its date – the Adoration is generally thought to have been painted around 1470-72, when Netherlandish approaches to the depiction of landscape were just beginning to make a significant impact on Florentine painting – and also by virtue of its own early place in the artist’s career. Filippino’s precocious interest in Netherlandish painting is likely to have come from his father, himself one of the most responsive to Netherlandish painting of the previous generation, rather than from Botticelli, who was one of the least responsive of his. 4 I am very grateful to Jill Dunkerton for sharing this information. At the time of writing, the panel is still undergoing scientific examination, and no further conclusions can as yet be drawn about the extent of the Eyckian landscape citation. The results will be published in due course in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin.

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Figure 7.2 Filippino Lippi and Sandro Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1470-72, tempera on panel, 50.2 × 135.9 cm. London, National Gallery

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The Eyckian St Francis, known in two virtually identical versions now in Turin and Philadelphia, is generally identified with the two ‘little pictures’ of St Francis by Jan van Eyck mentioned in the 1470 will of Anselm Adornes, a distinguished Bruges citizen of Genoese extraction, who in that year made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, plausibly taking one of these paintings with him for devotional use.5 In February 1471 Adornes visited Florence on his homeward journey, and it is surely no coincidence that a number of citations from the St Francis appear in Florentine painting around this time.6 These citations, by Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio and others, are mostly of the right-hand rocks; Filippino is virtually unique in also reproducing the distant city vista and its reflection in the water – an ambitious passage for a teenage painter to attempt. Additionally, the head of St Francis, with its distinctive receding hairline, seems to be echoed in one of the central figures in Filippino’s retinue. These quotations indicate that he made a more extensive and detailed study of the prototype than his peers, perhaps implying that he had more access to the original, and certainly offering an insight into his fascination with Netherlandish painting in these early years. It is easy to imagine the young Filippino, confronted with the novelty and virtuosity of this small miracle of a painting, which he would have understood to be by the celebrated Giovanni da Bruggia (as Jan van Eyck was known), being prompted to copy it by sheer admiration, or by a competitive urge to flex his own artistic muscles.7 Equally, though, the St Francis provided an opportunity to study new methods for the construction of landscape backgrounds, and the rendition of atmosphere, reflection and light, representational concerns with which Florentine painters in the 1470s were increasingly engaged. Elements of the Eyckian composition resurface, although never again with such exactitude, in works from throughout Filippino’s career, in a variety of contexts, suggesting that he kept a model book in which they were recorded. The distinctive right-hand rocks of the St Francis are reflected, for instance, in the background of the London Adoration of the Magi no. 1124, of about 1475 (fig. 3.7), repurposed to provide a Thebaid-like setting for an array of hermit saints; 5 J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer et al., Jan van Eyck: Two Paintings of Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, cat. exh. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Philadelphia 1997; K. Crawford Luber, ‘Patronage and Pilgrimage: Jan van Eyck, the Adornes Family, and Two Paintings of “Saint Francis in Portraiture”’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 91 (1998), no. 386/387, 24-37; N. Geirnaert, ‘Anselm Adornes and his Daughters. Owners of Two Paintings of Saint Francis by Jan van Eyck?’ in Foister, Jones and Cool: op cit (note 3), 163-168. 6 The citations are listed in Rohlmann: op. cit (note 3), 242-3. See also Panhans: op. cit. (note 3), 194-5; Nuttall: op. cit. (note 3), 178-180. 7 On Van Eyck’s fame in Italy see for example R. Weiss, ‘Jan van Eyck and the Italians’, Italian Studies 11 (1956), 1-15 and 12 (1957), 7-21; Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), 32-34.

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Figure 7.3 Filippino Lippi, The Vision of St Bernard, c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 210 × 195 cm. Florence, Badia

the tiny saints may themselves have been suggested by the minute figures typically seen in the backgrounds of Netherlandish paintings.8 The St Francis is referenced again some twenty years later, in the Wounded Centaur (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum), most obviously in the rocky outcrop, but also in the silhouetted trees protruding from it, which echo the placement of the crucifix in the Eyckian work.9 The St Francis also forms the inspiration for the central rocks in the Vision of St Bernard (fig. 7.3) which, like those in the Eyckian 8 Nuttall: op. cit. (note 3), 178; Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), 146-147; Zambrano and Nelson: op. cit. (note 2), 169-178, esp. 178. 9 Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), 147.

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model, serve as a repoussoir for a distant landscape vista.10 Filippino’s vista is not, however, an imitation of a specific model so much as a variation of the type of Netherlandish landscape alla fiamminga that, by the mid 1480s, the likely date of the Vision of St Bernard, was infiltrating the backgrounds of almost every Florentine painting. By now, Filippino had a wider than ever repertory of Netherlandish examples to draw upon. Memling’s Pagagnotti triptych of the Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Lawrence (fig. 7.4), made for the eminent Dominican Benedetto Pagagnotti, a close associate of the Medici, probably arrived in Florence in 1480-81.11 Like the Eyckian St Francis a decade earlier, the Pagagnotti triptych prompted a flurry of citations by Florentine painters, including the young Fra Bartolomeo and Lorenzo di Credi.12 Probably the earliest, and certainly the most imaginative, of these is the citation of the watermill and city gate from the background of the Pagagnotti Virgin in Filippino’s Bernardi altarpiece of 1482-3 (figs. 4.94.12).13 In Memling’s panel these details respectively symbolize the Eucharist and the Virgin as Porta Coeli, but as Geoffrey Nuttall argues in his essay in this volume, in the Bernardi altarpiece Filippino adapts and re-contextualizes them to reflect the patrons’ interests. By now, Filippino was using Netherlandish motifs not merely to display familiarity with admired models, but to enrich the meaning of his paintings. It is worth noting that, years later, in the mid 1490s, Filippino freely reused the motif of the watermill in the Double Intercession altarpiece for the Franciscan convent of Palco, near Prato (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).14 Placed centrally between Christ and the Virgin, beneath God the Father and directly above the Crucifix that would originally have adorned the altar, it resumes its original Eucharistic significance. The Bernardi landscapes are indebted to those of Memling, with their lowlying, rolling hills; neat, plump trees, and untroubled skies – but the dramatic landscape behind the Virgin in the San Gimignano Annunciation of 1483 (fig. 5.2) is strikingly different, and unprecedented in Filippino’s work. It reflects the impact of the newly arrived Portinari triptych in May of that year, a work

10 Ibid. 11 M. Rohlmann,‘Memling’s Pagagnotti Triptych’, The Burlington Magazine 137 (1995), 438445. 12 Rohlmann: op. cit. (note 3), 244-245. 13 M. Meiss, ‘A New Monumental Painting by Filippino Lippi’, The Art Bulletin 55 (1973), 47993, esp. 481; see also the chapter by Geoffrey Nuttall in this volume. 14 On this work see most recently A. Schumacher et al., Florentiner Malerei, Alte Pinakothek: die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts, Munich 2017, 434-447.

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Figure 7.4 Hans Memling. The Virgin and Child with Angels (central panel of the Pagagnotti Triptych), c. 1479-80, oil on panel, 57 × 42 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi

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Figure 7.5 Hugo van der Goes, The Portinari Triptych, c. 1473-78, oil on panel, 253 × 304 cm (central panel), 253 × 141 cm (each wing). Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi

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that transformed Filippino’s conception of landscape (fig. 7.5).15 The Portinari wings, I would argue, took root in his artistic subconscious, underpinning the distinctive landscape style he developed in his mature works of the 1480s, with steep craggy bluffs; tall, bare trees silhouetted against dramatic, cloud-strewn skies, and small figures winding through low hills. The landscape of the Carafa Assumption (fig. 8.1), to name just one example, is unthinkable without the experience of the Portinari wings. The Portinari triptych is outstanding, among other things, for its drama, which its moody landscapes complement, and which is the keynote of the Nativity scene in its central panel. Hugo van der Goes employs an exceptional emotional range here, underscored by dynamic movement – or the lack of it – to achieve dramatic tension between the sober, contemplative mood of the sacred figures, particularly the almost melancholic Virgin, and the other protagonists. These subtly observed emotions encompass the agitation of the shepherd on the far hill, receiving the news of Christ’s birth; the eagerness, wonder and joy of the shepherds arriving at the stable; the surprise of the fluttering angels disturbed by their arrival, and the chatty exchange between the pair of midwives departing the scene. Many Florentine painters responded to formal elements of the Portinari triptych, but only Filippino seems to have plumbed the full measure of its expressive power. The impact of the Portinari triptych could explain the contrast in mood between the two panels of the San Gimignano Annunciation, commissioned in January 1483. The Angel, a relatively static figure, conceived parallel to the picture plane, seems akin to the slightly earlier Lucchese altarpieces, and may have been completed before the triptych’s arrival. The heightened emotion of the Virgin, however, is arguably the result of Filippino’s recent encounter with the Portinari triptych, as is the already-mentioned landscape behind her, with its small background figures, and the virtuosic still life. So too, I would suggest, are the Virgin’s extraordinarily voluminous draperies, dramatically angled into the picture space, and Filippino’s singular juxtaposition of brilliant apricot and vivid red, together with inky blue, colours that occur in precisely this 15

B. Hatfield Strens, ‘L’arrivo del trittico Portinari a Firenze’, Commentari 19 (1968), 315-319. The importance of the triptych for Filippino has long been acknowledged; see for example F. Knapp, ‘Hugo van der Goes’ Portinari-Altar und sein Einfluss auf Lionardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo u.a.’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 2 (1917), nos. 5/6, 194-210, esp. 207-209, and more recently Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), 243-4; M. Rohlmann, ‘Luoghi del paragone. La ricezione del Trittico Portinari nell’ arte fiorentina’ in B. W. Meijer (ed.), Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi, 1430-1530, dialoghi tra artisti: da Jan van Eyck a Ghirlandaio, da Memling a Raffaello, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti), Livorno 2008, 70-71

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combination in the wings of one of Hugo’s foreground angels, and are unlike the palette of Filippino’s own angel. These colours reappear in the group of angels in the Vision of St Bernard (fig. 7.3), in my view datable to shortly after the Annunciation.16 The remarkable expressive range of the Vision of St Bernard, also seems inspired by the Portinari Nativity: here too there is a tension between the still, solemn intensity of the two principal figures, the charming inquisitiveness and arrested movement of the angels, and the animated figures of the monks in the middle distance, reminiscent of Hugo’s gesticulating shepherds.17 In the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece of 1485 (fig. 7.6), and the probably contemporary Rucellai altarpiece (London, National Gallery), the melancholic Virgins with heavy downcast eyelids and loose hair falling in ribbon-like strands, the bony, ascetic saints, and the mood of intense concentration on the Child, again recall the Portinari triptych. Further correspondences seem to exist, in the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece, between the elongated, heavily draped pairs of saints and the monumental saints on the Portinari wings, and the liminal placement of the book in the foreground, and the still-life detail in Hugo’s Nativity. Colouristically, too, the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece reflects the Portinari triptych, in the distribution of hues across the panel, from red on the left to blue in the centre to gold on the right, and in its cool, steely tonality, the expressive effect of which Filippino recognizes and exploits.18 In both works the melancholic effect relies substantially on the dominant expanse of the Virgin’s deep blue drapery. This is, in Filippino’s altarpiece, inclined further towards the cold spectrum by the substitution of a lilac gown for the pink customarily worn by Florentine Virgins, an unusual colour choice possibly suggested by the purple gown of the Virgin in Rogier van der Weyden’s Uffizi Lamentation, discussed below. The violet of St Zenobius’ cope and the deep crimson of the Baptist’s cloak further emphasise the cool tonality. As in the Portinari altarpiece, a particularly wide range of whites, tinged with subtly varied hues – blue, grey, yellow, rose – is found in the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece. The lustrous jewels and gleaming gold of St Zenobius’ vestments and crozier are meticulously executed, emulating the virtuoso effects of Netherlandish oil painting. Few of Filippino’s panel paintings have undergone medium analysis, but on the basis of work carried out on the Corsini tondo and the Uffizi Adoration of 16 17 18

For a summary of views on the date of the St Bernard, see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson: op. cit. (note 2), cat. 32, 346-347. A further correspondence may exist, between the shadowy devils behind St Bernard and the demon in the shadows of the Portinari stable; on the latter see R. Walker, ‘The Demon of the Portinari Altarpiece’, The Art Bulletin 42 (1960), 218-219. Nuttall: op. cit. (note 1), 178.

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Figure 7.6 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius, (The Palazzo Vecchio Altarpiece), 1485, tempera and oil on panel, 355 × 255.5 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffzi

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the Magi, and on the National Gallery’s panels, as well as from empirical observation, it seems reasonably safe to say that he used a mixture of egg and oil, employing oil in greater quantities during the course of the 1480s.19 The saturation of the reds and blues in the Palazzo Vecchio altarpiece, which has not been analysed, suggests a fairly extensive use of oil. The somewhat neglected Wernher tondo (London, the Ranger’s House, Wernher Collection) of similar date, is painted in an oil-rich medium, as the thickly painted shadows of the Virgin’s blue and red drapery, visible to the naked eye, testify. The left-hand background of this work contains another possible Goesian reminiscence, in the vignette of Joseph and the donkey, perhaps inspired by the Journey to Bethlehem on the left wing of the Portinari triptych, while the wisps of straw on the right may have been suggested by the Portinari foreground.20 The Lamentation by Rogier van der Weyden (fig. 7.7), identifiable as the chapel altarpiece at the villa of Careggi in Lorenzo de Medici’s inventory of 1492, was already in Florence by the 1470s, when it was much cited by Florentine painters.21 It seems to have provided inspiration for the heads of St Jerome and St Benedict in Filippino’s two Lucchese altarpieces of the early 1480s, which recall the bald, grey-bearded Nicodemus, and the intense, interlocutor gaze of the Joseph of Arimathea in the Lamentation. Years later, Filippino reused the idea of the elderly male supporting figure directly confronting the viewer, in the small Pietà in Washington.22 Filippino would of course have seen many more Netherlandish paintings than the handful of well known, surviving examples discussed above. It is possible to trace their visual footprints in some of his works by analogy with existing Netherlandish examples, which often depend on established, widely reiterated, prototypes. Hence, for instance, a Netherlandish Annunciation may lie behind the remarkably innovative interior of the San Gimignano Annunciation. The unusual placement of the chair in the foreground might have been suggested by an image similar to Van Eyck’s Washington Annunciation, where the footstool is in an analogous position abutting the viewer’s space, in the lower right-hand corner. The niche with still life detail is an Eyckian motif found, for instance, in Van Eyck’s Lucca Virgin (Frankfurt, Städel), and in the 19

20 21 22

A. Del Serra, ‘A Conversation on Painting Techniques’, The Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), 4-16; J. Mills and R. White, ‘Organic Analysis in the Arts: Some Further Paint Medium Analysis’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 2 (1978), 71-76; J. Dunkerton and A. Roy, ‘The Materials of a Group of Late Fifteenth-century Florentine Panel Paintings’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 17 (1996), 21-31. For the Werhner tondo see Zambrano in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 2), 179-180, cat. 37. See for example Nuttall op. cit. (note 1), 113-114; Meijer, op. cit. (note 15), 98-100. Zambrano and Nelson: op. cit. (note 2), cat. 58, 601.

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Figure 7.7 Rogier van der Weyden, The Lamentation, c. 1460, oil on panel, 110 × 96 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi

Detroit St Jerome, possibly identifiable with the Van Eyck St Jerome owned by the Medici.23 Though the bedchamber setting occurs in Florentine Annunciations, notably those of Fra Filippo, the placement of the red-draped bed in the 23

For the Van Eyck St Jerome see for example Nuttall, op. cit. (note 1), 107; Meijer, op. cit. (note 15), 86-90.

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right-hand corner, and the reading desk in front of it, recalls Netherlandish examples, such as that in the Annunciation from Rogier van der Weyden’s St Columba triptych, which spawned many derivatives. The twisting pose of Rogier’s Annunciate may also have suggested a solution to the problem, in the Carafa Annunciation, of how to depict the Virgin attending simultaneously to the angelic salutation, and to St Thomas Aquinas and the Cardinal. The pair of reddish marble columns on the left of the Strozzi Virgin and Child (fig. 7.8) of c. 1484, may reflect Memling’s Portrait of a Young Man in the Lehman collection, known in Florence by the mid 1470s.24 The motifs of the foreground cushion and the vista viewed through a window may derive from the type of half-length Virgins in domestic interiors depicted by Dirk Bouts, such as that in the National Gallery, London. The strong diagonal of the figure group, the Child facing away from his mother and toying with the book, recalls the design of Rogier’s Virgin and Child in the Huntington Art Collection, San Marino; the unusual detail of the Child crumpling the pages of the book, occurs in Rogier van der Weyden’s Durán Virgin in the Prado. These resonances suggest that Filippino may have known an image related to these works. None of this is, of course, direct citation, and indeed it would be surprising if it were; after his youthful encounter with the St Francis, Filippino never again approached Netherlandish painting so literally. As he found his own artistic voice in the early 1480s, allusion, rather than reiteration, becomes the keyword for his response. Moving in the Medici ambit, he must have been familiar with current thinking on literary and artistic style, notably the importance of employing a wide variety of models in order to develop one’s own individual style, disguising and dissimulating ones sources, as advocated in the context of verbal culture by Angelo Poliziano, for example.25 The Strozzi Virgin, often noted as an example of Filippino’s response to Netherlandish painting, offers a visual equivalent to this type of literary eclecticism, whereby elements from the Netherlandish visual lexicon, in this case the Virgin and Child in a domestic interior, are translated into a Florentine idiom: the buildings seen through the window are Tuscan vernacular, the carved furniture is antique in style, the Virgin herself is consistent with Filippino’s types of the mid 80s, and the baby is robustly Florentine. Such visual intertextuality was no doubt intended to please the patron, Filippo Strozzi, himself no stranger to stylistic diversity: Strozzi had lived in Naples, where the vogue for Netherlandish painting 24 25

For Memling’s portrait in Florence see L. Campbell, ‘Memlinc and the Followers of Verrocchio, The Burlington Magazine 125 (1983), 675-6; Meijer, op. cit. (note 15), 168-9. G.W. Pigman, ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980), no. 1, 1-32; J. Dellaneva, Ciceronian Controversies, Cambridge, Mass. 2007, xiii-xx.

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Figure 7.8 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child (The Strozzi Virgin), c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 81.3 × 59.7 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Julius Bache Collection

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comingled with that for the antique, and had personally presented both Netherlandish and antique artifacts as gifts to the Neapolitan court; he himself owned Netherlandish paintings, but also commissioned portraits of himself in the up-to-date Italian forms of the marble bust and the medal, and built a ­palace in the modern Florentine style.26 Filippino had from the first shown an interest in Netherlandish painting, but his most intense engagement with it was undoubtedly in the early to mid 1480s, when its compositional, expressive and colouristic novelties fuelled his own rapidly evolving artistic interests. By the end of the decade, when he arrived in Rome, these novelties had been assimilated, and unsurprisingly, his interest in Netherlandish painting was now eclipsed by the excitement of encountering the antique. Yet he continued to employ Netherlandish motifs selectively and thoughtfully, as appropriate, in specific contexts. Hence the Portinari triptych is revisited, in the right-hand background of the San Donato Adoration of 1496, furnishing ideas for the retinue of the Magi, which echoes that of the Portinari right wing. The triptych must also have suggested itself to Filippino when designing the Nerli altarpiece, probably in the early 1490s (fig. 7.9). Confronted with the unusual – for Florence – requirement to include images of the kneeling donor and his wife presented by saints, he seems to have taken inspiration from the arrangement of the Portinari wings. Indeed it is possible that the Portinari triptych spurred a brief vogue for this type of donor imagery among the Florentine elite; it is worth recalling that Ghirlandaio had likewise alluded to its wings in his frescoed depictions of Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni Tornabuoni at prayer with their wives, flanking the altarpieces in their family chapels. Tanai de’ Nerli, a member of the same social class, would presumably have appreciated – and may even have suggested – this reference. The allusion extends beyond the configuration of donor, donatrix and saints, to elements of the design, in which the Nerli’s black draperies splay in distinctive flat, angular folds on the ground, like those of the Portinari family, and St Martin’s almost tender presentation gesture echoes that of St Thomas. It may be that elements of the Portinari triptych lodged subliminally in Filippino’s artistic consciousness. How else to explain the arresting kinship between the female saints on the right wing of the Portinari triptych, and the pair of bystanders at the right hand edge of The Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St Philip from the Strozzi Chapel (fig. 9.11): one red-robed and long-haired, with 26

J. R. Sale, Filippino Lippi’s Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, New York/London, 1979, 7-82; Nuttall op. cit. (note 1), 121-122, 258-259; K. Christiansen and S. Weppelman (eds.), The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, cat. exh., Berlin (Bode Museum)/New York (Metropolitan Museum), New Haven/London 2011, 129-32.

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Figure 7.9 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with Saints Martin of Tours and Catherine of Siena, Tanai de’ Nerli and Nanna Capponi (The Nerli Altarpiece), c. 1493, tempera and oil on panel, 170.6 × 182.5 cm. Florence, Santo Spirito

downcast eyes, turning towards his companion, clad magnificently in white and gold, his abundant draperies bunched in front of him at waist level, and his Mamluk hat reminiscent of the towering hair-do of the Portinari Magdalen? If this seems fanciful, it is worth recalling that Katharine Neilson made a similar observation regarding the head of a man with a black, turban-like hat on the extreme left of the Uffizi Adoration, which she likened to the Magdalen, expressing the view that if taken out of its context ‘such a head could scarcely be identified as the work of Filippino’.27 One final Netherlandish work that Filippino studied, towards the end of his career, is the small panel of the Sudarium borne by Angels by the Bruges Master of the St Ursula Legend, which Filippino transformed into a triptych with the 27

K. B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi. A Critical Study, Cambridge, Mass 1938, 115.

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Figure 7.10 Master of the St Ursula Legend, The Sudarium Borne by Angels, c. 1480, oil on panel, 49.5 × 31.5 cm, Filippino Lippi, Christ and the Woman of Samaria and Noli me tangere, c. 1493-1500, tempera and oil on panel, 56 × 15 cm (each wing). Venice, Seminario Patriarcale, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana

addition of wings depicting Christ and the Woman of Samaria and Noli me tangere for its owner, Francesco del Pugliese (fig. 7.10).28 The triptych is mentioned in Pugliese’s will of 1503. Given his lifelong interest in Netherlandish painting, Filippino may have relished this opportunity to compete directly with a Netherlandish work; yet apart from the landscapes and castellated buildings of northern inspiration, with perhaps an echo of the Eyckian St Francis in the rocks above Christ and the Samaritan woman, he eschews obvious references to the maniera fiamminga. Confronted with the Bruges master’s symmetrical and hieratic image, Filippino chose instead to play an elaborate visual counterpoint. The delicacy and detail, animated figures and feathery brushwork of the wings sets up a dialogue with the static simplicity and polished finish of the Netherlandish panel. Filippino’s figures are in profile, the St Ursula Master’s are 28

B. Hatfield Strens, ‘Le aggiunte di Filippino Lippi ad un “Volto di Cristo” fiammingo’, in: M. G. Ciardi Dupré dal Poggeto and P. dal Poggeto (eds.), Scritti di Storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, 2 vols, Milan 1977, I, 284-288; J. Burke, Changing Patrons. Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park 2004, 177-181; Nuttall op. cit. (note 1), 122-123, Meijer, op. cit. (note 15), 154-6.

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frontal. Filippino’s airy landscapes contrast with the absence of background in the centre panel. Pairs of grisaille putti support all’ antica tablets inscribed with gospel texts, in a witty riposte to the quintessentially Netherlandish pair of angels bearing the Sudarium. The putti occupy illusionistic niches, suggesting spatial complexities and ambiguities – between the niches, the scenes above, and the viewer’s space – in contrast to the two-dimensional image of the Sudarium. Yet Filippino’s design also complements the St Ursula Master’s, respecting its symmetry in the arcing trajectory of figures and landscape that encompasses the two veil-bearing angels, and his vibrant palette of red, steely blue, violet and apricot, takes its lead from the Bruges panel. Gifted with extraordinary versatility, and capable of working in a range of modes simultaneously, Filippino was nothing if not stylistically self-aware.29 In the Pugliese wings, rather than reiterating the maniera fiamminga, as a less inventive artist might have done, he consciously speaks his own visual language, interlaced with elements of the antique. In so doing, he creates an elegant and intelligent artistic discourse that highlights the differences between Florentine and Netherlandish style, while simultaneously displaying a profound understanding of the latter, gained during the course of a career inflected by the experience of Netherlandish painting. Bibliography van Asperen de Boer, J.R.J. et al., Jan van Eyck: Two Paintings of Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, cat. exh., Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1997. Burke, J., Changing Patrons. Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park 2004. Campbell, L., ‘Memlinc and the Followers of Verrocchio, The Burlington Magazine 125 (1983), 675-6. Christiansen, K. and Weppelman, S., (eds.), The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, cat. exh., Berlin (Bode Museum)/New York (Metropolitan Museum), New Haven/London 2011. Crawford Luber, K., ‘Patronage and Pilgrimage: Jan van Eyck, the Adornes Family, and Two Paintings of “Saint Francis in Portraiture”’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 91 (1998), no. 386/387, 24-37. Del Serra, A., ‘A Conversation on Painting Techniques’, The Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), 4-16. Dellaneva, J., Ciceronian Controversies, Cambridge (Mass.) 2007. 29

On Filippino’s stylistic range see Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 2), 406-16.

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Dunkerton, J. and Roy, A, ‘The Materials of a Group of Late Fifteenth-century Florentine Panel Paintings’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 17 (1996), 21-31. Geirnaert, N., ‘Anselm Adornes and his Daughters. Owners of Two Paintings of Saint Francis by Jan van Eyck?’ in: S. Foister, S. Jones and D. Cool (eds.), Investigating Jan van Eyck, Turnhout 2000, 163-168. Hatfield Strens, B., ‘L’arrivo del trittico Portinari a Firenze’, Commentari 19 (1968), 315-319 Hatfield Strens, B., ‘Le aggiunte di Filippino Lippi ad un “Volto di Cristo” fiammingo’ in M. G. Ciardi Dupré dal Poggeto and P. dal Poggeto (eds.), Scritti di Storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, 2 vols, Milan 1977, I, 284-288. Knapp, F., ‘Hugo van der Goes’ Portinari-Altar und sein Einfluss auf Lionardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo u.a.’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 2 (1917), nos. 5/6, 194-210. Meiss, M., ‘A New Monumental Painting by Filippino Lippi’, The Art Bulletin 55 (1973), 479-93. Mills, J. and White, R., ‘Organic Analysis in the Arts: Some Further Paint Medium Analysis’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 2 (1978), 71-76. Neilson, K. B., Filippino Lippi. A Critical Study, Cambridge, MA 1938. Nuttall P., ‘Jan van Eyck’s Paintings in Italy’, in: S. Foister, S. Jones and D. Cool (eds.), Investigating Jan van Eyck, Turnhout 2000169-182. Nuttall, P., From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500, New Haven/London 2004. Panhans, G., ‘Florentiner Maler verarbeiten ein Eyckisches Bild’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 27 (1974), 188-198. Pigman, G.W., ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980), no. 1, 1-32. Rohlmann, M., ‘Zitate flämischer Landschaftsmotive in Florentiner Quattrocento­ malerei’ in: J. Poeschke (ed.), Italienische Frührenaissance und nordeuropäisches Mittelalter, Munich 1993, 235-258. Rohlmann, M., ‘Memling’s Pagagnotti Triptych’, The Burlington Magazine 137 (1995), 438-445. Rohlmann, M., ‘Luoghi del paragone. La ricezione del Trittico Portinari nell’ arte fiorentina’, in: B. W. Meijer (ed.), Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi, 1430-1530, dialoghi tra artisti: da Jan van Eyck a Ghirlandaio, da Memling a Raffaello, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti), Livorno 2008, 70-71. Sale, J. R., Filippino Lippi’s Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, PhD thesis, New York/ London 1979 Schumacher, A., et al., Florentiner Malerei, Alte Pinakothek: die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts, Munich 2017.

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Walker, R., ‘The Demon of the Portinari Altarpiece’, The Art Bulletin 42 (1960), 218-219. Weiss R., ‘Jan van Eyck and the Italians’, Italian Studies 11 (1956), 1-15 and 12 (1957), 7-21. Zambrano, P. and Nelson, J.K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 8

Annunciation and Assumption: Notes on a Particular Constellation in the Carafa Chapel Johannes Grave



Nested Paintings

As one of the many innovative and original inventions that characterize Filippino Lippi’s frescos in the Cappella Carafa (c. 1488-1493), the composition of the south wall has always aroused the attention of art historians.1 Two prominent scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary are combined in a rather unorthodox way here: the altar is embellished by a sumptuously framed representation of the Annunciation, whereas the large remaining space of the wall is covered by a mural painting showing the Assumption of Mary (fig. 8.1). Of course, the combination of these two important moments from salvation history is not at all uncommon. Large polyptychs or fresco cycles with elaborate programmes 1 The following remarks focus on only a few aspects and problems of Filippino’s frescos. They are not meant as an all-encompassing interpretation. On Filippino’s frescos see C. Bertelli, ‘Appunti sugli affreschi nella Cappella Carafa alla Minerva’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 35 (1965), 115-130; G. L. Geiger, Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel. Renaissance Art in Rome, Kirksville, Ma., 1986; A. Chastel, ‘La chapelle Carafa à l’église de la Minerve. Réflexions sur la méthode’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 50 (1988), no. 1, 111-119; D. Norman, ‘In Imitation of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Art, Patronage and Liturgy within a Renaissance Chapel’, Renaissance Studies 7 (1993), 1-42; S. Roettgen, Wandmalerei der Frührenaissance in Italien, vol. 2: Die Blütezeit 1470-1510, Munich 1997, 202-229; P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, esp. 513-555 and 579-583; D. Ganz, ‘Bild und Buch als Pforten des Auges. Exklusive Sichtbarkeit in Filippino Lippis Cappella Carafa’, in: D. Ganz and T. Lentes (eds.), Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren. Bildtheorie und Bildgebrauch in der Vormoderne, Berlin 2004, 260290; G. Cornini, ‘Filippino Lippi, la cappella Carafa’, in: M. G. Bernardini and M. Bussagli (eds.), Il ’400 a Roma. La rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino, Milan 2008, vol. 1, 247-255; J. K. Nelson, ‘La cappella Carafa. Un nuovo linguaggio figurativo per la Roma del Rinascimento’, in: A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan, 2011, 41-49. See also R. Loos, ‘Across the Frame. The Painted Proscenium Arch in Renaissance Frescoes as a Place to Connect Fiction to Reality’, in: D. Wagner and F. Conrad (eds.), Rahmen und frames. Dispositionen des Visuellen in der Kunst der Vormoderne (Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte, 11), Berlin 2018, 61-78, which came to my attention only after this paper was written. ← Filippino Lippi, Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, detail of fig. 8.8

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Figure 8.1 Filippino Lippi, Assumption and Annunciation, 1488-1493, fresco, 711.6 × 1110 cm. Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel

often depict these scenes next to each other. Sometimes, both depictions are immediately adjacent, as in Pietro Lorenzetti’s altarpiece for Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo (fig. 8.2), where the Annunciation is crowned by a small painting representing the Virgin’s Assumption. In these cases, both scenes are part of large pictorial systems, and their relationship is clearly defined by a Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 8.2 Pietro Lorenzetti, The Virgin and Child with Saints (The Tarlati Polyptych), 1320, tempera on panel, 298 × 309 cm. Arezzo, Pieve di Santa Maria

comprehensive framing structure and by their format. In Filippino’s composition, however, both scenes are not merely juxtaposed, but nested in a particular way. Filippino’s Annunciation cuts into the space of the mural with the Assumption, which in turn covers the entire wall and is only framed by the fictive pillars and arches at the edges of the wall. As is rightly emphasised in the extensive scholarly literature on the Carafa Chapel, particularly in the works of Gail L. Geiger as well as Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan K. Nelson, there is no need to search for a complex rationale for the choice of both scenes. As the chapel was dedicated both to Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Annunciation, a prominent position within the pictorial programme had to be assigned to the Annunciation. Moreover, this iconographic Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 8.3 Anonymous artist, Assumption of the Virgin (after Perugino, altar wall, Sistine Chapel, 1481-83), metal point and ink, 27.3 × 21 cm. Vienna, Albertina Graphische Sammlung

choice might also be motivated by the consideration that, with its prominent depiction of the Annunciation, the chapel would attract more attention during the papal mass at Santa Maria sopra Minerva that was held each year on the occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March).2 The Assumption, in turn, was a particularly appropriate subject for a mural decoration that reflected the latest pictorial trends. Before Michelangelo painted his fresco of the Last Judgement, the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was decorated by Perugino’s depiction of the Assumption – a painting that included the portrait of its donor Pope Sixtus IV (fig. 8.3).3 Work on the paintings in the Sistine Chapel 2 See C. L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, Bloomington 1998, esp. 41; Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 531. 3 The reference to Perugino was suggested, among others, by A. Coliva, ‘Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Carafa. L’affermazione del nuovo spazio romano’, in: S. Rossi (ed.), Le due Rome del Quattrocento. Melozzo, Antoniazzo e la cultura artistica del’400 romano, Rome 1997, 148-153, esp. 150; Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 458, 530 and 540; as well as by Ganz, op. cit. (note 1), 266. On the particular presence of the donor in the altarpiece see also G. L. Geiger,

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had just finished when Oliviero Carafa began thinking about the enlargement and decoration of his newly acquired chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. He probably had Perugino’s large fresco in mind when he asked Filippino to design a monumental depiction of the Assumption for the altar wall of his chapel. But whereas Perugino had depicted the pope as if he were participating in the Assumption and Coronation of Mary, Filippino chose a slightly different strategy. His painting for the altar of the Carafa Chapel (fig. 8.4) can be divided into two scenes: on the right, the donor Oliviero Carafa is presented to the Virgin by Thomas Aquinas; on the left, the archangel Gabriel enters Mary’s chamber and delivers the message that she will give birth to Jesus. Although both events take place in the same room, Carafa and Thomas Aquinas do not seem to pay attention to the angel’s arrival. Strictly speaking, they do not assist the Annunciation, but address Mary as the mediatrix and ask for her intercession. The Virgin is the only link between these two scenes. Consequently, she forms the centre of the composition. Her position thus deviates from traditional representations of the Annunciation in which the Virgin is placed on the right side, directly opposite the archangel. Filippino might have arranged the figures of the painting in a way such that, from different viewpoints, the painting was recognised either as an Annunciation or an intercession in favour of the donor. If a visitor approaches the chapel from an oblique angle, the monumental marble pillars may partially cover and conceal the altar. It is therefore possible that, at least in rare cases, the archangel or Carafa and Thomas Aquinas are obscured. However, the question that I want to focus on does not concern the internal composition of the frescoed altar painting, but its relation to the surrounding mural (fig. 8.1). Just like Pinturicchio in the Bufalini Chapel (fig. 8.5) and Ghirlandaio in the Florentine Sassetti Chapel (fig. 8.6) only a few years before, Filippino conceived a mural painting that covers the entire wall and is framed by fictive, illusionistically rendered architectural elements.4 The fresco thereby gives the impression of opening the chapel’s architecture and of offering a view onto the outside. However, Filippino did not pick up Pinturicchio’s idea of abstaining from a framed altarpiece and of using the entire wall-sized fresco as its substitute. Neither did he divide the wall into several registers, as Ghirlan­ daio had done in Santa Trinita. Ghirlandaio had integrated the frame of his ‘Filippino Lippi’s Carafa “Annunciation”. Theology, Artistic Conventions, and Patronage’, Art Bulletin 63 (1981), 62-75; Geiger, op. cit. (note 1), 150, and Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 453-459. 4 See S. Sandström, Levels of Unreality. Studies in Structure and Construction in Italian Mural Painting during the Renaissance, Uppsala 1963, esp. 41-47 and 53-56.

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Figure 8.4 Filippino Lippi, Annunciation, detail of fig. 8.1

altarpiece into the fictive architectural arrangement of the frescos and had thus prevented the altarpiece from disturbingly interfering with his murals. Instead, Filippino deliberately disrupted the continuum of his monumental fresco by partially covering it with the altarpiece. The apostles do not pay Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 8.5 Bernardo Pinturicchio, Glorification of Saint Bernardino, 1482-1485, fresco, Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Bufalini Chapel

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attention to the foreign object that divides them into two groups. But since the frame of the altar partially overlaps with some of the figures and with the sarcophagus at the left, the large mural and its composition is undoubtedly affected by the presence of the altarpiece. The partial covering of some of the apostles and of the tomb suggests that there is space behind the altarpiece, and the putti that are engaged in arranging the drapery literally tie the altarpiece to the fictive architectural frame of the fresco. However, it does not make any sense to conceive the physicality of the altarpiece as an integral part of the representation of the Assumption. The ambiguous relation between fresco and altarpiece affects both the representation of the Assumption and the Annunciation. Just as the fiction of opening up the wall becomes implausible in view of the altarpiece, the spatial depth of Mary’s chamber within the altarpiece is negated by the fact that the frame partially overlaps with figures in the fresco. It is this unusual and confusing relation between both images that I will briefly discuss by proposing two rather preliminary explanations: Filippino’s decision not merely to juxtapose both paintings but to opt for an ambiguous, nested constellation of Annunciation and Assumption might be inspired by a particular theological argument that emphasizes the fundamental relation between both events in the history of salvation. At the same time, Filippino’s solution matches his more general interest in paradoxical constellations between pictures, frames, and their surroundings. Perhaps both explanations are not to be taken as mutually exclusive alternatives, but as interrelated. ‘De assumptione’ The nested character of the relation between mural and altarpiece implies that the two pictures are neither merely juxtaposed nor subordinated. Both assert their independent positions and are, at the same time, closely interrelated. This particular pictorial constellation raises the question of whether it reflects any theological insights. For several reasons, it seems very likely that such theological considerations might have been suggested by the work of Thomas Aquinas. Not only did Oliviero Carafa dedicate the chapel to Thomas, but he himself, who had served as the Cardinal protector of the Dominicans since 1478,5 strongly promoted Thomistic thoughts – especially since his mother was said to be distantly related to the Saint.6 5 See F. Petrucci, ‘Carafa, Oliviero di’, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 19 (1976), 589-596, esp. 590 and 592-593. 6 See Geiger, op. cit. (note 3), 71.

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Figure 8.6 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Resurrection of the Boy (upper register), Donors and Altarpiece, 1483-1485, fresco (upper register, and donors) and tempera and oil on panel (altarpiece, 167 × 167 cm.), Florence, Santa Trinita, Sassetti Chapel

However, at first sight, Thomas Aquinas’ extensive writings do not seem to be helpful here.7 His all-encompassing Summa theologica only refers to Mariological questions insofar as they are related to problems of Christology. In his discussion of fundamental questions of the doctrine of the Incarnation, Thomas also addresses the particular status of the Virgin. But the Summa theologica, as well as his other works, does not include a detailed and extensive discussion of the Assumption of Mary. 7 Gail L. Geiger suggested that the general structure of the Summa theologica might have been the model for the disposition of Filippino’s murals; see Geiger, op. cit. (note 1), esp. 50-51. This assumption has been criticised by a number of scholars; see, e.g., D. Norman, ‘Case Studies in Interpretation. A Dominican Chapel and a Franciscan Church’, Art History 10 (1987), 532-541, esp. 536; Chastel, op. cit. (note 1), 114; Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 547 and 576, note 170.

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However, Thomas Aquinas parenthetically refers to a short, but important text on the mystery of the Assumption that, in his time, was attributed to Saint Augustine: the treatise, letter, or sermon ‘De assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’. Thomas writes: ‘But as Augustine, in his tractate on the Assumption of the Virgin, argues with reason, since her body was assumed into heaven, and yet Scripture does not relate this; so it may be reasonably argued that she was sanctified in the womb.’8 By quoting Pseudo-Augustine, Thomas indicates that he believes in the Assumption of Mary, and also points out a particularly interesting text to his readers. Thomas Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio), a close collaborator of Oliviero Carafa, picked this reference up in his celebrated and highly influential commentary on the Summa theologica.9 Hence there can be no doubt that, in the Renaissance, erudite theologians were still familiar with the short text De assumptione, which might have been written as early as the ninth century.10 Indeed, the treatise is handed down to us through a large number of manuscripts, and its relevance in the fifteenth century is proven by the fact that it was a part of the early editions of Augustine’s Opuscula, printed in Venice in 1483 and 1484.11 As Thomas Aquinas highlighted in his short reference, the author of De assumptione tries to argue for the mystery of the Assumption of Mary without being able to rely on biblical sources alone. He explicitly refers to rational arguments in order to respond to a question that is not answered in Holy Scripture. For this reason, Pseudo-Augustine is forced to consider the specific status of Mary and the nature of her body in order to explain why he believes in her Assumption. Since God preserved Mary’s virginity, it seems only reasonable to 8

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The Summa theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Part III (Q. XXVII-LIX), transl. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd, rev. ed., London 1926, 3. See Sancti Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M., vol. 11: Tertia pars Summae theologiae […] cum commentariis Thomae de Vio Caietani, Rome 1903, 289: ‘Sed sicut Augustinus, de Assumptione ipsius virginis, rationabiliter argumentatur quod cum corpore sit assumpta in caelum, quod tamen Scriptura non tradit; ita etiam rationabiliter argumentari possumus quod fuerit sanctificata in utero.’ Cajetan’s commentary is included in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia […], vol. 11, op. cit. (note 8), 289: ‘Quoad primum, via sciendi non est ex sacrae Scripturae auctoritate in specie: sed ex rationabilibus sacrae Scripturae consonis; ut Augustinus de Assumptione arguit.’ See Giuseppe Quadrio, Il trattato ‘De assumptione B. Mariae Virginis’ dello pseudo-Agostino e il suo influsso nella teologia assunzionistica latina, Rome 1951, 45; M.-H. Jullien and F. Perelman (eds.), Clavis des auteurs latins du moyen âge. Territoire français. 735-987, vol. II: Alcuin, Turnhout 1999, 492-493. See [Pseudo-]Augustine, ‘De assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’, in: Augustine, Opuscula, Venice: Octavianus Scotus, 1483 [first printed edition, unpaginated]; see also Quadrio, op. cit. (note 10), 19.

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the author that Mary’s flesh was also saved from rotting and from being eaten by worms. Just as Christ reversed the nature of Adam, Mary changed the fate of Eve by escaping sexual desire and giving birth to a child without suffering pain.12 It would therefore be implausible to assume that her body was left to the fate of decaying into soil and dust. The crucial argument of this brief treatise is directly linked to God’s incarnation: it is Mary’s flesh that was adopted by God in the course of the incarnation and the birth of Jesus. In the course of the resurrection of Christ and his bodily ascension, Mary’s flesh had already entered Heaven. Since Christ and Mary are tied to each other by a ‘corporeal and substantial unity’ (‘unita[s] corporalis naturae et substantiae’),13 the Virgin must also have been elevated into Heaven. The shared nature of Mary’s and Christ’s flesh is probably the main reason that is put forward by Pseudo-Augustine in favour of the Assumption of the Virgin. It is this argument that establishes a particularly close relationship between God’s incarnation and Mary’s assumption. Due to the lack of testimonies in the canonical writings of Holy Scripture, belief in the Assumption relies on the understanding of the Incarnation and its implications. From a theological point of view, it therefore makes perfect sense to combine a fresco of the Assumption with a representation of the Annunciation. Oliviero Carafa and Filippino Lippi might have been guided by such considerations when they decided on an innovative and extraordinary constellation of the two pictures that decorate the altar wall of the Carafa Chapel.14 As both paintings are not simply juxtaposed or subordinated, their relationship is not reduced to a mere coexistence or chronological succession, as is the case in many mural cycles that depict Mary’s life. On the contrary, Filippino arranged both images in such a way that one of them cannot be perceived without paying attention to the other. Filippino obviously wanted the two pictures to be taken as more than just two episodes in the history of salvation. Their complex relationship calls for a deeper understanding of the interrelation of Annunciation, Incarnation, and Assumption. It is significant that the altarpiece overlaps the open tomb of Mary at the point where the archangel Gabriel enters Mary’s 12 13 14

See anonymous writer (Pseudo-Augustine), ‘De assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’, in: Jacques Paul Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 40, Paris 1887, 1141-1148, esp. 1144-1145 (chapter III-IV). Anonymous writer (Pseudo-Augustine), op. cit. (note 12), 1145. Claudia La Malfa suggested that the combination of both scenes was not part of the original design and is due to a change during Filippino’s stay in Rome; C. La Malfa, ‘A New Sketch by Filippino Lippi for the “Assumption of the Virgin” in the Carafa Chapel’, Master drawings 43 (2005), no. 2, 144-159. For a critical view on this assumption see Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 583, cat.-no. 39.d.12; and Nelson 2011, op. cit. (note 1), 49, note 19.

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chamber. Thus, the Virgin’s pregnancy and her corporeal ascension into Heaven are closely connected.

The Paradoxical Nature of Images

The altar wall is not the only place in the Carafa Chapel where Filippino Lippi created confusing, nested, and sometimes even contradictory relations between different images, their frames, and their respective surroundings. Filippino paid special attention to the fictitious pillars, entablatures, capitals, and friezes that define the architectonic structure of the chapel (fig. 8.7).15 When seen from an appropriate viewpoint, these painted framing and decorating devices appear as if they were real, solid architectural elements that support large openings towards the outside of the building.16 Again, the viewer is astonished by the number of easily avoidable and therefore deliberately created contradictions within the chapel’s decoration. For instance, the fictitious, coffered arch above the western wall (fig. 8.8) takes the spectator’s view from below into account. Consequently, the top edge of the entablature is not visible from this position. Instead, the perspective of the upper fresco completely ignores the bottom view and shows the tiled floor of the building, in which the Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix takes place.17 If the viewers adhere to the illusion of the fictitious architecture of the chapel, they cannot help but notice that the representation of the miracle is clearly characterized as an image that follows different spatial rules. The contradiction is all the more remarkable given the contrast between this clear-cut separation and the merging of depicted space and real space that 15

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See Geiger, op. cit. (note 1), 161-182. On the real architecture of the chapel, the fictitious architectural elements and the decoration system see E. Parlato, ‘La decorazione della cappella Carafa. Allegoria ed emblematica negli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, in: S. Danesi Squarzina (ed.), Roma, centro ideale della cultura dell’antico nei secoli XV e XVI. Da Martino V al Sacco di Roma 1417-1527, Milan 1989, 169-184; M. Vitiello, Le architetture dipinte di Filippino Lippi. La Cappella Carafa a S. Maria sopra Minerva in Roma, Rome 2003; S. Catitti, ‘L’architettura della Cappella Carafa in Santa Maria sopra Minerva a Roma’, Annali di architettura 16 (2005), 25-43. On the decoration see also P. Halm, ‘Das unvoll­ endete Fresko des Filippino Lippi in Poggio a Caiano’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 3 (1931), H. 7, 393-427, esp. 408-410. See Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 513-518. Jonathan K. Nelson and Richard J. Zeckhauer noticed that this fresco is best viewed when seen from the high altar of the church; see J. K. Nelson and R. J. Zeckhauer, ‘Analytic Framework: Benefits, Costs, and Constraints’, in: id. (eds.): The Patron’s Payoff. Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art, Princeton 2008, 37-66, esp. 42.

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Figure 8.7 Exterior view of the Carafa Chapel, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

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Figure 8.8 Filippino Lippi, Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Miracle of the Cross, 1488-1493, fresco, 555 × 447 cm. (Triumph of Saint Thomas), Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel

is suggested by the lower fresco of the western wall.18 At the right side of this mural, two Dominican friars are among the witnesses of the intellectual ‘tri18

In the fresco depicting the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the relation between fictitious space and real space seems to be even more complicated, since the urban setting in the background probably is meant to open a view on well-known Roman places; see

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umph’ of Thomas Aquinas. One of them, who has been identified as Gioacchino Torriani,19 the Master General of the Order of Saint Dominic from 1487 to 1500, seems actively to join the discussion and attracts the attention of some bystanders. It is this friar who transgresses the borders of the mural. He partially overlaps the fictive right pillar and thus blurs the distinction between the depiction and its frame. The viewer only realises this anomaly at a later stage of his or her contemplation of the chapel and its decoration. Seen from outside of the chapel, the visitor cannot perceive this significant detail, because the real pillar at the entrance obstructs the view onto the relevant part of the mural.20 The ambiguously positioned friar and the pillar on the right only become visible from a very oblique viewing position or from a standpoint within the chapel. The viewer is thus forced to question the distinction between the real chapel, the fictitious architectural elements at the corners, and the depicted buildings within the murals. Whereas the upper part of the fresco clearly distinguishes between the depicted scene within the lunette and its surrounding architectural frame by implying two completely different viewpoints, the lower part seems to merge the pictorial representation with its border. Filippino’s decoration of the Carafa Chapel offers even more examples of such confusing relations between images, frames, and their surroundings. In the altarpiece (fig. 8.4), for instance, the cord that gathers the red curtain at the right side seems to be attached to the frame of the picture. It suggests that the curtain and its rail are situated right at the front of the depicted space. However, a look at the lower parts of the picture clearly shows that the curtain rail is installed more towards the back, at the threshold to the rear part of the chamber. By experimenting with such paradoxical or contradictory effects, Filippino tests pictorial strategies that will later be fully developed in the Stroz­ zi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella. In a paper on this Florentine project, I proposed that Filippino did not have the intention to strengthen the illusion of the scene or to create an ‘effet de réel’. Instead, he engaged in a ‘parergonal’ aesthetics that causes ambiguity and reveals the subversive potential of perspective.21

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R. Papa, ‘La città dipinta. La decorazione di Filippino Lippi nella cappella Carafa a Roma’, Art e dossier 20 (2005), no. 207, 34-40, esp. p. 39; and Cornini, op. cit. (note 1), 251. See Bertelli, op. cit. (note 1), 122; Geiger, op. cit. (note 1), 100; Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 544; and L. Mainini, ‘Eresia e cultura umanistica. Idee per una rilettura degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, Storia dell’arte 131 (2012), 9-26, 16. See also Nelson 2011, op. cit. (note 1), p. 46. See J. Grave, ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur. Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in: A. Beyer, M. Burioni and J. Grave (eds.), Das Auge der Architektur. Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, Munich 2011, 221-249; and J. Grave, Architekturen

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Indeed, the incoherencies and inconsistencies that Filippino already employs in the Carafa Chapel undercut the illusion that is created by his fictitious architecture and the diligent application of perspective. Since the spatial paradoxes that are caused by ambiguous relationships between images and frames cannot be observed in real life, they emphasize the artificiality of the paintings. However, it would be wrong to deduce that Filippino thereby merely weakened the ‘power’ of his images. Instead, he empowers his paintings as images. He consciously directs the viewer’s attention to the fact that they perceive pictorial representations and not reality itself. At the same time, these images exert a powerful effect and confront the viewer with paradoxes that cannot be fully controlled and understood by them. It is therefore no coincidence that Filippino’s frescos illustrate such a ‘power’ of images as images by representing the Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix witnessed by Thomas Aquinas in Naples in 1273 (fig. 8.8).22 According to the biography written by William de Tocco, Thomas dedicated his work, particularly the third part of his Summa theologica, to Jesus Christ. Christ articulates his gratitude towards Thomas through a crucifix, an artificial, but speaking sculpture (‘de imagine Crucifixi’): ‘Thoma, bene scripsisti de me.’23 The miracle is performed by an animation or vivification of the mute cross, not by a visionary apparition. It is therefore imperative to be aware of the artificiality of the image in order to grasp its miraculous transformation. Against this background, it is particularly revealing how Filippino stresses the pictorial nature of his altarpiece (fig. 8.1). Although his painting of the Annunciation is also executed as a fresco, he presents it like a panel painting. Viewers will only realize that the painting is done in a fresco technique when they approach the altar and come closer to the picture’s surface. Regardless of the fact that the altarpiece was actually painted as a mural, Filippino avoids its integration into the surrounding fresco and stresses its status as a picture. He

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des Sehens. Bauten in Bildern des Quattrocento, Munich 2015, 233-251 (with further references). On this fresco see Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 542-543. Geiger proposed that Filippino referred to another moment of the life of Thomas Aquinas, the so-called miracle of chastity; see G. L. Geiger, ‘Filippino Lippis “Wunder des heiligen Thomas von Aquin” im Rom des späten Quattrocento’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47 (1984), 247-260; Geiger, op. cit. (note 1), 73-88. Diana Norman argued for an interpretation that takes the fresco for a representation of both miracles; Norman, op. cit. (note 1). On this question see also Ganz, op. cit. (note 1), 277-281; Cornini, op. cit. (note 1), 250; Nelson 2011, op. cit. (note 1), 46. For a critical response to Geiger’s assumption see Chastel, op. cit. (note 1), 115; and Roettgen, op. cit. (note 1), 209. Guillelmus de Tocco, Vita Sancti Thomae Aquinatis (Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis: notis historicis et criticis illustrati, 2), D. M. Prümmer (ed.), Toulouse 1913, 108 (cap. 34).

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thereby prevents visitors from merely marvelling at the illusion of his decoration and, more importantly, prompts them to reflect on the complex relation between Annunciation and Assumption. Both moments in the history of salvation are in themselves characterized by a fundamental paradox, as they transcend the boundaries between Heaven and Earth. Filippino’s efforts to design murals that constantly evoke ambiguities and paradoxes can perhaps be understood as an attempt at creating a pictorial analogy to these mysteries. His murals do not simply overcome the distinctions between images, frames, and surroundings, but incessantly play with them. They display transgressions that are not controllable by means of human reasoning. Bibliography Bertelli, C., ‘Appunti sugli affreschi nella Cappella Carafa alla Minerva’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 35 (1965), 115-130. Catitti, S., ‘L’architettura della Cappella Carafa in Santa Maria sopra Minerva a Roma’, Annali di architettura 16 (2005), 25-43. Chastel, A., ‘La chapelle Carafa à l’église de la Minerve. Réflexions sur la méthode’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 50 (1988), 111-119. Coliva, A., ‘Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Carafa. L’affermazione del nuovo spazio romano’, in: S. Rossi (ed.), Le due Rome del Quattrocento. Melozzo, Antoniazzo e la cultura artistica del’400 romano, Rome 1997, 148-153. Cornini, G., ‘Filippino Lippi, la cappella Carafa’, in: M. G. Bernardini and M. Bussagli (eds.), Il ’400 a Roma. La rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino, vol. 1, Milan 2008, 247-255. Ganz, D., ‘Bild und Buch als Pforten des Auges. Exklusive Sichtbarkeit in Filippino Lippis Cappella Carafa’, in: D. Ganz and T. Lentes (eds.), Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren. Bildtheorie und Bildgebrauch in der Vormoderne, Berlin 2004, 260-290. Geiger, G. L., ‘Filippino Lippi’s Carafa “Annunciation”. Theology, Artistic Conventions, and Patronage’, Art Bulletin 63 (1981), 62-75. Geiger, G. L, ‘Filippino Lippis “Wunder des heiligen Thomas von Aquin” im Rom des späten Quattrocento’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47 (1984), 247-260. Geiger, G. L., Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel. Renaissance Art in Rome, Kirksville, Ma., 1986. Grave, J., ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur. Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in: A. Beyer, M. Burioni and J. Grave (eds.), Das Auge der Architektur. Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, Munich 2011, 221-249. Grave, J., Architekturen des Sehens. Bauten in Bildern des Quattrocento, Munich 2015.

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Halm, P., ‘Das unvollendete Fresko des Filippino Lippi in Poggio a Caiano’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 3 (1931), H. 7, 393-427. Jullien, M-H., and Perelman, F., (eds.), Clavis des auteurs latins du moyen âge. Territoire français. 735-987, vol. II: Alcuin, Turnhout 1999. La Malfa, C., ‘A New Sketch by Filippino Lippi for the “Assumption of the Virgin” in the Carafa Chapel’, Master drawings 43 (2005), 144-159. Loos, R., ‘Across the Frame. The Painted Proscenium Arch in Renaissance Frescoes as a Place to Connect Fiction to Reality’, in: D. Wagner and F. Conrad (eds.), Rahmen und frames. Dispositionen des Visuellen in der Kunst der Vormoderne (Hamburger For­ schungen zur Kunstgeschichte, 11), Berlin/Boston 2018, 61-78. Mainini, L., ‘Eresia e cultura umanistica. Idee per una rilettura degli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, Storia dell’arte 131 (2012), 9-26. Nelson, J. K., and Zeckhauer, R. J., ‘Analytic Framework: Benefits, Costs, and Constraints’, in: J. K. Nelson and R. J. Zeckhauer (eds.), The Patron’s Payoff. Conspicuous Com­ missions in Italian Renaissance Art, Princeton 2008, 37-66. Nelson, J. K., ‘La cappella Carafa. Un nuovo linguaggio figurativo per la Roma del Rinascimento’, in: Alessandro Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan, 2011, 41-49. Norman, D., ‘Case Studies in Interpretation. A Dominican Chapel and a Franciscan Church’, Art History 10 (1987), 532-541. Norman, D., ‘In Imitation of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Art, Patronage and Liturgy within a Renaissance Chapel’, Renaissance Studies 7 (1993), 1-42. Papa, R., ‘La città dipinta. La decorazione di Filippino Lippi nella cappella Carafa a Roma’, Art e dossier 20 (2005), 34-40. Parlato, E., ‘La decorazione della cappella Carafa. Allegoria ed emblematica negli affreschi di Filippino Lippi alla Minerva’, in: S. Danesi Squarzina (ed.), Roma, centro ideale della cultura dell’antico nei secoli XV e XVI. Da Martino V al Sacco di Roma 14171527, Milan 1989, 169-184. Petrucci, F., ‘Carafa, Oliviero di’, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 19 (1976), 589596. (Pseudo-Augustine), ‘De assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’, in: Augustine, Opuscula, Venice: Octavianus Scotus, 1483. (Pseudo-Augustine), ‘De assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’, in: J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 40, Paris 1887, 1141-1148. Quadrio, G., Il trattato ‘De assumptione B. Mariae Virginis’ dello pseudo-Agostino e il suo influsso nella teologia assunzionistica latina, Rome 1951. Roettgen, S., Wandmalerei der Frührenaissance in Italien, vol. 2: Die Blütezeit 1470-1510, Munich 1997. Sandström, S., Levels of Unreality. Studies in Structure and Construction in Italian Mural Painting during the Renaissance, Uppsala 1963.

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Stinger, C. L., The Renaissance in Rome, Bloomington 1998. Sancti Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M., vol. 11: Tertia pars Summae theologiae […] cum commentariis Thomae de Vio Caietani, Rome 1903. The Summa theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Part III (Q. XXVII-LIX), trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd, rev. ed., London 1926. de Tocco, G., Vita Sancti Thomae Aquinatis (Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis: notis historicis et criticis illustrati, 2), D. M. Prümmer (ed.), Toulouse 1913. Vitiello, M., Le architetture dipinte di Filippino Lippi. La Cappella Carafa a S. Maria sopra Minerva in Roma, Rome 2003. Zambrano, P. and Nelson, J. K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 9

The Temporary and the Temporal: Suspense in the Strozzi Chapel Alison Wright

All funerary chapels operate in a peculiar space-time. They receive the dead in order to safeguard, commemorate and benefit them, but they are also underpinned by expectation. They are waiting rooms to another place that anyone not immediately damned may hope to attain in an indefinite end time.1 Not all intra-mural burial sites deal with the provisionality of this situation in such a peculiar way as the chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella, Florence (painted 1487 and 1493-1502). Extending the potential inherent in the Sistine Chapel frescos of the early 1480s with their triumphal arches bearing gilded inscriptions, the representation of the ancient past is merged with present messages. But rather than the one being nested within the other, they sit together on the surface, with the pendant inscriptions in fictive marble being temporally, as well as literally, suspended. Figures from pagan antiquity are presented life-size and as though still in residence, occasionally overlapping or exceeding their frames, while the attempts of Sts. John and Philip to exorcise the old deities are shown on the side walls where priests and votaries of their cults flee towards the entrance (fig. 9.1). Looking ahead (fig. 9.2), the tall stained glass window is presided over by the device of a lamb resting, from which depends a hanging tablet with the message MITIS ESTO – ‘be meek/gentle’ – a somewhat improbable motto for the increasingly conspicuous Strozzi of Florence.2 The text speaks to the present beholder but evokes the worship of the sacrificial Lamb at the end of time in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is no placid ‘chapel of rest’; not only is its richness of invention and sheer expense the antithesis of meek, the overriding mood is one of agitation.3 Even the lamb looks 1 For burial chapels in the economy of Christian salvation see H. Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life, New Haven/London 1991, 123-128 and Chapter 10. 2 The device with this motto appears, for example, on the frontispiece of Filippo Strozzi’s own copy of Cristoforo Landino’s Italian translation of Pliny’s Natural History, dating to 1476 (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Arch. G b.6, f.5r). 3 For the chapel as Filippo Strozzi’s carefully planned for and magnificent memorial see E. Borsook, ‘Documents for Filippo Strozzi’s Chapel in Santa Maria Novella and Other Related ← Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion of St Philip, detail of fig. 9.12 Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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under threat from another Strozzi family emblem, the falcon shedding feathers, which hovers in relief above the window embrasure with the fluttering motto EXPECTO (I look for/await). The contention of this paper is that this state of suspension, which invites alert and extended looking without offering satisfactory resolution, is thematised in the decorative scheme, both intentionally and incidentally. The analysis of the relationship between the pictorial and the temporal draws attention to the Strozzi Chapel’s challenge to the security of Christian messages, as well as to the decorum of the funerary chapel. In spite of the confident pomp of the triumphal arch that extends above Filippo Strozzi’s tomb, or even the abundant narrative wit and visual pleasures of the frescos, a sense of the unsettled or even the doubtful has been voiced in various terms by writers on the frescos. Focussing on the chapel’s painted architectural frames, Johannes Grave, for instance, articulates how this supposed guarantor of differentiation and stability is, in Filippino’s hands, an agent of uncertainty.4 Slipping at different places and moments from structural support to stage prop, from framework in the present of the chapel to embedded frieze in the fiction of the historical scene, it deliberately sets in question the limits of the pictorial image and its relation to the real. Andrea De Marchi has convincingly reasserted the audacity, to the point of effrontery, of some of the scheme’s inventions in a sacred context.5 It is well known that the powerful Observant Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola, objected to the great artifice of painted figures that in holy places drew the eyes of devotees to curiosity and diverted them from the ‘true’ contemplation.6 While the frescos would have been incomplete at Savonarola’s burning in 1498, the tomb was already installed by 1495 and the Prior of San Marco almost certainly had Strozzi’s funerary chapel in his sights when he railed against those super-rich ‘gran maestri’ of this world who usurped the prerogative of saints by having themselves buried beneath the site of the Mass.7 For this reforming scourge there was something

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Papers’, Burlington Magazine, 112 (1970), 737-745 and 800-804; P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 532-540. J. Grave, ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur. Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in: A. Beyer, M. Burioni and J. Grave (eds.), Das Auge der Architektur. Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, Munich 2011, 221-249, esp. 235-9 for the unstable frame. A. 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: A. De Marchi (ed.) Santa Maria Novella, la Basilica e il Convento. II. dalla Trinità del Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, Florence 2016, 207-238, esp. 207 and 209. G. Savonarola, Prediche sopra li Salmi, Venice 1543, 75 b, Sermon 12; see D. Friedman, ‘The Burial Chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in Florence’, L’Arte, 9 (1970), note 44, 131. G. Savonarola, Prediche italiane ai fiorentini, F. Cognasso (ed.), Perugia and Venice 1930, I, 32 as first noted and cited by Friedman, op. cit. (note 6) 122-123 and note 34, 130.

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Figure 9.1 Filippino Lippi, View of the north wall with St. John raising Drusiana, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

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Figure 9.2 Filippino Lippi, Detail of the window wall, after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

definitively out of place in this funerary presumption and it would bring eternal perdition. Whereas for Savonarola ornaments that excited curiosity and delight were deadly distractions, Vasari praised the chapel’s abundance of ornaments in terms that have led others to see it as before its time, anticipating later sixteenth-century painting: ‘[He] was the first to show the moderns the new method of giving variety to clothing, and embellished and adorned his figures with the girt-up garments of antiquity’.8 But whether out of place or before its time, it is surprising that the passage of nearly five hundred years fails to reconcile the twenty-first century viewer to its audacity simply by placing the chapel under the Vasarian sign of ‘art’. Santa Maria Novella presents itself now as an art museum but, if anything, the cleaned frescos only intensify the challenge to the visitor in their superabundant vivacity of surface. Take, for example, the distribution of a very particular tone of celestial blue that threads 8 G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, G. Milanesi (ed.), 9 vols, Florence 1878, 3, 461 ‘[…]che fu il primo, il quale ai moderni mostrasse il nuovo modo di variare gli abiti, e che abellisse ornatamente con veste antiche succinte le sue figure’.

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across the whole pictorial field and lifts or animates whatever it defines. On one wall it distinguishes a cloak, on another it highlights a gilded pedestal, dangerously suggesting the sacrality of the idol Mars, while in the same scene it associates the sash of the stricken boy with the commanding arm of St. Philip who saves him (fig. 9.11).9 The altar wall, as the highly charged site of Filippo Strozzi’s tomb, is where the challenge starts and it is here that the interplay of the supposedly fixed or monumental with the momentary and the temporary is staged in quite unprecedented fashion (fig. 9.3). The antique triumphal scenography, which both acknowledges and imposes upon an extant gothic structure, may relate to Filippino Lippi’s proposed design for the façade of Florence cathedral, a project strongly backed and influenced by Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1490.10 As an extension of the sepulchre, it channels the extravagantly monumental height and expanse of the carved royal wall tombs of Naples, the city in which Filippo Strozzi thrived while in exile.11 But none of this explains or makes it less disconcerting as a chapel mural. Like a temporary frontage, the extent of its illusory depth is hard to grasp, and its upper ornaments are only superficially attached. Hanging tablets with large but abbreviated inscriptions fall free of the wall and are held up with some dynamic effort by pairs of angels (fig. 9.4). Beholders would have been accustomed to the convention of angelic go-betweens shouldering garlands or supporting coats of arms on tombs. But here the simultaneous action of holding up shields and pulling down on sashes, as though operating some celestial pulley system, brings to mind instead the strenuous operations of a staged performance. Everywhere drapery and sashes are in billowing movement. Winternitz and others have emphasised the interplay of the Strozzi altar ‘façade’ with the temporary character of an apparato – especially the occasional architecture of festivals and entries that Filippino witnessed in Rome and participated in in Florence.12 Such temporary edifizi, like the so-called 9 10 11

12

The main damage to the blues has occurred where they were applied a secco, principally in the vault, though the elements described may also have lost some of their earlier nuance. Those who submitted designs are recorded in a document of 5 January 1491 published by Milanesi (Vasari, op. cit. (note 8), 4, 304-9, at 306). See for example that of King Ladislao and his sister Queen Joanna II in S. Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, c. 1414-1428. Friedman, op. cit. (note 6) 112, refers rather to the triumphal-arched wall tombs like that of Niccolò Marcello, which Filippino could conceivably have seen in Venice. E. Winternitz, ‘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, 11 (1963-5), 263-286 at 264; Nelson in Nelson and Zambrano, op. cit. (note 3)

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Figure 9.3 View towards the altar wall, fresco after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

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Figure 9.4 Filippino Lippi, Detail of angels on the altar wall, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

‘Triumph of Peace’ constructed to pacify Charles VIII of France on his entry into the city in 1494, were frequently inhabited by human figures who were less dramatis personae than animated ornaments. The trionfo that Filippino Lippi had designed for this unsought royal entry included boys dressed as golddraped nymphs, as well as musicians and singers arrayed around gilt and silver emblems.13 In the chapel painting, a significant distinction emerges between the angels in the upper reaches, who are fully alive, and the disconcerting

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524-526; For St. Philip’s exorcism seen in these terms see P. Helas, Lebende Bilder in der italienischen Festkultur des 15. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1999, esp. 188-189; P. Helas and G. Wolf, ‘The Shadow of the Wolf’, in M.W. Cole and R. Zorach (eds.), The Idol on the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, Farnham/Burlington VT 2009, 146-150. As first established by Eve Borsook, (E. Borsook, ‘Décor in Florence for the Entry of Charles VIII of France’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 10 (1961), 106-122, esp. 111-114).

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Figure 9.5 Filippino Lippi, Detail of hanging tablet on the altar wall, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

allegories below that appear as though in high relief, teetering between sculpted ornaments and moving bodies performing a musical accompaniment. They belong to the order of antiquity and to artifice, but they also morph into sentient collaborators in the scheme who are intriguingly – even insufficiently – dead. Implied mobility of a different kind is also given to the stupendous, shadow-casting, ansate tablets (fig. 9.5) with their broad and complex ‘marble’ frames, somewhere between Judeo-Christian Tablets of the Law and all’antica plaques. Their multiple pendant attachments are devised in the manner of the ancient grotesques which Filippino had recently seen at their source in the Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Domus Aurea in Rome. Unlike the daintily suspended conceits of the ‘grottoes’ however, these tablets do not hang lightly. Their massive fictional heft and excess of ornament seems to weigh against the possibility of their holding fast. Everywhere on this wall, fictions of permanence in the form of stone relief and gilded bronze are harnessed rather literally to motifs of mobility and change, whether in the form of winged beings brandishing straps, quasi relief figures that sit proud of the wall or flying bands of ornament. The ‘carved’ spandrel figures around the tomb, though in earthy grisaille, seem no less touched by Filippino’s promethean spark than the frame-defying angels of the upper field (fig. 9.7). An instructive comparison, in the commemorative context of the altar wall, lies in the Trinity fresco with its associated altar in the nave of the same church, painted by Masaccio (fig. 9.6). This offers a significant precedent both for sepulchral architecture rendered entirely in fresco and for Filippino’s, similarly skeletal, memento mori imagery painted as trompe l’oeil around the tomb/altar.14 Yet the effect in the Strozzi Chapel is entirely different: hyper-active, demonstrative genies hold up and point out skulls for contemplation, while trampling other bones under foot. Whereas in the nave fresco the inscribed address to the viewer is readily accessible in Italian verse: IO FU’ GIA QUEL CHE VOI SETE E QUEL CH’I’ SON VOI ANCO SARETE (‘As you are, so was I. As I am so shall you be too’), the Strozzi inscription is in Latin and reads cryptically NI HANC DESPEXERIS VIVES ‘If you shall not have despised this, you will live’.15 What is the not-to-be-despised ‘this’? Winternitz and others make a strong case for ‘this’ as the gift of eternal life referred to, equally cryptically, in the inscription across the two roundels high up near the top of the wall ‘SI SCIRES’ ‘DONUM DEI’ (‘if you knew’ ‘the gift of God’). 16 These words are excerpted from Christ’s address to the Samaritan woman at the well who had offered him water. But being completely de-contextualised here, viewers must work to recognise this unrepresented ‘gift’: all they are shown around the inscription on the tomb is death’s heads lined up in a charnel house (fig. 9.7). In a climate of Savonarolan fear about the unknowable imminence of damnation, might it be the certainty of death – like that signalled by 14 15 16

For this altar / tomb relation see also J.R. Sale, The Strozzi Chapel by Filippino Lippi in Santa Maria Novella, PhD thesis, New York/London 1979, 307. Winternitz, op. cit. (note 12), 269; Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 3) 551. Winternitz, op. cit. (note 12), 266; Friedman, op. cit. (note 6), 112; Nelson, in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 3) 551. My special thanks to Caroline Elam for disputing the sense of this text with me. Elam (personal communication and ‘Art and Cultural Identity in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence’, in: F. Ames-Lewis (ed.), Florence, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance series, Cambridge 2011, 226, notes 111 and 112) accords with Winternitz and Nelson (‘hanc aquam’) but also hypothesises that ‘hanc’ could refer to proper burial as essential to the hope of salvation, a theme addressed in a coeval book of sermons.

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Figure 9.6 Masaccio, Trinity, c. 1427, 667 × 317 cm. fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella

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Figure 9.7 Filippino Lippi, Detail above marble tomb of Filippo Strozzi, after 1493, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

Masaccio’s skeleton – that we should not despise since to do so leads to perdition? 17 The beholder-reader is directly addressed by the inscription but without resolution, suspended between apparently opposing meanings. Whatever this inexplicit referent signals, as a crowning message above the tomb arch, flanked by personifications of Charity and Faith, it seems a less than obvious – or adequate – substitute for Hope. The visual dynamic of the earlier Trinity fresco is one into an architectural depth that reveals and stages the source of salvation. The altar wall of the Strozzi Chapel presents instead an obsessively layered and projecting surface that, despite the lofty window, defies any attempt to ‘see through’ it metaphorically. In order for the perspective of the thrusting columns flanking the aperture to fall in with a visitor’s optical experience, the beholder has to be standing well inside the chapel, directly in front of the altar. But what is encountered from this vantage point, far from producing revelation rather pushes it away, deferring understanding. The inscriptions themselves have an absent subject that veils their meaning to all but ‘initiates’ of the kind referred to in the hanging 17

As proposed by Sale, op. cit. (note 14) 318, relating this to a longer memento mori tradition on tombs (319-329).

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tablet to the left: SACRIS SUPERIS INITIATI CANUNT (‘the initiates sing/make music to the sacred [beings] above’).18 The inscriptions speak to those who are trained either to complete their half statements uttered from a remote historical moment, or to tune in to the silent music being played to the ‘sacris superis’. As Grave puts it, beholders are caught in the net of possible meanings and must ask themselves ‘whether they count among the initiates or not’.19 Unlike the demonstrative Virgin Mary of Masaccio’s Trinity, who gestures towards Christ crucified as the source of salvation (fig. 9.6), the Virgin and Child and titular saints that Lippi designed for the Strozzi window pay no attention as intercessors. Philip and John are too busy with the prophecies of their books to return the gaze of the beholder and the scripture that Philip opens towards devotees, while citing the biblical gifts of God to the favoured leaders of Israel, refers not to those old testament figures but to an ambiguous ‘him’. For example, ‘He tied around him the girdle of glory’ would have been legible to the officiating priest before the altar as a passage from Ecclesiasticus referring to the rich priestly garments bestowed on Aaron by God. But in its setting here one is led to ask whether the indirect object refers instead prophetically to Christ? to St. Philip himself? proleptically to his protégée, Filippo Strozzi, buried below? or potentially to all three.20 In the chapel frescos, St. John wears a bright blue girdle while the gorgeously-dressed ‘ancient’ priest issuing from the side wall (fig. 9.1, far left) is a deeply ambivalent figure. Either Jewish or pagan, he is apparently put to flight by John’s miraculous raising of Drusiana. What temporal tensions or indeed what contradictions are these inscriptions trying to hold in place? Answering this requires looking closer at nonverbal cues. Though they form a completely different order of sign, a similar question can be asked of the abundant and varied ornaments of the chapel. How do the many girdles, straps, hanging ribbons and winged figures operate in relation to the beholder and what tensions do they materialise or seek to bind together? It helps to start with the contradictions. One of the most apparent for a funerary chapel would inevitably be that between Christian and pagan ‘triumph’. In earlier iconography, Christian victory would presuppose 18 19

Adapted from Elam’s translation, op. cit. (note 16) 226. Grave, ‘Grenzerkundungen’ op. cit. (note 4), p. 241. Patricia Rubin also sees the text as a disruptive technique but relates this veiling to the challenge of a higher inner vision that alone can offer insight into ‘truth’ (‘Filippino Lippi, “pittore di vaghissima invenzione”: Christian poetry and the significance of style in late fifteenth-century altarpiece design,’ in M. Hochmann, J. Kliemann, J. Koering, and P. Morel (eds.), Programme et invention dans l’art de la Renaissance, Rome and Paris 2008, 227-46, esp. 231). 20 Friedman, op cit. (note 6), 115, plumps emphatically for the ‘him’ as Filippo Strozzi.

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the demise of ancient rites, yet here they are both quite strenuously in play. At the time the chapel was decorated, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence’s de facto ruler, was dead and his family in exile, but Lorenzo had set the agenda in Florence with his audacious spectacle of the pagan Triumph of the Roman consul Aemilius Paullus, a magnificent procession of fifteen floats showing the spoils of conquest, that he sponsored for the civic – and sacred – Feast of the St John the Baptist in 1491.21 The new triumph, ‘cho moltissimi ornamenti’, was partially sanctioned by the Feast’s old ‘trionfi’, or mobile tableau, while offering an image of victory and endless material riches that temporarily transformed the city into ancient Rome. That the consul was intended to reference Lorenzo himself was hard for Florentines to miss, and the still fresh memory of this event would have helped to politicise the aesthetic of the Strozzi chapel for contemporaries. A wider contemporary fascination with the ornaments of Roman triumph is witnessed in the late-fifteenth century engraving representing a more pastoral Triumph of Aemilius Paullus (fig. 9.8) with its dynamic of ornamental staffs, trophies and wings in movement.22 The repertoire of improvised hangings, pendant tablets and casually strewn piles of armour, as well as the ephemeral architecture that characterise the print, all find a place in the Strozzi funerary chapel with its copious material riches in movement and its orchestrated crowds of peoples encompassed under the Roman empire. It is not too fanciful to see in Filippino’s fabulously-clothed figures the impact on his more substantial invention of the kinds of fancy figures – nymphs, soldiers, warrior heroines, complete with suspended or supported shields – that had long been popularised in the ornament of Florentine everyday objects, some of which revivified ancient rites in a festive present.23 The side walls at S. Maria Novella are copiously filled by peoples and races of the ancient worlds – Romans, Scythians, Phrygians, Ephesians or Asians (figs. 9.10 and 9.11). All are elaborately wrapped and knotted with contrasting layers of clothing, feathers, leather and metal. While occasionally the dress 21 22

23

Helas, op. cit. (note 12), p. 36 and p. 200 for the 1491 Triumph with fifteen carts staged by the Compagnia della Stella, as recorded by Tribaldo de’ Rossi (ed. 1787, 270-271). A.M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving. A Critical Catalogue, 7 vols, London 1938-48, 1, 144-5, B.III.17.1 https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_ details.aspx?objectId=761496&partId=1&searchText=aemilius&from=ad&fromDate=140 0&to=ad&toDate=1500&page=1. The relationship to the Strozzi Chapel frescos is unclear, but the presiding emblematic bird (a phoenix in the print) and circular inscription tablet are specific to both. See also P. Barocchi ed, Il giardino di San Marco. Maestri e compagni del giovane Michelangelo, Milan 1992, 28 and note 92. Hind, ibid. I, 85-96, esp. A.IV.5 at 89. See also https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=757012&partId=1&searchText =baccio+baldini+otto&page=1

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Figure 9.8 Florentine, Triumph of Aemilius Paullus, c. 1490-1500, engraving, 23.8 × 31.9 cm, inv. no. 1845,0825.263, London, British Museum

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Figure 9.9 Attributed to Baccio Baldini, Hellespontine Sybil, c. 1470-1480, engraving, 17.3 × 10.5 cm, inv. no. 1895, 0915.60, London, British Museum

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derives from antique reliefs, the cosmopolitan combinations of turbaned, swathed and layered ‘character’-figures and imaginatively-conceived ornament also tie Filippino’s devout pagans to an earlier Florentine print ‘source’, namely the Sibyls and Prophets engravings of which the elaborate ornamental invention has often been attributed to Baccio Baldini (c. 1470-1480, fig. 9.9).24 But in the chapel the tension is of another kind. Whereas the inscriptions of the ‘Baldini’ Sibyls speak directly of the incarnation through the Virgin Mary and the redemption to come, in the Strozzi Chapel, the tablet inscriptions seem to place ancient deities and the Christian God on a par and, at best, in a place and time when Christian victory looks far from assured. The first disciples seem fully embedded in the ancient world of idolatry, magic and ritual mysteries. In visual terms, they struggle to combat the manifest and lingering power of the pagan gods and their votaries. This, we should remember, stands in starkest possible contrast to the depiction of the Apostles’ power over death in the directly equivalent east end chapel of the basilica of S. Croce in Florence, which was likewise dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. Whereas in the solemn and unambiguous economy of Giotto’s cycle for the Peruzzi Chapel, the saint is adored by the widows of Ephesus, Filippino enacts a curious reversal of the expected decorum. John’s gesture of command is diminished by the visual noise of everything that surrounds it (fig. 9.10). Indeed we understand the significance of the raising of Drusiana far better from its effects than we do from the action of the saint. A palpable visual excitement shudders through the groups that witness the resurrection, and, as in Donatello’s early stucco roundel of the same scene at San Lorenzo, the bearers abandon the bier in shock. The sacerdotal party is so driven by the miracle that they flee out of the visual frame, temporarily drawing the viewer along with them. Meanwhile, among the throng of John’s followers, a little child is far more exercised by the puppy pulling at his girdle than by the miracle and, in his fearful distraction, pulls our attention in the other direction.25 Perhaps for reasons of decorum, the beautiful Drusiana on the bier is shown as chastely covered in flowing garments and not ‘unbound’ at St. John’s order, as the Golden Legend’s version of the apocryphal episode recounts. In the staging of exorcism on the opposite wall, St. Philip’s figure is given greater prominence than John’s (fig. 9.11). But, unusually for the spiritual 24 25

Hind, ibid. C.II. 1-12, 163-168 for the Sibyls; J.A. Levenson in J.A Levenson, K. Oberhuber and J.L. Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, cat. exh., Washington (National Gallery of Art), Washington DC 1973, 22-38. Vasari, op. cit. (note 8), 3, 477 was similarly diverted by this group, and claimed, rather rhetorically than accurately, that the child’s fear of the dog seems to mirror that of its mother at the Raising.

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Figure 9.10 Filippino Lippi, Raising of Drusiana by St John the Evangelist, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, north wall

protagonist, his face is partially concealed as he commands the monster from under the statue of Mars. The High Priest, the expiring son and his marvellously dressed companions are, by contrast, fully on display. Most tellingly, however, the still living figure of Mars continues to hold the centre of the composition, secure on his pedestal, and shows no sign of succumbing to the command. Mars’ lance may be broken, but the cult site remains impressively intact. On its magnificent storeys the full panoply of military trophies, tributes and Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 9.11 Filippino Lippi, Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St Philip, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, south wall

treasure continue to do honour to the god, and ornament the chapel. The exalted, semi-clad female victories on the entablature carry on exercising their summary punishment and, most disturbingly of all, the votive lamps which, on close inspection are evidently hanging from the frieze, look as though they are lit both within the chapel and before the pagan shrine.26 In relation to this visually commanding scene, the mysteries of the imprinted Holy Face of Christ (Veronica) and the liturgical instruments of Christian sacrament in the monochrome frieze directly above appear fictive and distant. 27 The sanctuary lamps 26 27

See also for this illusionistic ambiguity Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 3) 524. For the vera icon here as commenting on the nature of depiction, Helas and Wolf, op. cit. (note 12) 155. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 9.12 Filippino Lippi, Crucifixion of St Philip, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, south wall lunette

are doing a disturbing double service as they hold together, but in tension, uneven and contradictory claims to truth as well as orders of image. Similarly, the elegant niche of the Virgin sub gratia in the stained glass window, while it echoes the shrine of Mars, hardly offers it any serious competition. It is only at the later moment of the saint’s martyrdom shown in the lunette above, that the pagan order seems to be lapsing into entropy among the marble ruins (fig. 9.12). Even here though, the now aged saint has yet to triumph. Instead, bound to the cross, Philip is permanently pitching forward towards the transept in a moment of tense irresolution. This sense of the ‘not yet’ is one of a number of troubling deferrals that I take as key to the visual and thematic claims of the chapel. Vasari offered a lengthy and insightful ekphrasis of the scene of Philip’s martyrdom as a narrative invenzione of the highest order and, as the saint teeters on the brink of his death, the contemporary viewer’s attention is still now absorbed by what amounts to an extended investigation of the process of Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Crucifixion, its physical labour and mechanics.28 The instructions might read something like: first take a pick and dig a hole, then bind the victim to your crudely hewn cross (for economy you can use the same straps that hold the cross bar in place), now pull from one direction with ropes, push from another with ladders and lever the stake into the hole using whatever comes to hand as a fulcrum. Michael Cole has illuminated this human machinery and the play of its forces in art as characteristic of the later fifteenth-century Florentine avantgarde that encompassed both Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Leonardo da Vinci.29 My concern here is with the kind of psychological tension and attention that these mechanics excite and the effect of this on the decorum of the religious image. So visually fascinating is this process and so unresolved and suspended is the moment depicted, that far from looking beyond to Philip’s heavenly reward, the spectator at best anticipates the jarring thud, at worst finds themselves willing the cross to go into the hole.30 At one level Filippino seems to be drawing here, as elsewhere in the chapel, on the inspiration of earlier fresco cycles in the Dominican church and convent. The pictorial drama of pulling at hawsers seems to hark back to the actions of the disciples holding hard the sail of the Navicella against the storm on the sea of Galilee, as it was depicted by Andrea di Bonaiuto in the conventual Chapter House of the 1360s. But the meaning attaching to the gesture has been turned on its head; the protagonists are now crude and faithless mechanicals doing the bidding of a cruel regime whose banner is flying against the sky. A similar pictorial delight in the laborious and the provisional is apparent on the opposite lunette too, though the setting is more cultivated – a courtyard presided over by the emperor Domitian, and the artificers’ idol, Mercury (fig. 9.13). Here the instruments turned against St. John are wrought in the refined metal of an age of bronze and steel, but the semi-clad torturers likewise go on doing their effortful work, stoking the fire and shielding themselves from the intense heat as if they were merely assisting in an armourer’s forge. Far, then, from opening the upper reaches of the chapel to transcendence, the lunette frescos present only further variations of material display and spectatorship and add to this mix the intensified labour of the servile and unredeemed. That such an emphasis on labour stands for more than just a dynamic visual effect is made clear by the prominence given to the post-lapsarian figure of Adam 28 29 30

Vasari, op. cit. (note 8) 3, 473. M.W. Cole, Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Art of the Figure, New Haven/London 2015, 88-133. Friedman, op. cit. (note 6), 124 stresses rather the viewer’s anticipated recognition of the saint’s suffering through this prior moment.

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Figure 9.13 Filippino Lippi, Failed Martyrdom of St John, after 1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, north wall lunette

clutching his adze, and his son Cain, above the lunettes in the adjacent vault (fig. 9.14). Friedman’s alignment of the choice of Adam and Jacob as Patriarchs in the vault with Filippo Strozzi’s own identification with their labours in exile is persuasive.31 But to try to make sense of its broader implications we need to look beyond the patron, and even the internal logic of representation, to the spatial and temporal relations in which the chapel as a funerary site is inserted. Ito Takuma has pointed out that Filippo Strozzi’s niche tomb, which is unusually sited ‘humbly’ at floor level, echoes that of the Trecento prior Alessio Strozzi in relation to the great north transept chapel of Strozzi’s ancestors at S. Maria Novella.32 In this relation, the unusual importance of the forefather Adam in 31 32

Friedman, Ibid. 116. I. 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, 7 (2011), 215-242 esp. 229-234. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 9.14 Filippino Lippi, Adam, c. 1487, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, vault

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the later vault resonates with the salvational scheme of the earlier site, since Adam’s burial place was thought to be beneath the cross. Yet just as significant is the way that, far from emphasising the vision of last things as John the Evangelist ‘revealed’ them or as is represented by Nardo di Cione, the new chapel programme actually reverses that schema. The Christ child, appearing in the intimate Marian roundel, is brought down to rest above Filippo Strozzi in his up-market catacomb, while the fallen Adam is elevated. Of course, the salvific Crucifix would have been present as a liturgical object on the altar but in the cycle it is marginalised within the frieze. Filippino himself seems, indeed, to have recognised a potential problem in this respect when he adjusted the gilded sign of the cross upwards. This gives it greater prominence directly above the cosmic disturbance in the clouds of the Raising of Drusiana, which looks forward to the Emperor Constantine’s vision in the sky of the Cross preceding his defeat of Maxentius (fig. 9.10).33 Nonetheless Christ’s revelation from behind the clouds in the Exorcism is reduced to a tiny and distant place far above the action (fig. 9.11). Salvation then, but certainly ‘not yet’. We are familiar with the kind of complex temporal imbrications that characterised the immediate precedents for funerary chapel programmes in Florence. The adjacent Tornabuoni High Altar and the chapel of Francesco Sassetti at S. Trinita, both frescoed by Domenico Ghirlandaio, have long been seen as offering parallels for the Strozzi Chapel’s audacious all’ antica conception and their pliancy to the needs of a paterfamilias who was eager to display his wealth and humanist credentials. At S. Maria Novella, and still more explicitly under the Sibyls of the Sassetti Chapel, the spirit of prophecy and fulfilment are leitmotivs closely tied to the dynastic interests of Florentine elites. Filippo Strozzi would have seen how inscription, ancient prophecy and the riches of the Augustan Golden Age are harnessed to Christ’s Nativity in the Sassetti altar wall and thence brought purposefully to bear on the late fifteenthcentury present via the inaugural date of the chapel (Christmas 1485, prominently inscribed, for the Sassetti, Christmas 1490 for the Tornabuoni). This collapsing of time via the liturgy allows fathers, sons and daughters directly to witness or partake in scenes of rebirth and renewal. The mise-en-scène and prophetic framework of the Tornabuoni Chapel leave no room for doubt over the claim that Florence has become God’s chosen city, blessed with prosperity and peace.34 In Filippo Strozzi’s Chapel the temporality of the decora33 34

The connection is drawn by the inscription on the book below the cross: IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. P.L. Rubin, ‘Domenico Ghirlandaio and the Meaning of History in Fifteenth Century Florence’, in W. Prinz and M. Seidel (eds.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Firenze, 16-18 ottobre 1994, Florence 1996, 97-108.

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tive scheme is completely different. As Friedman has argued, the peregrinations and reversals of fortune that exiled and then elevated Filippo Strozzi are not visible but are indirectly mythologised in the life of St. John.35 One could add that it is this pagan, conflicted and far from peaceful world that pushes itself on our attention. Jacob, seated on clouds, presides above the entrance where he declares that ‘this is the house of God and this is the gate of heaven’ (Genesis 28 verse 17, referring to his dream of the Ladder) but, looking around the vault, the message is hardly borne out. We find ourselves not in the realm of the heavenly nor even of Christianised prophecy but under the far more occult or exclusive signs of the crescent moons of the Strozzi and the repeated motif of the ancient mask.36 Whereas Filippino’s sibyls of the Carafa Chapel catch the gaze of the viewer directly and signal skyward, Abraham gestures towards his sacrificial altar and wields the instrument with which he would have killed his son. Adam, the only figure who turns heavenward, casts his troubled gaze – as of a Pothos or a Laocöon – straight into the eyes of the female serpent from whom he tries to shelter his terrified, and later murderous, child (fig. 9.14). We can see the rays of grace, but rather than pointing forward to the era sub gratia, these patriarchs seem temporally suspended, trapped in stories of betrayal or reversal that play out into subsequent generations. Thus Noah, though he has gained dry land, is semi-clad, quite possibly half drunk and forced to read ahead for a hope deferred. Compare this, for a moment, to the threshold messages of the mortuary chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal at San Miniato al Monte decorated in the 1460s and early 70s. Here the altarpiece shows the way with its fictions of revelation, window-like prospect and its inscription from St. Mark’s gospel, ‘To you is given to know the Kingdom of Heaven’.37 The saints acknowledge the presence of the visitor, the deceased receives a beatific vision and the tiled vault, brilliantly coloured and radiant with Holy Spirit, fulfils the promise. The Cardinal of Portugal’s Chapel, which was indulgenced and served the cult of two locally venerated saints, also encodes its messages with prophetic figures and quasi-mystic marbles. This too was a space of privileged access, but it was one that allowed the pilgrim to be pulled up in the Cardinal’s train. In the 35 36

37

Friedman, op. cit. (note 6), 115-116. See Marco Parenti’s letter to Filippo Strozzi of 1451 interpreting the crescent moon in terms of the continual planetary movement of the heavens that dictates time and influences human action (translated in C. E. Gilbert, Italian Art 1400-1500. Sources and Documents, 1980, Evanston (Illinois), 113-114). VOBIS DATUM EST NOSCERE MYSTERIUM REGNI DEI. See A. Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome, New Haven/London 2005, p. 196 and 192-200 for the altarpiece within the chapel and church.

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Golden Legend, St John the Evangelist is declared to be gifted with the revelation of profound secrets ‘such as the divinity of the Word and the end of the world’, but where is the offer of revelation in the Strozzi Chapel or the hope of joining the elect? The theme of initiation is bookish and obscure. No more exquisite revelations through the wall here, but meaning that is masked and inscriptions that make no sense at first reading: GLOVIS (‘si volge’ in reverse) inscribed to the left of the window is a message of turning or return that is itself turned around and only reveals itself to those equipped to recognise and enjoy that reversal, most of all perhaps the returned Strozzi.38 The way to the divine is apparently littered with images that are also obstacles, with idols that fascinate and betray into idolatry again. Reminiscent of the way that elsewhere, Filippino Lippi figures the Golden Calf as an active Egyptian deity, Apis, so here the statue of Mars is clearly animate and, what is more, potent.39 The god of war does not seem to be upon the point of submission, nor the whole edifice about to crumble.40 At one level this begs to be seen as an insufficiently apologetic celebration of what Filippino and the Florentine elite saw in antiquity – a manifestation of a constantly productive historical and visual imaginary that served present needs. One of the painter’s ‘invenzioni peregrine’ at its most assertive, the temple of Mars (fig. 9.11) is imagined as a structure worthy to grace the piazza in Florence, but even in a city which venerated the Roman ‘temple of Mars’ as its Baptistery, its monumentality is questionable in a chapel setting, since it offers an alternative centre to the altar wall and one that is far more visible from the crossing than the real altar.41 At another level, I discern a more programmatic engagement with ambiguity, ambivalence and a temporality of deferral and suspense. Might this be accounted for within the larger logic of the chapel’s placement? Did the chapel intentionally defer to the positive message of the high altar space? This seems most unlikely given its relationship of competition with, even upstaging of, the mural scheme commissioned by the Tornabuoni 38 39

40 41

For later Medici use of the riddling ‘GLOVIS’ see J. Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos. Princeton 1984, 29 and note 55. Helas and Wolf, op. cit. (note 12), 145-146. Helas, op. cit. (note 12), 188-189 asks whether the idol, with the exorcism of the demon, has turned into a man or whether the living god requires no demon to be animate. See also G. Wolf, ‘“Toccar con gli occhi”: Zu Kon­stella­ tionen und Konzeptionen von Bild und Wirklichkeit im Späten Quattrocento’, in T.W. Gaehtgens (ed.), Künst­lerischer Austausch: Artistic Exchange, Berlin 1993, II, 437-452, esp. 440-444 for the Strozzi Chapel, the Mars statue and the vera icon. Grave, ‘Grenzerkundungen’, op. cit. (note 4), 242-3 also emphasises that there is no hint at all of the shrine’s demise. Alexander Nagel (‘Image Magic’, Cabinet, 26, Summer 2007) argues nonetheless that, as a painting, the image is able to avoid reproducing the idolatry pictured in it.

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family. More obviously, it does defer to the old Strozzi Chapel where, in the mid Trecento, the general Resurrection at the end of time had been depicted. The inscription above the window in Filippo’s chapel, as Friedman noted, refers to the familiar passage from the Nicene Creed: ‘Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum’ (‘and I look for the Resurrection of the dead’).42 So far so uncontroversial. But as Sale and others point out, Expecto appears here too as Filippo Strozzi’s motto.43 It implies waiting in hope (historically, for Strozzi, for his return from exile) but also the need to ‘look ahead for’. In the old transept chapel there is revelation, and advance warning for viewers. In the late-fifteenth-century schema there is only a search for meaning in signs. The written ones are abbreviated and, as indicated, deliberately ambiguous: is ‘hanc’ above the tomb the water of life, or death? In the tablet inscription D[IIS] M[ANIBUS] / QUONDAM NUNC/ D[EO] O[TMO] M[AXIMO] CANIMUS (‘once to the gods of the Manes now to the great God we make music’) is the positioning of ‘quondam nunc’ on the same line to be read as a radical opposition, or as aligning Christian rites with the religion of the pagan world? Most striking are the completely contrasting readings that have been hazarded of the abbreviated inscriptions on the temple of Mars (fig. 9.12): ‘EX H TRI’ and ‘D M VICT’. For Sale and others these expand to EX H[OC] TRI[UMPHO] D[EO] M[AXIM]O VIC[TORIA] while Müller Profumo proposed EX[EMPLU] H[ERMETI] TRI[SMEGISTI]; D[IVO] M[ARTI] VICT[ORI].44 The second reading is eccentric, but the triumph of the god Mars is undoubtedly implied by the inscriptions’ placement on his shrine and beneath pagan statues of victory; that of the Christian God is, instead, brought to the scene by viewers who witness the miracle. The inscription and the image together therefore permit of both readings. This is clearly not a visual advocacy of image magic since the risk that statues animated by heavenly powers could attract demons is, after all, revealed by the exorcism. But Filippino’s art stages ambiguity in a way that leaves the reader-viewer hanging, or seeing double.45 42 43 44 45

Friedman, op. cit. (note 6), 112. Sale, op. cit. (note 14), 83-99 for Strozzi imprese. Ibid., 236. L. Müller Profumo, ‘Per la fortuna di Ermete Trismegisto nel Rinascimento. Filippino Lippi e la Cappella Strozzi’, Athenaeum, 58 (1980), 429-453. Müller Profumo, ibid. argues that the painting opposes Ficino’s views on image magic, whereas Nelson in Nelson and Zambrano op. cit. (note 3), 548 takes the view that the painting ‘is framed in line with Ficino’s theories’. Alexander Nagel op. cit. (note 41) emphasises that these very theories were unstable, noting the ‘acute ambivalence of Ficino’s thinking on the question’. For the tensions in Ficino’s writing on the sources of occult power in earthly forms (and especially for his heavy reliance on Thomas Aquinas) see Brian Copenhaver, ‘Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the “De Vita” of Marsilio Ficino’, Renaissance Quarterly, 37 (1984), 523-554, esp. 545-6 and 549-554.

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De Marchi has argued that, despite the avowed rhetoric of the exorcism of evil power in the programme of the chapel, the dominant key of the frescos is something more slippery, namely that of eternal metamorphosis. Certainly, if the Medici family’s device of the ring with the motto SEMPER (‘always’), offered a message of universality and endurance that sought to hold on to the cosmic centre, the Strozzi family image of the crescent moon, which appears repeatedly in the chapel, is literally open-ended and associated with continuous planetary change and influence. But there is, I would argue, an overt invitation in the frescos to read against the grain of Christian last things in a slightly different way. The Strozzi Chapel imagery continues to place a chapel visitor in a state of suspense not just between different eras, the once and the now, antiquity and Strozzi family history, but, as suggested above, between different and unresolved possibilities for interpretation and even different systems of belief. The chain of signifiers opened up by the interplay of texts and images, and their presentation to the viewer leads to a ‘transcendental signified’, that is remarkably elusive. There is no way to see salvation or to be sure of triumph over death standing before the bones of the founder Filippo Strozzi, as he lies in his perpetual waiting room. I would like to suggest, albeit speculatively and in conclusion, that one insistent ornamental motif of the chapel, the girdle, ribbon or strap, which is a favourite device of the mature Filippino Lippi, is used to sustain his figures and keep his viewers in a kind of fascinated suspense. It catches and holds the gaze with a pleasing, wind-blown, flourish (a rhetorical floscula), weaving through and holding together relief ornaments or tying together the disparate and pendant elements of a candelabrum or tablet. The sash also contributes to the adornment and articulation of the body, and, as Vasari noted, it binds the ‘garments of antiquity’.46 Finally, Filippino uses the bond as a sign of oppressive power – of the Romans over the early Christians, and of the power of pagan cult to bind and poison. His linking and fluttering bands are at one moment beguiling and free ornaments, at another the bonds of the earthly and supernatural powers. Wherever we look we find them holding up, hanging down or binding together. These strains and movements exist in the marginal ornament as strongly as they do in the narrative and, as such, they provide a kind of commentary on what is shown, as well as suggesting its quality as ‘staged’. They contribute, too, to a pervasive sense of precariousness that is only reinforced by the way that some of the more vulnerable figures clasp, cling, or drop down 46 Vasari, op.cit. (note 8). For Lippi’s use of ornament as equivalent to the ornate style in Ciceronian Latin with its love of lexical richness, rarity and original combinations see Nelson and Zambrano, op. cit. (note 3). 399; Rubin, op. cit. (note 19).

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– like the dead weight of the high priest’s son (fig. 9.11) or the frightened offspring of Adam. Just why this should be the case is far from easy to answer. The binding and linking functions performed by grotesque pendant inventions and friezes evidently fascinated the painter, whose pen drawings after antique ornament show his facility of hand with their curling contours and scrolling forms. The flourish of bands and ribbons, or the visual intrigue of knotting, is a signature feature of several other late works by Filippino, including the allegorical panel of the muse Erato where active ties divert and bind the gaze of the viewer.47 Equally, as has often been remarked, an increasing premium was attached to invention and ornateness by many later fifteenth-century patrons as much as by the painters and sculptors they employed. But that the chapel’s strains and occlusions may be in some sense symptomatic of larger social, religious and political conflicts of the 1490s, and even of the dangers inherent in humanist enquiry into the ancient origins of religion, must be recognised too. These frescos engage a desire, and assume a willingness, on the part of the viewer to be actively involved in the production of meaning. In the process, they intimate that human history and divine will is not fully accessible. In comparison with the adjacent saintly narratives in the Tornabuoni Chapel, with their crowds of contemporary witnesses to sacred history, the Strozzi Chapel murals could have left Quattrocento viewers with less ground for confidence in either present good or future prosperity. The airy vapours that seem to stir in the chapel frescos carry the whiff of death as much as the odour of sanctity. It is true that the Strozzi family probably saw themselves as privileged guardians of a more obscure wisdom and, even in a Dominican setting, were ready to defy the dire predictions coming from Savonarolan Observance against the wealthy elite who flaunted their entitlement to sacred space. But the paintings were produced in the course of a decade of enormous political upheaval characterised by conflicting claims as to the civic and spiritual destiny of Florence, a ‘late’ republic that was internally riven and externally threatened. Long before the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII and the subsequent ousting of the Medici in 1494, work on the chapel had had to be suspended so that Filippino could be bound in the service of a Roman cardinal by Lorenzo de’ Medici, who by then saw his family’s political future attached to the papacy.48 Filippo Strozzi had to wait – meekly or not – many years for this extraordinary work to be restarted 47 48

For the Erato, Nelson in Nelson and Zambrano, op. cit. (note 3) 439-440 and 602, cat. no. 60. Filippino was ‘sent’ by Lorenzo to paint the chapel of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa in Rome, in all likelihood to ensure the latter’s support for his own son’s premature raising to the cardinalate. See C. Elam, ‘Art and Diplomacy in Renaissance Florence’, Journal of the Royal

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and, in the event, he was buried long before its conclusion. What such a scheme surely intimated is that outcomes in this world, as in the next, are far from secure. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Savonarola, G., Le prediche sopra li salmi, Venice 1543. Savonarola, G., Prediche italiane ai fiorentini, F. Cognasso (ed.), Perugia and Venice 1930. Vasari, G., Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, G. Milanesi (ed.), 9 vols. Florence 1878-1885.

Barocchi, P. (ed.), Il giardino di San Marco.Maestri e compagni del giovane Michelangelo, Milan 1992. Borsook, E., ‘Décor in Florence for the Entry of Charles VIII of France’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 10 (1961), 106-122. Borsook, E., ‘Documents for Filippo Strozzi’s Chapel in Santa Maria Novella and Other Related Papers’, Burlington Magazine, 112 (1970), 737-745 and 800-804. Cole, M.W., Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Art of the Figure, New Haven/London 2015. Colvin, H., Architecture and the After-Life, New Haven/ London 1991. Copenhaver, D., ‘Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De Vita of Marsilio Ficino’, Renaissance Quarterly, 37 (1984), 523-554 Cox-Rearick, J., Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos. Princeton 1984. De Marchi, A., ‘“...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: Andrea De Marchi (ed.), Santa Maria Novella, la Basilica e il Convento. II. dalla Trinità del Masaccio alla metà del Cinquecento, Florence 2016, 207-238. Elam, C., ‘Art and Cultural Identity in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence’, in: F. Ames-Lewis (ed.), Florence, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance series, Cambridge 2011, 157-180. Friedman, D., ‘The Burial Chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in Florence’, L’Arte, 9 (1970), 109-131. Gilbert, C., Italian Art 1400-1500. Sources and Documents, Evanston (Illinois) 1980. Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, 136 (1988), 813-826 at 819-820; Nelson in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 3) 532-2 and 534.

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Grave, J., ‘Grenzerkundungen zwischen Bild und Architektur. Filippino Lippis parergonale Ästhetik’, in: A. Beyer, M. Burioni and J. Grave (eds.), Das Auge der Architektur. Zur Frage der Bildlichkeit in der Baukunst, Munich 2011, 221-249. Helas, P., Lebende Bilder in der italienischen Festkultur des 15. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1999. Helas, P. and Wolf, G., ‘The Shadow of the Wolf’, in Cole M.W. and Zorach, R. (eds.), The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, Farnham and Burlington VT 2009, 133-157. Hind, A. M., Early Italian Engraving. A Critical Catalogue, 7 vols., London 1938-1948. Levenson, J. A., Oberhuber, K., and Sheehan J. L., Early Italian Engravings from the Na­ tional Gallery of Art, cat. exh. Washington (National Gallery of Art), Washington 1973. Müller Profumo, L., ‘Per la fortuna di Ermete Trismegisto nel Rinascimento. Filippino Lippi e la Cappella Strozzi’, Athenaeum, 58 (1980), 429-453. Nagel, A., ‘Image Magic’, Cabinet, 26, Summer, 2007 (unpaginated). Rubin, P., ‘Domenico Ghirlandaio and the Meaning of History in Fifteenth Century Florence’, in: W. Prinz and M. Seidel, (eds.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Firenze, 16-18 ottobre 1994, Florence 1996, 97-108. Rubin, P. L., ‘Filippino Lippi, “pittore di vaghissima invenzione”: Christian poetry and the significance of style in late fifteenth-century altarpiece design,’ in: M. Hoch­ mann, J. Kliemann, J. Koering, and P. Morel (eds.), Pro­gramme et invention dans l’art de la Renaissance, Rome/Paris 2008, 227-46. Sale, J., Filippino Lippi’s Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, PhD thesis, New York/ London 1979. Takuma, I., ‘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, 7 (2011), 215-242. Winternitz, E., ‘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, 11 (1963-5), 263-286. Wright, A., The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome, New Haven/ London 2005. Zambrano, P and Nelson, J. K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 10

Gli affreschi di Filippino Lippi nella Cappella Strozzi a Santa Maria Novella a Firenze: il restauro e la tecnica Alessandra Popple e Cristiana Conti Le pitture che decorano la Cappella Strozzi nella Basilica di Santa Maria Novella a Firenze sono state oggetto, nel corso dei secoli, di molteplici interventi di restauro. Sono certamente documentati gli interventi risalenti al 1753 e al 1859, come anche i più recenti del 1967 e del 1985. L’intervento eseguito negli anni sessanta è stato condotto dai restauratori Rosi, Tintori e Del Serra ed ha comportato il distacco delle vele della volta, mentre, negli anni ottanta, gli interventi di restauro, effettuati ad opera della SBAA di Firenze, si sono concentrati sulla parete di fondo della cappella. L’esteso intervento di restauro realizzato tra il 1999 e il 2000, preceduto da un pronto intervento d’urgenza nel 1997, si è reso necessario a seguito delle ripetute infiltrazioni d’acqua a partenza dalle coperture della cappella che hanno progressivamente danneggiato le pitture murali. Successivamente, tra il 2007 e il 2015, è stato indispensabile re-intervenire periodicamente per il ripetersi delle infiltrazioni. Queste sono definitivamente cessate nel 2015 a seguito di un importante intervento di rifacimento delle coperture. 1

La tecnica esecutiva

La tecnica pittorica impiegata da Filippino Lippi nelle pitture che decorano la Cappella Strozzi spicca per l’estrema complessità, ma anche per la raffinatezza e l’originalità, che si osservano non solo nella scelta delle procedure pittoriche, ma anche nell’uso dei materiali. L’artista, infatti, accosta ad una pittura che presenta le caratteristiche tipiche del buon fresco, anche elementi realizzati con una tecnica pittorica tipica della pittura su tavola. Ad oggi risulta estremamente difficile spiegare come l’artista sia riuscito ad integrare così efficacemente diverse tecniche pittoriche ottenendo risultati eccezionali non solo dal punto di vista estetico, ma anche in relazione alla resistenza ai processi alterativi. ← Filippino Lippi, Raising of Drusiana, detail of fig. 9.10 Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Dalle analisi preliminari è emerso che le pitture dei costoloni e delle cornici sono state eseguite a fresco, con l’aggiunta del bianco di calce per realizzare le lumeggiature. Tali elementi, essendo semplici e puramente decorativi, sono stati eseguiti in modo rapido ed essenziale e, pertanto, la pellicola pittorica risulta estremamente sottile ed acquerellata. Rispetto ad altre zone affrescate della cappella, qui i segni delle attaccature di giornata, essendo piuttosto grossolani ed imprecisi, risultano particolarmente evidenti. Sulle cornici che circondano le vele sono presenti numerosi segni di incisioni dirette, mentre sui costoloni appare più frequente l’impiego della tecnica dello spolvero. Le dorature sono su missione oleosa oppure su pasta cerosa. Anche i dipinti delle vele della volta a crociera sono stati eseguiti a buon fresco, ad esclusione del colore di fondo, l’azzurrite, che è stato applicato a secco, per mezzo di un legante. Il disegno preparatorio è tracciato tramite incisioni dirette e da cartone. Quest’ultima tecnica di riporto è stata impiegata solo in questa sede oltre che in corrispondenza delle decorazioni geometriche. Per quanto riguarda invece le pareti della cappella, nonostante accurate analisi scientifiche eseguite in occasione del restauro, non è stato possibile definire esaustivamente le caratteristiche della tecnica pittorica (fig. 10.1). Nelle pitture delle pareti, infatti, Filippino Lippi, allo scopo di poter assecondare pienamente le proprie esigenze estetiche, ha applicato una varietà di tecniche innovative e originali. Ne risultano caratteristiche materiche tanto particolari da essere irrealizzabili tramite procedure pittoriche tradizionali. Pertanto si può concludere che le pitture delle pareti siano state realizzate con una tecnica mista. Uno degli aspetti più peculiari della tecnica pittorica delle pareti è la suddivisione dell’intonaco in giornate di lavoro estremamente piccole, caratterizzate da margini particolarmente curati, che seguono con precisione e meticolosità il contorno del soggetto. L’intonaco pittorico risulta estremamente levigato, grazie all’impiego di un inerte molto fine e all’accurata lisciatura a mestola nella finitura superficiale. Questo tipo di preparazione dell’intonaco pittorico è tradizionalmente associata alla tecnica a fresco, tuttavia, in questo caso, al di sotto della pellicola pittorica, è presente una particolare preparazione riconducibile invece ad una tecnica esecutiva a secco. Si tratta di una sorta di ammannitura di colore bianco, simile all’imprimitura che si applica sulle tavole, realizzata con una base inerte addizionata con olio di lino (come emerso dalle analisi chimiche quali la gascromatografia accoppiata alla spettrometria di massa). Tale preparazione è ampiamente distribuita sulla superficie delle pareti, sia in corrispondenza delle figure che delle campiture pittoriche dei fondi, in particolare è costantemente presente a livello del cielo, sia sulla Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.1 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Giovanni, Grafico della tecnica esecutiva. Mappatura delle giornate di lavoro e della preparazione bianca sottostante la pellicola pittorica. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

parete destra, che su quella sinistra, mentre risulta del tutto assente sulle pitture della volta. Pertanto è difficile stabilire una relazione tra l’uso di questa preparazione e l’impiego di una specifica procedura tecnica o l’applicazione di determinati pigmenti. L’olio di lino è stato rilevato, oltre che nella preparazione di base, anche all’interno delle stesure pittoriche più superficiali. Esso è stato infatti ampiamente impiegato come legante organico nelle zone eseguite a secco dove l’artista ha impiegato pigmenti non compatibili con la pittura a fresco, come il cinabro e il giallo di Napoli. Le finiture eseguite a secco, ampiamente distribuite sulla superficie pittorica, non si distinguono ad occhio nudo, in normali condizioni di luce, dalle zone eseguite a fresco. Per rilevare tali differenze tecniche è stato necessario eseguire delle riprese con i raggi ultravioletti (UV) che mettono in evidenza la fluorescenza emessa dai leganti organici, laddove sono stati impiegati per eseguire i dipinti a secco (fig. 10.2a-d).

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Figure 10.2a-d Riprese a luce visibile e a fluorescenza UV dove si evidenziano in giallo le finiture a secco. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

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Anche per quanto riguarda le tecniche di riporto del disegno preparatorio, Filippino sembra impiegare metodi diversi. In corrispondenza delle scene non risultano presenti incisioni da cartone, ma sono invece numerose le incisioni dirette, soprattutto a livello delle architetture e negli scomparti decorativi. Tracce della tecnica dello spolvero sono invece presenti nei motivi decorativi delle finte lesene ai lati delle scene così come a livello dell’architravatura orizzontale posta tra il lunettone e la scena sottostante. Estremamente scarse sono, invece, le tracce di spolvero rinvenute in corrispondenza delle scene. Si osservano, ad esempio, a livello del panneggio di Filippo Strozzi sul lunettone della parete destra oppure in una figura allegorica femminile sul basamento di sinistra della parete di fondo. Ciononostante, data l’assenza di tracce di incisione da cartone, è stato ipotizzato che la principale tecnica impiegata per la trasposizione del disegno delle figure sia proprio lo spolvero. Le tracce di questa tecnica di riporto potrebbero essere state occultate dalla corposità delle pennellate e dall’imprimitura bianca. A causa dell’assenza di significative mancanze di intonaco che potessero esporre parzialmente lo strato sottostante, non è stato possibile verificare la presenza della sinopia per il disegno preparatorio. In conclusione, possiamo dire che l’uso di materiali innovativi, che emergono specialmente in corrispondenza delle pareti, sono probabilmente motivate principalmente da esigenze di tipo tecnico. L’uso abbondante di oro e pigmenti come il “giallorino” e il cinabro, che non sono compatibili con la tecnica ad affresco, vengono scelti per arricchire e valorizzare queste scene e forse per accentuare la loro dimensione extra terrena. La volta, interessata da problemi conservativi nei secoli dovuti ad infiltrazioni e interventi vari, ora risulta non così ricca rispetto alle pareti ma, in origine, doveva emanare molta luminosità con la diffusa applicazione della doratura e dell’azzurro sui fondi. In particolare l’uso dell’oro applicato a raggiera attorno alle figure dei patriarchi colmava la discrepanza di effetto con le pareti percepibile oggi ma all’epoca probabilmente perfettamente unitario. 2

Lo stato di conservazione

A livello dei costoloni e delle cornici il danno alle pitture è ascrivibile principalmente alle abbondanti infiltrazioni di umidità a partenza dalle coperture della cappella. La mancanza di areazione nel sottotetto e il ristagno di umidità e acqua nei materiali depositati in questa sede ha incrementato il danno di tali infiltrazioni. A livello delle pitture murali erano proprio le zone interessate dalle infiltrazioni quelle che risultavano maggiormente compromesse. Queste apparivano concentrate nella zona adiacente la parete di fondo e sulle pareti Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.3 I costoloni della volta nello spigolo fra la parete destra e la parete di fondo dove sono evidenti le efflorescenze saline e la perdita di pellicola pittorica dovuta ad infiltrazioni dalle coperture. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

verticali in prossimità dell’innesto dei pennacchi sulle pareti verticali (fig. 10.3). L’angolo sinistro della parete destra, che risultava la zona in assoluto più danneggiata della cappella, è stato oggetto del primo pronto intervento eseguito nel 1997. In questa zona erano particolarmente abbondanti le tipiche efflorescenze saline provocate dalle sostanze estranee contenute nella muratura e veicolate dall’acqua. L’azione di questi sali ha provocato numerosi danni alle pitture, variabili a seconda della tipologia di cristallizzazione e della natura chimica delle sostanze presenti all’interno della muratura. Prima del restauro, infatti, erano visibili le ampie macchie scure tipicamente provocate dai nitrati, insieme a esfoliazioni e decoesioni della pellicola pittorica attribuibili all’azione dei solfati. Trattandosi di infiltrazioni recidivanti nel tempo, è evidente come il danno sia incrementato in modo esponenziale, con un progressivo aggravamento ed ampliamento delle zone degradate. Nelle situazioni più gravi e compromesse, come a livello del costolone destro, il danno è stato tale da comportare la perdita di tutto lo strato di intonachino pittorico. Danni tanto consistenti suggeriscono la possibilità che questo fenomeno infiltrativo abbia origini piuttosto lontane e che, accanto a segni di danni recenti, siano evidenziabili tracce di lesioni occorse in tempi più remoti. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.4 Particolare della zona danneggiata da sali dove si notano sollevamenti gravi della pellicola pittorica. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

Un fattore che ha ulteriormente aggravato gli effetti di questi processi alterativi è stata l’applicazione di fissativi non idonei nel corso dei precedenti interventi di restauro. Queste sostanze di natura resinosa sono dotate di proprietà filmogene che hanno comportato una riduzione della porosità delle superfici pittoriche. Nonostante le indagini diagnostiche non abbiano potuto accertarne la presenza, è ipotizzabile che nelle zone particolarmente compromesse, in aggiunta alla resina acrilica, l’intonaco pittorico fosse intriso di fissativi di natura organica (quali gommalacca o caseina). A sostegno di questa ipotesi, è stato osservato che lo strato cromatico esfoliato si presentava estremamente rigido e cristallino, con un aspetto che poteva definirsi quasi ‘crostoso’, e costellato da alterazioni cromatiche brunastre tipicamente osservabili in seguito all’applicazione di tali sostanze (fig. 10.4). In aggiunta, su tutte le superfici pittoriche interessate dalle infiltrazioni, erano presenti zone di imbianchimento, provocate sia dall’alterazione di vecchi fissativi, sia dalla cristallizzazione di sostanze saline come i carbonati. Talvolta queste efflorescenze presentavano uno spessore non indifferente, soprattutto nelle zone dove le infiltrazioni sono state particolarmente abbondanti o prolungate nel tempo. In diverse zone della cappella, le infiltrazioni d’acqua hanno lasciato evidenti segni di percolamento, suggerendo che le infiltrazioni abbiano talvolta assunto la consistenza di un vero e proprio ruscellamento (fig. 10.5). Per quanto riguarda le vele della volta, lo stato di conservazione delle pitture murali risultava discreto. Nel 1967 queste sono state strappate dal loro Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.5 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Filippo Ripresa UV dove è evidente la superficie pittorica gravemente dilavata dal percolamento di acqua piovana. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

supporto murario e successivamente riportate su supporti di vetroresina. Probabilmente l’intervento è stato eseguito proprio a causa dell’elevato rischio a cui le pitture erano esposte a causa delle copiose infiltrazioni dal tetto. In occasione del restauro del 1999-2000 sono stati riscontrati solo alcuni distacchi della tela di foderatura dal supporto sottostante in corrispondenza della figura di Giacobbe. Il fenomeno è risultato estremamente circoscritto e, comunque, non sufficientemente grave da compromettere in modo significativo la stabilità della pellicola pittorica. In aggiunta sono stati messi in evidenza piccoli e circoscritti sollevamenti del colore in corrispondenza della figura di Abramo, Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.6 Filippino Lippi, Martirio di S. Filippo Zona interessata da cristallizzazione di sali dovuti al percolamento di acqua piovana. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

probabilmente attribuibili ad un eccessivo impiego di fissativo nel preconsolidamento eseguito prima dello strappo. A livello delle pareti, le pitture non direttamente interessate dalle infiltrazioni di umidità si presentavano in uno stato di conservazione discreto. Al contrario, quelle soggette alle infiltrazioni erano interessate da gravi processi alterativi e, come già sottolineato, l’angolo sinistro della parete destra risultava la zona maggiormente compromessa. Nelle zone danneggiate erano evidenti diffuse cristallizzazioni superficiali di sali, distacchi di colore ed esfoliazioni, fenomeni facilitati dalla presenza di fissativi applicati durante pregressi interventi di restauro (fig. 10.6). Su tutta la superficie della parete destra risultavano evidenti segni di abbondante percolamento d’acqua che aveva provocato estesi sollevamenti della pellicola pittorica e cadute del colore. È interessante sottolineare come l’umidità avesse provocato danni di gravità diversa a seconda della tecnica pittorica impiegata o a seconda del pigmento utilizzato. A livello del panneggio del sacerdote nel Miracolo di San Filippo, ad esempio, la stesura di rosso cinabro è risultata decisamente più danneggiata rispetto a quella di giallo di Napoli, sebbene entrambe fossero state presumibilmente applicate a secco. Anche per quanto riguarda le finte lesene ai lati delle scene, è stato possibile riscontrare una differenza nello stato di conservazione delle stesure pittoriche attribuibile sia alla natura dei pigmenti, sia alla loro tecnica di applicazione. I fondi neri, che apparivano totalmente abrasi, sono stati eseguiti con una materia grassa applicata a formare uno strato spesso, mentre, al contrario, le Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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candelabre centrali sono state eseguite tramite stesure sottili ed acquerellate, dunque più resistenti, e, di conseguenza, risultavano molto meglio conservate. Per mezzo delle analisi chimiche è stato possibile constatare la presenza di un fissativo di natura acrilica che è stato applicato su tutta la superficie pittorica nel corso di un precedente intervento di restauro. Tale fissativo ha subito, col trascorrere del tempo, una significativa alterazione cromatica, tanto da apparire come una stesura grigia uniforme che ricopriva la superficie cromatica. In alcune zone, come ad esempio nel cielo di fondo del Martirio di S. Filippo, erano addirittura visibili i segni delle pennellate con cui il fissativo è stato applicato. Sono state riscontrate anche diffuse e ampie lacune del film pittorico causate da graffi e abrasioni di tipo meccanico provocate da spolverature mal eseguite; questo tipo di danno è stato, con tutta probabilità, facilitato dallo spessore dell’imprimitura di preparazione, in particolare a livello dei fondi del cielo e nella parte bassa delle scene. 3

L’intervento di restauro del 1999-2000

La prima operazione effettuata è stata il preconsolidamento della pellicola pittorica che consiste nella fermatura del colore polverulento tramite applicazione sul retro delle scaglie di colore sollevate di caseinato d’ammonio al 4% per mezzo di piccole siringhe o pennelli. Laddove l’esfoliazione del colore risultava più pronunciata, e quindi il colore tendeva a sollevarsi in scaglie di maggiori dimensioni, è stato necessario sostituire il caseinato d’ammonio con un consolidante più potente, quale la resina acrilica in soluzione acquosa al 10%. In entrambi gli scenari, a questa prima operazione, è seguita una tamponatura su carta giapponese eseguita per mezzo di spugne naturali e acqua deionizzata, al fine di facilitare la riadesione dei frammenti di colore sollevati. Il preconsolidamento ha lo scopo di fermare temporaneamente il colore, così da consentire di eseguire in maggiore sicurezza le successive operazioni di pulitura. In seguito è stata operata una pulitura preliminare di tutta la superficie pittorica impiegando tamponi di cotone idrofilo e/o spugne naturali imbevuti di acqua deionizzata con lo scopo di rimuovere i depositi più superficiali ed incoerenti e lo strato di nerofumo. Tutte le dorature sono state protette applicando Paraloid B72 in diluente nitro al 15%. La pulitura finale è stata eseguita in maniera differenziale a seconda dello stato di conservazione e della tecnica esecutiva impiegata nelle diverse zone. Lo scopo principale dell’intervento è stato quello di aggredire e rimuovere il fissativo acrilico presente su tutta la superficie per consentire di raggiungere e Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.7a-b Filippino Lippi, Particolare della Resurrezione di Drusiana durante la fase di pulitura. Applicazione della carta giapponese tramite acqua satura di carbonato di ammonio e successiva rimozione dello sporco rigonfiato con un tampone di cotone. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

agire sullo strato di sporco interposto tra la stesura di colore superficiale e lo strato di fissativo. È stato possibile dimostrare che, in tale contesto ambientale, la rimozione del fissativo acrilico consentiva una migliore conservazione delle pitture sottostanti, anche in considerazione della particolare tecnica esecutiva impiegata. A seguito delle prove comparative, è stato possibile stabilire che i migliori risultati erano ottenuti impiegando carbonato o bicarbonato d’ammonio applicati sia a cristalli (fig. 10.7a-b), previa interposizione di un foglio di carta giapponese, sia tramite impacco di pasta di cellulosa e sepiolite (fig. 10.8). L’accurata scelta del supportante, del reagente e dei tempi di contatto più adeguati ad ogni singola zona è stata decisiva al fine di ottenere un risultato quanto più omogeneo possibile. È importante sottolineare che la parete di fondo, essendo stata oggetto di un approfondito restauro nel 1985, è stata sottoposta esclusivamente ad una semplice manutenzione e, pertanto, nel corso del restauro, ha rappresentato un inevitabile punto di riferimento per stabilire il grado di pulitura finale da raggiungere sulle altre superfici pittoriche. In aggiunta, è stato fondamentale evitare che la pulitura mettesse in risalto le differenze materiche tra zone simili, ma dipinte con tecniche esecutive differenti. Nel corso della pulitura, sul fondo del lunettone e della scena sulla parete destra, si è verificato un fenomeno molto peculiare: dopo l’applicazione dell’impacco di pulitura a base di carbonato di ammonio, la zona trattata assumeva una colorazione bruno-scura. Questa alterazione persisteva per alcuni giorni, fintanto che il carbonato d’ammonio permaneva nelle porosità dell’intonaco. Le analisi chimiche hanno in seguito dimostrato che l’alterazione era Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 10.8 Filippino Lippi, Scena del Miracolo del drago cacciato dal tempio Impacco di pulitura costituito da Arbocel, ammonio carbonato e sepiolite applicato sulla superficie. L’impacco bianco, in corrispondenza dell’ aureola dorata invece, è costituito da Arbocel e acqua e serve a proteggere la zona dal contatto con l’impacco adiacente. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

correlata alla presenza, nella preparazione bianca della pittura, di olio di lino in associazione con il carbonato d’ammonio. In seguito all’evaporazione del carbonato d’ammonio, l’alterazione scompariva senza ripercussioni durature sulla pittura. La scomparsa di questa alterazione era inoltre favorita da ripetuti lavaggi con acqua satura di ammonio addizionata al 50% di acetone. Il trattamento con impacco consolidante e antisolfatante della pellicola pittorica con idrossido di bario è stato eseguito sui due lunettoni e su gran parte della scena della parete destra (fig. 10.9). L’idrossido di bario è stato applicato in percentuale variabile dal 5% al 10% tramite impacco di pasta di cellulosa (Arbocel BC1000) su doppio foglio di carta giapponese con un tempo di contatto di circa 4 ore. A questa operazione hanno fatto seguito gli interventi di consolidamento dell’intonaco in profondità che sono stati eseguiti mediante iniezioni di consolidanti minerali idonei (PLM-A e Calxnova).

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Figure 10.9 Filippino Lippi, Scena del Miracolo di s. Giovanni Rimozione dell’impacco consolidante e antisolfatante di Idrossido di Bario ad asciugatura completata. Firenze, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Strozzi

Le vecchie stuccature sono state rimosse poiché, al di sotto di uno strato superficiale di calce e sabbia, presentavano un riempimento a base di gesso, una sostanza che, essendo instabile ed avendo una naturale tendenza a polverizzarsi, risulta dannosa dal punto di vista conservativo. Quindi la stuccatura di tutte le lesioni, lacune e mancanze di intonaco è stata eseguita impiegando una malta costituita da sabbia lavata e setacciata e grassello di calce. Il ritocco pittorico delle mancanze più minute è stato condotto con la sovrapposizione di più velature a base di pigmenti naturali stemperati con caseinato d’ammonio, al fine di ottenere un valore cromatico unitario. Nelle zone in cui le mancanze risultavano più ampie, è stato deciso di eseguire un’integrazione a velature sovrapposte con una tonalità neutra, senza cioè alcun intento ricostruttivo. Sul cielo di fondo le abrasioni più scure sono state velate impiegando bianco di titanio, in modo tale da attenuare il forte contrasto Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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percepibile tra queste mancanze e il colore originale. Per integrare le stuccature, invece, è stata impiegata la tecnica della selezione cromatica. Sulla parete di fondo, come già detto, è stato necessario intervenire solo in modo localizzato, laddove infiltrazioni recenti di acqua avevano provocato sollevamenti del colore e imbianchimenti da cristallizzazione di sostanze saline. Il danno su questa parete è risultato limitato grazie al restauro eseguito negli anni ottanta, che si è avvalso di metodologie di restauro idonee, basate sul trattamento consolidante con idrossido di bario. Pertanto, oltre alla pulitura ad acqua ed al preconsolidamento, è stato sufficiente applicare impacchi assorbenti di pasta di cellulosa e sepiolite, al fine di estrarre e rimuovere le sostanze saline inquinanti. Tali impacchi sono stati applicati su tre fogli di carta giapponese con un tempo di contatto di alcuni giorni. Il ritocco è stato condotto con criteri analoghi alle altre zone della cappella. 4

I successivi interventi di restauro

A seguito dell’esteso restauro realizzato tra il 1999 e il 2000 si è reso necessario re-intervenire in più occasioni sulle pitture murali della cappella a causa del reiterarsi dei danni provocati dalle persistenti infiltrazioni di acqua dalle coperture. Nel 2007 è stato condotto un intervento urgente mirato a mettere in sicurezza la zona più compromessa della volta. Nel 2015, invece, è stato effettuato un intervento di rifacimento delle coperture della cappella che, per mezzo dell’applicazione di un manto di copertura, dell’inserimento di una guaina bituminosa sottostante, della riapertura di alcune bifore di areazione precedentemente murate, e della modifica del sistema di raccolta delle acque piovane, ha consentito di interrompere l’afflusso di acqua nel sottotetto e di creare delle condizioni climatiche più favorevoli ai fini della conservazione delle sottostanti pitture murali. Tuttavia, pur avendo eliminato la sorgente di degrado, l’umidità residua all’interno della muratura, sommata alle possibili variazioni dell’umidità ambientale nella cappella, sono ancora potenzialmente in grado di far riemergere i sali e dunque di danneggiare le pitture. Con tutta probabilità saranno necessari diversi anni perché la situazione sia del tutto risanata. Da ciò deriva la necessità di ripetuti interventi di monitoraggio dello stato di conservazione delle pitture. Sempre nel 2015, una volta completate le operazioni di risanamento del tetto, sono state condotte analisi per verificare il contenuto di umidità sub-superficiale e la presenza di sali a livello delle pitture murali. La campagna diagnostica, effettuata in collaborazione con l’Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze, è stata condotta per mezzo di rilevazioni termografiche Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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nell’infrarosso termico e misure puntuali mediante il sistema dielettrotermico a campo evanescente detto anche SUSI. Tali rilevamenti sono stati ripetuti nel tempo per monitorare il grado di asciugatura. Allo stesso tempo sono stati avviate operazioni di pronto intervento per la messa in sicurezza degli intonaci danneggiati e degli strati di colore indeboliti dall’azione dei sali cristallizzati. In primo luogo sono stati effettuati interventi diretti, consistenti nell’applicazione di adesivi e consolidanti al fine di bloccare la perdita di materiale originale, successivamente sono stati effettuati anche interventi preventivi allo scopo di limitare il degrado prodotto dai sali durante l’evaporazione dell’acqua. Tali interventi hanno previsto l’applicazione di impacchi assorbenti e intonaci “di sacrificio”, in modo da veicolare l’umidità e i sali verso queste superfici e di conseguenza tentare di risparmiare la pittura originale. L’intonaco “di sacrificio”, composto da sabbia di diverse granulometrie mista a nanoestel come legante, è stato applicato in molteplici punti della superficie pittorica, tramite l’interposizione di un foglio di carta giapponese. Gli intonaci sono mantenuti in sede a tempo indeterminato e, tutt’oggi, sono periodicamente monitorati per rilevarne l’umidità e il contenuto salino e, in generale, per valutare l’efficacia del trattamento nel tempo.

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Chapter 11

Never Being Boring: Filippino Lippi, Michelangelo and the Concept of Chapel Decoration Charles Robertson

There were surprisingly few circumstances that linked Filippino Lippi and Michelangelo Buonarroti directly, and indeed they were very dissimilar as artists. Their approaches, notably evident in drawing, were markedly different: Filippino characteristically had a scintillating elegance and lightness of touch that was largely alien to Michelangelo, who had been formed in quite another ambience, as a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio. Yet it is generally understood that the extraordinary Carafa Chapel at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome and Strozzi Chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, are immediate precedents for Michelangelo’s solutions in the Sistine Chapel.1 Although from different generations, they were peers among the elite of Florentine artists in the years around 1500. Both were commissioned to contribute to the decoration of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio.2 Filippino was among the artists to advise on the placement of the giant statue of David in January 1504.3 He argued that Michelangelo’s opinion about the location should be respected, suggesting positive relations between the two artists. These connections are still quite remote, but there is also the odd and evidently garbled story in the Anonimo Magliabechiano, notes on Florentine artists compiled in the 1530s and 40s.4 According to this, Michelangelo was interdicted for spilling someone’s blood, described as ‘one of the Lippis’, and then hiding the body in a vault where he carried out anatomical investigations on the corpses he found there. 1 P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 529. C. Brothers, Michelangelo, Drawing and the Invention of Architecture, New Haven/London 2008, 49-50, 96 2 M. Hirst, Michelangelo, The Achievement of Fame 1475-1534, New Haven/London 2011, 57 3 G. Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI, Florence 1839-40, II, 455. 4 Michele Agnolo quando era interdetto per sparsione di sangue di uno de Lippi [interdetto], entro la in una volta, doue erano moltj depositj di mortj, et quiuj fece notomia di assaj corpo et taglió et sparó, aqualj a caso prese uno de Corsinj, che ne fu gran rumore, fatto dalla casata de dettj Corsinj. Et funne fatta richiama a Piero Soderinj, allora gonfaloniere di iustitia, del che ei rise, ueggiendo hauerlo fatto per aquistare nell’ arte sua. C. 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, 115. ← Filippino Lippi, Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St Philip, detail of fig. 11.6

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As a result, he was brought before Piero Soderini, who laughingly pardoned him as ‘he had done it to progress in his art’. This might have been in 1501, since Soderini is merely called Gonfaloniere di Justizia as it was not till the next year that he was appointed permanently as Gonfaloniere a Vita. While there is no reason to be certain that the initial body was someone of Filippino Lippi’s family, it conceivably might have been an associate, a pupil or assistant; though equally well, it might have been a member of a different family of the same name. In any case this most probably falls into the category of ‘fake news’, but as is now well understood, that does not mean that it is not significant. This intriguing and under-considered story may disrupt the comfortable familiar or documented patterns of artistic formation and patronage that a more restrictive history of art often insists upon. Moreover, the association of anatomy with the macabre was one that Michelangelo certainly made himself, as he exploited the sentiment forcibly in the lower section of the Last Judgement, contrasting bare skeletons to fully-fleshed bodies. In fact, Filippino played with such imagery in the Strozzi Chapel, where the angels above the donor’s tomb play with skulls, and Drusiana comes to back to life on a bier surmounted, quite comically, by a grinning skull. So, in this area at the least, the two artists shared a sense of humour. Michelangelo’s emphatic rejection of a key part of his artistic formation, to the point of suppressing the truth of his apprenticeship as a painter with Domenico Ghirlandaio in the personally sanctioned biography of his pupil Condivi, indicates, perhaps, an inclination or a need to break away.5 While, as has been generally acknowledged, the influence of Ghirlandaio is very apparent, throughout his career Michelangelo returned repeatedly to visual ideas drawn more broadly from a wide range of artistic practice and experience in Florence in the decade and a half before 1500, a period of extraordinary diversity and variety. Filippino was then an outstanding figure and a telling example of what it was to be a successful painter both in Florence and Rome where Michelangelo was making his own career. In this world Filippino must have appeared in distinct contrast to Ghirlandaio, perhaps the normative artist for late fifteenth-century Florence. It might be tempting to think of Filippino’s elegant style as a market strategy articulating particularity and difference. Vasari’s characterization of Filippino, specifically in terms of the revival of the antique, was ‘of such copious invention in painting and most bizarre and new in his ornaments’, indicating an inspiring precedent.6 Michelangelo’s situation after 1500 was rather different from that 5 A. Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo, G. Nencioni (ed.), Florence 1998, 9-10. 6 Di sì copiosa invenzione nella pittura e tanto bizzaro e nuovo ne’ suoi oranamenti, G. Vasari, Le Vite dei piu eccellenti Pittori Scultori e Architettori nelle le redazioni del 1550 e 1568, R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi (eds.), 6 vols, Florence 1966-1987, III, 559-60. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of Filippino. The younger man was increasingly a court or a state artist, perhaps not subject to market competition; nevertheless the need to stand out as a singular talent was also important to him as a professional, and to his selfconceit as artist. However, it may have been necessity, as much as admiration, that led Michelangelo to take Filippino as an example. The design of the Sistine ceiling, a required and certainly not initially a desired task, seems to have been devised in an extraordinarily short period by a fairly inexperienced painter. Although first mooted in 1506, Michelangelo does not seem to have done any work on it until Spring 1508. According to Michelangelo, a relatively simpler scheme of Twelve Apostles and decorative elements had been rejected in favour of the larger executed version with Prophets and Sibyls, Ancestors of Christ and a major series of narrative images of Genesis set in a complex architectural scheme.7 It was his first intention to employ quite a large team of qualified masters to help him execute the work in an expedite fashion, which presumably required a substantial amount of pre-planning and preparation in a quite brief time frame in order that they should help substantially in the execution.8 Given this pressure, it is not surprising that Michelangelo may have appropriated ideas from a number of sources including Filippino. The first scene of the ceiling was the Drunkenness of Noah. The back view of one of Noah’s sons harks back to the youth who raises the cross in the Martyrdom of St. Peter, one of the scenes that Filippino painted in his completion of the Brancacci Chapel in the mid 1480’s. Though Filippino’s figure leans back at an angle hauling at the pulley, it is difficult to believe that Michelangelo did not have the oval shape of the head and the curve of the back to some extent in mind (fig. 11.1, 11.2). Furthermore, Filippino’s careful anatomical exploration of the interaction of youths and an older man in the Martyrdom may have prompted Michelangelo’s unconventional approach to his subject, seemingly at odds with the ostensible theme of shame, with the sons as well as the father naked. While Michelangelo’s approach to the nude is hugely original there is a sense in which the ignudi develops a form of adolescent nude that Filippino had explored with the Raising of the son of Theophilus in the Brancacci Chapel. This is particularly true for the ignudi in the first half of ceiling, notably those over Joel and the Delphic Sibyl, after which the musculature becomes con­ siderably heavier. According to Vasari the model for the son was Francesco Granacci, a friend of Michelangelo and a fellow apprentice in the studio of 7 G. Poggi, P. Barocchi, R. Ristori, (eds.), Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, Florence 1965-1979, III, 8-9. 8 Hirst, op. cit. (note 2), 91-94.

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Figure 11.1 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Drunkenness of Noah, 1509, detail, fresco, Vatican, Rome, Sistine Chapel

Figure 11.2 Filippino Lippi, Martyrdom of St. Peter, c. 1481-1482, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Ghirlandaio, and the leader of the group of Florentine artists hired to help execute Michelangelo’s project in the Sistine Chapel.9 Such a connection between Filippino and Michelangelo would have both been remarkable and visceral since it turned on the representation of the male nude, based on life study, that was a focus for both artists. The figure based on Granacci was not just beautiful, it was also, demonstrably, a public example of a nude study of an identifiable body. Since it is normal to acknowledge Masaccio’s crucial influence on Michelangelo and the importance to him of drawing in the Brancacci Chapel, it is worth reflecting on how Filipino’s inspired completion of this decoration, of the first half of the 1480s, offered a significantly different approach to that which Michelangelo would have imbibed in Ghirlandaio’s studio. Masaccio, viewed via Ghirlandaio, as reflected, for example, in the Calling of the Apostles of 1481 in the Sistine Chapel, was sonorous but also ponderous and staid. Filippino’s intervention in the Brancacci Chapel, by contrast, responded to the liveliness in drawing and colour shared by both Masaccio and Masolino, despite profound differences of approach. Moreover, Michelangelo’s handling of fresco, although substantially derived from Ghirlandaio, was significantly freer than that of his teacher, and perhaps this was stimulated by the example of Filippino. The impact of Filippino may have gone beyond the borrowing of individual figures or refining the notion of life study. The ceiling scheme has nine narrative fields and Michelangelo, having opted principally for sculpture, had relatively little experience in the invention of composition. Tentatively it may be suggested that the interaction of the main protagonists in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam owes something to Filippino’s Vision of St Bernard of c. 1484, painted for the monastery of the Campora at Marignole, and now in the church of the Badia in Florence (figs. 11.3, 11.4).10 The hands of the Virgin and the Saint hover above the text and do not touch, while the eyes engage. The Virgin’s head in authoritative profile, set higher than that of Bernard, which is slightly inclined to one side, is echoed in Adam’s and God’s heads on the ceiling: the eyes engage, precluding any need for touch, reifying inspiration. This is deftly used in the crucial idea for the Creation of Adam, as clay becomes living and breathing flesh. Finally, the Virgin’s accompanying angels prefigure God the Father’s wriggling companions. In a further Adam scene, the Temptation, Eve’s head, tilted to one side, framed by waving brown curls, looking up to the profile of a woman’s head on the serpent, recalls Adam’s head similarly tilted towards the female serpent in Filippino’s own 9 10

Vasari, op. cit. (note 6), 561. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 346-347.

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Figure 11.3 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Creation of Adam, 1510, fresco. Vatican, Rome, Sistine Chapel

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Figure 11.4 Filippino Lippi, The Vision of St Bernard, c. 1484, tempera and oil on panel, 210 × 195 cm. Florence, Badia

representation of Adam among the Four Patriarchs in the vault of the Strozzi Chapel (fig. 9.14).11 Although these were important contributions to the decoration of a chapel, they were essentially opportunistic, indicating, perhaps, a relative lack of practice as a painter on Michelangelo’s part. To go further, Filippino provided an example for a strategy of decoration in its broadest sense. This included issues, both iconographic and formal, of accommodating mural and vault painting to requirements defined by a predetermined space, of which Michelangelo had 11

Ibid, 586.

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no previous experience of devising. However, Filippino’s work seems also to have had a broader structural impact. It may have in part prompted the move from an initial project of Apostles to one of Prophets and Sibyls; and the Genesis cycle was an appreciation that this might be better suited to the dedication of the Sistine Chapel, which was to the Virgin. In this case the Carafa Chapel, also dedicated to the Virgin, is an obvious precedent of which everyone, including the Pope, would have been aware, including as it does the representation of the Sibyls, the ancient prophetesses foretelling the Virgin birth and the coming of Christ, on its ceiling.12 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Michelangelo did not appropriate any of Filippino’s figures directly, but he clearly was inspired by their extreme variety, which radically developed the range of the representation of the previously rather staid, front facing Sibyls by earlier artists. In his Libyan Sibyl Michelangelo specifically echoed the back view of Filippino’s Carafa Delphic Sibyl. Again, on the Sistine Ceiling, the putti accompanying the Prophets and Sibyls followed the example of the subsidiary angels who accompany the Sibyls, doing lively things with books, on the vault of the Carafa Chapel. What Michelangelo also realized was the dynamic quality of the curved triangular field that he was to exploit, both in the four major corner spandrels, and especially in the minor ones over the lunettes, where he specifically echoes Filippino’s Sibyls seated on the ground for the additional images of the Ancestors of Christ. It is worth considering broader motivations. The statement that Michelangelo made a few years later indicates that the key commitment in designing the Ceiling was to create something splendid. ‘The first design for that work was the twelve apostles… The rest a kind of compartment full of the usual ornaments. Then the work having begun, it seemed to me that it would come out a poor thing… So he [The Pope] gave me a new commission that I could do what I wanted.’13 In the middle of the century, in a vivid and complex evocation of the design of the ceiling in emphatically architectural terms which stressed the diversity of elements and their arrangement, Condivi stressed that the ceiling, as executed, was specifically designed with the intention of not being tedious, with a phrase that may have defined Michelangelo’s aesthetic purpose: ‘And he did this to escape the tediousness that is born of similitude.’14 12 13

14

Ibid, 579-584. l’disegno primo di decta opera furono dodici Apostoli… e l’ resto un certo partimento ripieno d’adornamenti chome s’usa. Dipoi, cominciata decta opera, mi parve riuscissi cosa povera… Allora mi decte nuova chommensione che io facessi ciò che io volevo.’ Poggi, op. cit. (note 7), 8 Et questo ha fatto per fuggir la sacietà, che nasce dalla similitudine. Condivi, op. cit. (note 5), 31

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Condivi’s description was an emphatic rejection of Vasari’s implication that the Ceiling was merely a decorative arrangement and not a genuinely spatial or architectural illusion.15 Condivi’s passages cited ornament and arrangement but, by extension, the representation of architecture was also being considered. In short, Michelangelo’s concern was that his work should stand out, being distinctive and complex or, put simply, not boring. While many things contribute to the design and fictive architecture of the Ceiling, Filippino’s example is crucial. Filippino’s conception of architecture in the Carafa and Strozzi Chapels was particularly significant for Michelangelo. For Filippino, architecture had both the quality of vividly represented buildings and also served as an assertive narrative element. It was quite different from the role almost of perspectival stage set, which it had normally served for Ghirlandaio, Perugino and their followers. Filippino was a truly distinguished exponent of architectural ideas. An outstanding example is found in details of the Carafa Chapel, which anticipate by ten years features of Donato Bramante’s Roman architecture, notably in the fragmentary building to the left of the Enthronement of St Thomas Aquinas (fig. 8.8). Here the module of an arch flanked by piers surmounted by a trabeated loggia supported by a central Corinthian pillar prefigures Bramante’s Cloister at Santa Maria della Pace, and the double baluster balustrade prefigures that of the Tempietto. This matters in this context because Bramante, despite Michelangelo’s later attempt to denigrate him, seems to have been involved in the ceiling project at the commission and design stage, particularly influencing some architectural elements.16 Quite how Filippino had achieved this degree of architectural fluency is unclear, as this interest is not apparent in his surviving autograph drawings. Perhaps the several lost sketch books described by Benvenuto Cellini, as containing ‘representations after the beautiful antiquities of Rome’ might fill this gap.17 One example of how profound his understanding of architecture was, is evident in a preparatory drawing for the Sacrifice of Laocoon of about 1493 for Poggio a Caiano, now in Moscow, which presents an alternative approach to the eventual solution.18 In the Moscow drawing a Tuscan /Doric building is contrasted with a Corinthian/Composite one in a manner that prefigures theoretical practice of the next century. Filip15 16 17 18

C. Robertson, ‘Riflessioni sulle architetture dipinti della Capella Sistina’, in: K. Weil-Garris Brandt, Michelangelo e la Capella Sistina, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Roma, marzo 1990, Vatican/Tokyo/Novara 1994, 155-157. C. Robertson, ‘Bramante, Michelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), 91-105. ritratti dalle belle anticaglie di Roma, B. Cellini, La vita, G. D. Bonino (ed.), Turin 1973, 27. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 590, cat. no. 44.

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Figure 11.5 Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti, Scheme for the tomb of Julius II, 1505-1506, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over stylus ruling and leadpoint, 51 × 39.9 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Figure 11.6 Filippino Lippi, Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by St. Philip, south wall, c. 1491-1493, fresco, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel

pino again shows a precocious understanding of the Tuscan in his Mystic Marriage of St Catherine altarpiece, painted for San Domenico in Bologna in 1501, which prefigures Michelangelo’s later exploration of this order in the Biblioteca Laurenziana.19 Part of what explains Michelangelo’s growing sophistication 19

Ibid., 604-05, cat. no. 62. Filippino’s use of plain double pilasters in this painting closely follows Giuliano da Sangalllo’s design for Santa Maria delle Carceri at Prato. I am grateful to David Hemsoll and Paul Davies for this point. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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as an architectural designer around the period of the ceiling and beyond perhaps should be put down to an engagement with Filippino’s inventions. Michelangelo may in fact have begun to consider Filippino’s architecture even before the Ceiling, as he developed the design for the Tomb of Julius II. One of the earliest schemes for the Tomb, the drawing in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, shows how Michelangelo engaged with Filippino’s ideas (fig. 11.4).20 In general appearance, particularly the relationship between the figures and architecture in the drawing resemble The Altar of Mars that dominates St Philip driving the dragon from the Temple of Hieropolis in the Strozzi Chapel. This has a similar tiered structure, set around a wide curving wall-like niche, to the tomb project (fig. 9.11). There is a rather similar delicate, almost febrile quality in the figures, with tilted heads and billowing garments. The sculpted figures interact with the architecture that supports them in Michelangelo’s scheme, recalling the mix of live and fictive sculpted figures in Filippino’s invention. More broadly, Vasari’s vague but evocative explanation of the Pope and Michelangelo’s shared intention for the tomb ‘which should outdo any antique imperial sepulchre in beauty, pride and invention’ articulates what Filippino was also aiming at in his all’antica image of an ancient shrine of Mars.21 For Michelangelo, Filippino seems to have contributed to the standard of what the imitation of the antique might achieve. Indeed, at this early stage, Filippino’s vision certainly outstripped Michelangelo’s in strictly all’antica terms. When it came to designing the ceiling, a number of aspects of Filippino’s architecture were to be important for Michelangelo. The first, demonstrated by the altar wall of the Strozzi Chapel, was the representation of architectural elements that seem to project into the viewer’s space, derived from the attached columns of triumphal arches. The form of thrusting cornice and frieze emphasised by the receding diagonal above attached columns repeats in the giant entablature and cornice that houses the Prophets and Sybils. The device of the sharp recession of the returning mouldings is a close echo of the conventions of architectural demonstration drawings before the development of elevation projection. Filippino expanded the potential meaning of architectural representation. The cool white gray monochrome of the altar wall that frames the tomb of the donor, Filippo Strozzi, signifies death. In contrast, the lateral 20 21

C. Bambach, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum), New York 2017, 296, cat. no. 69. la quale di bellezza, di superbia e d’invenzione passasse ogni antica imperiale sepoltura: G. Vasari, La Vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, P. Barocchi (ed.), 5 vols, Milan, 1962, I, 28.

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narrative scenes, in particular the scene of St Philip, are strongly polychrome, with the verdigris green of the capitals and gilded bronze cornices, coloured marble columns, and porphyry mouldings. Though in a more limited way, Michelangelo painted architecture and ornament that combined grisaille and polychrome with white marble, purple stone work (which probably referenced the fragmentary porphyry revetment of the Arch of Constantine), and imitation gilded bronze. The notion of a painted architecture peopled with fictive sculpture is prefigured by Filippino, and Michelangelo’s fictive sculpture plinths owe much to Filipino’s Altar of Mars in the Strozzi Chapel. To go further, living figures such as the infants below the tablets with the names of the Prophets and Sibyls derive from those above the entablature of the Throne of St Thomas Aquinas in the Carafa Chapel. There are a multitude of other parallels as forms and figures, slip, as it were, back and forth from sculpture to architecture, imitated in paint. Less concretely, yet no less importantly, Filipino conceived of architecture as subject, not merely setting, and both the structure around the throne for St Thomas Aquinas and the Altar of Mars provide meaning as well as structure and compositional organisation. Michelangelo’s brilliant, indeed unique conception of the ceiling as a convincing evocation of architecture took up this challenge. In filling the central field of the ceiling with a unified architectural scheme cut off from the chapel by the framing zigzag of the spandrels, he created a discrete structure for the central exegetical message of the ceiling, the Creation, God’s covenant and the foretelling of the Messiah, to which discontinuously the spandrels and lunettes are in a way simply juxtaposed, setting out the antitypes for Christ’s sacrifice and his ancestors. Filippino’s willingness to entertain different, contrasting solutions was a crucial precedent for Michelangelo. Particularly in the Strozzi Chapel, the altar wall is treated quite differently from the side walls. The Sistine Ceiling is an assemblage of elements and indeed an augmentation of the earlier decoration of Sixtus IV. This additive process is a quality which it shares with both the Strozzi and Carafa Chapels, which may both be considered as compilations with coherent themes, rather than rigorously focused iconographic projects. Filipino interestingly contrasted the framing architecture of both chapels with the architecture represented in the scenes; and similarly, in the Medici Chapel, Michelangelo set up a comparison between the framing architecture and the internal architecture of the wall tombs. With the Medici Tombs he returned to the interface between sculpture and architecture, a notable feature of the Strozzi altar wall that accommodates the actual carved tomb in addition to the elaborate painted wall treatment, reminiscent of a triumphal arch. Specifically, the finished pen and wash drawing for the Medici Tombs in the Louvre is Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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strongly reminiscent of the tiered structure of Filippino’s Altar of Mars.22 The term figures and military trophies in the attic storey of the drawing were derived directly from Filippino’s conception. Michelangelo also adapted the Victory and Captive figures that crown the Mars Altar in various iterations of the basement of the tomb project for Julius II. Beyond particular devices and forms that Michelangelo seems to have found delightful, Filippino provided Michelangelo with an object lesson in chapel decoration, required as painting in the Sistine Ceiling or as worked stone in the New Sacristy. Filippino may well have continued to be important to Michelangelo. Vasari’s account from the mid sixteenth century underlines that Filippino was seen as a hugely talented artist who remained generally relevant, effectively almost a contemporary, a point also confirmed by Cellini’s admiration. Furthermore, Filippino was also one of the few fifteenth century painters, who by virtue of Cristofano Robetta’s engravings had a significant, if somewhat muddled, reproduced graphic afterlife, and consequently currency.23 For career reasons, largely as a result of his problematic involvement in the Republican rebellion in Florence against the Medici, in the years around 1530 Michelangelo moved from sculpture and architecture to create and design paintings and highly finished graphic works, the so-called presentation drawings, covering both religious and mythological subjects, in both of which areas Filippino could have provided important precedents. Michelangelo’s design for the devotional panel the Noli Me Tangere, ultimately made as a gift for Vittoria Colonna, realised by Jacopo Pontormo, recalls Filippino’s invention, exemplified by the exquisite small altarpiece the Meeting at the Golden Gate, of 1497, now in Copenhagen (fig. 0.1).24 Michelangelo’s design and indeed Pontormo’s own Visitation in the parish church of San Michele e San Francesco, Carmignano, of 1528-29, depend for their impact on the movement of elegant draped figures to impress the viewer in an intensely dramatic way, echoing Filippino’s precedent, resonating precisely with the point Vasari made. In Rome in the mid 1530s, working again for the Medici Pope, Clement VII, Michelangelo had a new task, the reworking of the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel to create the Last Judgement (fig. 11.5). 22 23 24

Louvre, Département des Art Graphiques, Paris, 838. C. de Tolnay, Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo, 4 vols., Novara 1975-80, II, 30-31, no. 186. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 529 There are two versions, ascribed to Pontormo: Private collection, Busto Arsizio; and Casa Buonarroti, Florence. See V. Romani in: Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, cat. exh. Florence (Casa Buonarroti), Florence 2005, P. Ragionieri (ed.), 86-88, cat. no. 21. Filippino Lippi, Meeting at the Golden Gate, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 1), 596, cat. no. 53.

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Figure 11.7 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Last Judgement, 1537-1541, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome

As Johannes Wilde astutely realised, the early conception for this, shown in a drawing in the Casa Buonarroti Florence, in which the original altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin from Sixtus IV’s decoration of the chapel around 1480, was to be surrounded with the Judgement scene, was clearly inspired by the arrangement of the altar wall of the Carafa Chapel, where the mural of the Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 11.8 Filippino Lippi, Assumption and Annunciation, 1488-1493, fresco, 711.6 × 1110 cm. Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel

Assumption of the Virgin envelops the altar piece of the Annunciation with its frame, standing proud of the wall (fig. 8.1).25 25

J. Wilde, ‘Der Ursprüngliche plan Michelangelos zum Jüngsten Gericht’, Die Graphische Künste, Neue Folge, 1 (1936), 10. For the drawing see Tolnay, op. cit. (note 22), 21-23, no. 346 recto. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 11.9. Cristoforo Robetta, Adoration of the Magi, engraving, 30.1 × 28.1 cm. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art

Indeed the dynamic build towards the centre of the composition, especially with the rising elements to the left, retains a memory of Filippino’s conception, as does the division of the whole composition. It has been suggested that the central group around Christ and the Virgin resembles Leonardo’s unfinished Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi.26 This may be the case; however, a closer parallel is actually found in Filippino’s 26

J. Hall, Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body, New York 2005, 138.

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composition of the subject, also in the Uffizi. In fact, Michelangelo seems to have used the rather altered version of Filippino’s Adoration engraved by Cristofano Robetta, which was reversed and more tightly drawn together and may, indeed, refer to Leonardo’s composition as well (fig. 11.6).27 The arrangement of figures is quite similar, notably the position of the kneeling figures and the standing figures either side. Driven by the imperative of the demanding tasks of designing both the Ceiling and the Last Judgement, Michelangelo had to cast his net pretty wide, and this is but one of many probable print sources for the Last Judgement. The parallels suggested here are all contestable. Yet there is good reason to be wary of a dominant understanding of Michelangelo that puts too exclusive an emphasis upon what are often seen as a canonical set of influences from Masaccio and Donatello, inculcated through the formation with his masters Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. In fact, as has been noted, Michelangelo forcefully sought to suppress the memory of his formation with Ghirlandaio in particular. Furthermore, he also hinted at the possibility of the Sistine Ceiling failing to please its viewers because it risked being boring, something he wished to avoid. This sensitivity, alien, one might think, to a Ghirlandaio or perhaps even a Raphael, was refined in the young Michelangelo in Florence in the 1480s and 1490s as he was exposed to the extraordinary inventiveness around him. For Michelangelo, as he matured as an artist in the context of High Renaissance Rome, designing a tomb and painting the Sistine Ceiling for Julius II, Filippino’s example seems to have suggested, vividly, what art should be in a broad range of ways that comprehended the conception of individual figures, ­narrative composition, architectural design and ornament. It continued to be relevant a quarter of a century later, as Michelangelo reconfigured himself as a mural painter once more, creating the Last Judgement. Bibliography Bambach, C., Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer, cat. exh. New York (Metro­ politan Museum), New York 2017. Cellini, B., La vita, G. D. Bonino (ed.), Turin 1973. Condivi, A., Vita di Michelangelo, G. Nencioni (ed.), Florence 1998.

27

A. Hind, Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue, 7 vols., London/New York 1938-1948, I, 200, cat. no. D. II. 10.

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Frey, C. (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. Gaye, G., Carteggio inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI, Florence 1839-40. Hall, J., Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body, New York 2005. Hind, A., Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue, 7 vols., London/New York 1938-1948. Hirst, M., Michelangelo, The Achievement of Fame 1475-1534, New Haven/London 2011. Poggi, G., Barocchi P., Ristori R., (eds.), Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, Florence 19651979. Robertson, C., ‘Bramante, Michelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), 91-105. Robertson, C., ‘Riflessioni sulle architetture dipinti della Capella Sistina’, in: K. WeilGarris Brandt, (ed.), Michelangelo e la Capella Sistina, Atti del Convegno Internazio­ nale di Studi, Roma, marzo 1990, Vatican/Tokyo/Novara 1994, 155-157. Tolnay, C. de, Corpus dei Disegni di Michelangelo, 4 vols., Novara 1975-80 Vasari, G., La Vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, P. Barocchi (ed.), 5 vols, Milan 1962. Vasari, G., Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, (eds.) 6 vols., Firenze 1966-1987. Wilde, J., ‘Der Ursprüngliche plan Michelangelos zum Jüngsten Gericht’, Die Graphi­ sche Künste, Neue Folge, 1 (1936). Zambrano, P. and Nelson, J. K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004.

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Chapter 12

Reconsidering Lucchese Painting after Filippino Christopher Daly By 1483, two major paintings by Filippino Lippi could be found in Lucca. His altarpiece commissioned by Nicolao Bernardi for the church of Santa Maria del Corso, comprising a polychrome wooden sculpture of Saint Anthony Abbot by Benedetto da Maiano (now Lucca, Museo di Villa Guinigi) and painted side panels by Filippino (now Pasadena, Cal., Norton Simon Museum), was completed and installed by September of that year (fig. 4.2, 4.9, 4.10). His multipanelled altarpiece for Francesco Magrini’s chapel in San Michele in Foro – of which the central compartment depicting Saints Roch, Sebastian, Jerome and Helena survives in the church – was completed around the same time, if not a year or two earlier (fig. 4.1). In terms of their deeply meditative atmosphere and heightened attention to Netherlandish painting, both paintings are watersheds in Filippino’s stylistic development. They are also major turning points in Lucca’s local artistic culture, since Lucchese artists responded to the works of Filippino well into the sixteenth century. The precise nature of this response, however, remains ambiguous, and the question of why Filippino was such an important and long-lasting point of reference for the Lucchese remains open. Methodologically speaking, the study of late fifteenth-century Lucchese painting presents an unusual historiographic progression. All of Lucca’s painters emerged in scholarship as unnamed masters invented entirely by connoisseurship; as a result, the subsequent attempts to unite these painters and write for them a shared history have relied heavily on the stylistic deductions. For example, the Lucchese are usually described as having worked in an ‘eclecticism’ that parallels the city’s mercantile culture, which they transformed into a ‘collective homogeneity’ or ‘stylistic orthodoxy.’1 Although these characterizations are more reflective of the artists’ prolonged historiographic emergence than of their fifteenth-century reality, they have been more or less grafted onto 1 These characterizations derive from the two pioneering studies of late Quattrocento Lucchese painting: M. Ferretti, ‘Percorso Lucchese (pittori di fine ‘400),’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Ser. III, 5 (1975), 1033-1065; and M. Natale, ‘Note sulla pittura lucchese alla fine del Quattrocento,’ The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 8 (1980), 35-62. ← Anonymous Lucchese Painter, Annunciation, detail of fig. 12.5

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their historical identities, all retrieved from the archives in the mid-1980s.2 By heightening our awareness of this evolution and offering an alternative approach to the impact of Filippino, this essay aims to lay the groundwork for a new way of thinking about late fifteenth-century Lucchese painting, one which treats the local engagement with Florentine art with more prudence and multivalence. The first Lucchese painter to appear was the Master of the Lathrop Tondo, a personality invented by Berenson in 1906 around a tondo then in the collection of Francis Lathrop in New York and now at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.3 Stressed by Berenson as a follower of, but by no means inferior to, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio, who executed an important altarpiece for Lucca’s cathedral in 1479, this painter was followed some fifty years later by Richard Offner’s Master of the Immaculate Conception, a ‘provincial’ and ‘rustic’ follower of Filippino and Ghirlandaio whose name derived from the subject of the large anconetta from San Francesco in Lucca, now at the Museo di Villa Guinigi.4 In 1965, Everett Fahy intuited the Lucchese origins of Berenson’s enigmatic Stratonice Master – so-named after the subject of two imaginative cassone panels at the Huntington Museum in San Marino – whose activity had previously oscillated between Florence and Siena.5 The historical identities for each of these painters finally emerged in 1985, when Maurizia Tazartes uncovered a number of documents relevant to their paintings. The Master of the Lathrop Tondo became Michelangelo di Pietro Membrini (formerly read as ‘Mencherini’), Pistoiese by birth but active in Lucca from 1484

2 The identifications for each artist will be discussed in individual notes. For the most thorough accounts of Lucchese painting dating after the masters’ identifications, see C. Baracchini and M. T. Filieri, ‘Pittori a Lucca tra ‘400 e ‘500—1—: Annotazioni in margine,’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 16 (1986), 743-773; G. Ghilarducci and C. Ferri, ‘Notizie biografiche,’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, 16 (1986), 774-824; D. Cimorelli and C. Baracchini (eds.), Matteo Civitali e il suo tempo: Pittori, scultori e orafi a Lucca nel tardo Quattrocento, cat. exh., Lucca (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi), Milan 2004; and M. Tazartes, Fucina Lucchese: Maestri, botteghe, mercanti in una città del Quattrocento, Pisa 2007. 3 B. Berenson, ‘Le pitture italiane nella raccolta Yerkes lasciate di recente al Metropolitan Museum di Nuova-York,’ Rassegna d’arte, 6 (1906), 37-38. His oeuvre was significantly expanded by C. L. Ragghianti, ‘Il Pittore dei Guinigi,’ Critica d’arte, 8 (1955), 137-150, and E. Fahy, ‘A Lucchese follower of Filippino Lippi,’ Paragone 16 (1965), 9-20. 4 Offner’s master was first published by S. Symeonides, ‘An Altarpiece by the “Lucchese Master of the Immaculate Conception”,’ Marysyas 8 (1959), 55-66. His oeuvre was significantly enlarged by E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo, New York 1976 (originally the author’s 1968 PhD dissertation), 177-178. 5 E. Fahy, ‘Some Notes on the Stratonice Master,’ Paragone 12 (1966), 17-28.

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Figure 12.1 Antonio Corsi, Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Peter, 1489, tempera (?) on panel, 140 × 140 cm. Capannori, Pieve di San Pietro di Vorno

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until his death in 1525;6 the Master of the Immaculate Conception became Vincenzo d’Antonio Frediani, head of Lucca’s most prolific painting workshop from the late 1470s until his death in 1505;7 and the Stratonice Master became Michele Ciampanti, a painter of a slightly earlier generation active primarily in Lucca but also in Pisa and Pietrasanta.8 The first attempts to consider this core group of Lucchese painters together were undertaken before the recovery of their historical identities. In 1975, Massimo Ferretti published his fundamental article ‘Percorso Lucchese,’ in which he sought to map for these masters a common stylistic heritage.9 In so doing, he detected some slight stylistic divergences in the oeuvres of the Master of the Immaculate Conception and the Master of the Lathrop Tondo and extracted from each the Pittore di Paolo Buonvisi, now generally recognized as Vincenzo Frediani’s early phase,10 and the Master of the Crocefisso dei Bianchi, later identified with Frediani’s pupil, Ranieri di Leonardo da Pisa.11 Yet Ferretti’s connoisseurship was more than just taxonomic; in dividing two painters into four, he was able to trace a larger network of artists who, in theory, had previously been indistinguishable. Calling this phenomenon a ‘philological impasse,’ Ferretti wondered if these painters’ earlier indistinguishability might be indicative of their historical circumstances, hypothesizing an artistic ‘corporatism’ unique to fifteenth-century Lucca.12 This idea was significantly expounded by Mauro Natale, who in 1980 placed the members of Ferretti’s ‘strange stylistic solidarity’ in Lucca’s socio-economic context, particularly its 6 7 8 9 10

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M. Tazartes, ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – III. Michele Angelo (del fu Pietro “Mencherini”): il Maestro del Tondo Lathrop?’, Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 26 (1985), 28-49. M. Tazartes, ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – I. Vincenzo di Antonio Frediani ‘pictor de Luca’: il Maestro dell’Immacolata Concezione?’, Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 26 (1985), 4-17. M. Tazartes, ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – II. Michele Ciampanti: il Maestro di Stratonice?,” Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 26 (1985), 18-27. See also Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 42-52. Ferretti, op. cit. (note 1). This identification is due to Baracchini and Filieri, op. cit. (note 2), 750. Though generally accepted, it has recently been called into question by R. Massagli, ‘Il pittore di Paolo Buonvisi: proposte per un’identità,’ Paragone 54 (2003), 3-23, who upholds the distinction between Frediani and the Pittore di Paolo Buonvisi, tentatively proposing the latter is identifiable with Luca d’Ubertini da Montalcino. Baracchini and Filieri, op. cit. (note 2), 769-772. Ferretti, op. cit. (note 1), esp. 1052-1053 (‘il panorama della pittura lucchese negli ultimi due decenni del secolo appare dunque piuttosto uniforme. Se infatti questi impacci “filologici” oltre che un fine hanno senso in se stessi, il discernimento del Maestro dell’Immacolata Concezione dal Pittori di Paolo Buonvisi e dal Maestro di Stratonice (come poi del Maestro del tondo Lathrop vero da quello fittizio) significa una sostanziale compattezza di scelte e di elaborazioni. […] … questa situazione di solidarietà stilistica, si direbbe quasi di “corpo­ rativismo”’).

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tradition for artisanal quality control, regulated by the so-called Statute of the Court of Merchants.13 Revised in 1376 and geared primarily toward the city’s lucrative production of silk, the Statute does not make any reference to painters, who were apparently without a local guild; nonetheless, Natale provocatively suggested that a similarly regulative tendency may have underpinned their practice.14 Referring to the Master of the Lathrop Tondo, the Master of the Immaculate Conception and the Pittore di Paolo Buonvisi’s shared debt to Filippino, Ghirlandaio and Flemish painting as evidence of a ‘stylistic homogeneity’ or ‘stylistic orthodoxy,’ initiated between 1482 and 1483 – that is, after the arrival of Filippino and Ghirlandaio’s altarpieces – Natale implied that this may have been what caused the ‘systematic anonymity’ of Lucca’s painters in modern scholarship.15 As a case in point, he extracted the works of a previously unrecognized Lucchese painter, the Master of San Filippo (later identified with Sano Ciampanti, son of Michele, the ex-Stratonice Master), from the late works of the Stratonice Master.16 The narrative of Lucchese ‘artistic corporatism’ is attractive in the way it translates the remarkable stylistic matrix of the local painters onto the city’s complex and varied artisanal environment. Indeed, it continues to be repeated with little modification as we continue to learn about many of the painters’ close relationships with the local sculptors, like Matteo Civitali, and goldsmiths, like Francesco Marti.17 However, while the consistently high quality of most fifteenth-century Lucchese painting might be associable with an established local tradition of quality control, it is difficult to accept that this could 13

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Natale, op. cit. (note 1), 35-37, esp. 37 (‘La storia culturale di Lucca risulta incomprensibile se non tiene conto del valore normativo che ebbe l’organizzazione delle varie fasi della lavorazione della seta e del commercio’). For discussion of the Statues of the Court of Merchants and Lucca’s artisanal-economic climate, see M. E. Bratchel, Lucca, 1430-1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic, Oxford 2004. Natale, ibid., 37 (‘Il particolare assetto politico, la struttura sociale e l’accurata organiz­ zazione del lavoro rendono Lucca un caso singolare nel contesto storico dell’Italia quattro­ centesca…Un’analoga singolarità coinvolge anche la produzione artistica di questo periodo, sistematicamente anonima, omogenea dal punto di vista dello stile… ’). Natale, ibid., esp. 37 (quoted in note 14 above) and 46 (‘Gli anni 1482-1483 segnano dunque l’inizio a Lucca di un’ortodossia stilistica su parametri culturali altrove transitori ma che qui agiranno con continuità per circa trent’anni’). For the identification of the Master of San Filippo with Sano Ciampanti, see Baracchini and Filieri, op. cit. (note 2), 756-759. For a comprehensive treatment of the Ciampanti workshop, see R. Massagli, ‘La bottega dei Ciampanti: il Maestro di Stratonice e il Maestro di San Filippo,’ Proporzioni, 2/3, 2001/2002 (2003), 59-103. For the interrelationships of Lucca’s various artisanal workshops – a scenario which is by no means unique to Lucca – see especially the exhibition catalogue Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 2) and Tazartes, op cit. (note 2).

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trickle over into a downright ‘stylistic homogeneity.’ Quality and style are two very different concepts. And if these painters were so homogeneous to the point of becoming a ‘philological impasse,’ as described by Ferretti, then how are we to understand how their distinctive artistic personalities were isolated in the first place? A major weakness of this proposal is that it allows little room for the Lucchese artists who do not correspond to the proposed Filippinesque ‘orthodoxy,’ such as Antonio di Francesco Corsi. Formerly known as the Pittore Compitese, Corsi was active at exactly the same moment as the painters mentioned above and enjoyed virtually the same patronage.18 But his stylistic solutions, marked by a preference for stiff, wooden figures bathed in a violently contrasting ­chiaroscuro – seen in his two documented altarpieces at San Pietro di Vorno (fig. 12.1) and Sant’Andrea di Compito – are totally alien to the stereotypically graceful language of Frediani, Membrini and the Ciampanti. As a result, Corsi has been considered a ‘counter-current’ to his Lucchese contemporaries and conveniently excluded from their narrative of Filippinesque homogeneity.19 Positioning Corsi’s works alongside those of his colleagues, however, allows a more diverse panorama of Lucchese painting to emerge, suggesting a need to rethink the established account with its heavy reliance on Filippino and his contemporary Florentines. Instead of stressing these painters’ broad similarities, it may be more productive to refocus attention on the idiosyncrasies through which they first emerged. Central to their differences is in fact the widespread and varying response in Lucca to Filippino, whose works were indeed processed by many of the local painters but in remarkably different terms. Vincenzo Frediani is perhaps the only Lucchese painter who can be considered an outright follower of Filippino. Frediani was in fact documented in Florence in 1484, at work on the altarpiece that was commissioned from him by the heirs of Domenico del Voglia for the Lucchese church of San Romano (fig. 12.2).20 Formerly at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin and now destroyed, Filippino’s direct involvement in this altarpiece has been hypothesized, but as 18 19 20

On Antonio Corsi, see A. G. De Marchi, ‘Ipotesi sul percorso di Antonio di Francesco Corsi detto Corsetto,’ Antichità Viva, 36, (1997), nos. 5-6, 82-86; and Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 99-101. The characterization of Corsi as ‘controcorrente’ is found in Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 101102. The painter was notably absent from the 2004 Matteo Civitali exhibition in which his colleagues were well represented. For the contract for this work, in which Frediani agrees to paint the altarpiece in Florence and then bring it back to Lucca, see G. Concioni in Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 2), 557. It remains unclear why Frediani executed the painting in Florence rather than Lucca. Should it have been because the patron desired Filippino’s involvement, one would imagine that Filippino, rather than Frediani, would have received the commission.

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Figure 12.2 Vincenzo Frediani, Virgin and Child with Two Angels and Saints Nicholas, Vincent Ferrer, Dominic and Peter Martyr, 1484, tempera (?) on panel, 154 × 137 cm. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum (destroyed 1945)

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far as can be judged from old photographs, its consistent execution – polished and plastic but flimsy and mechanical – indicates that it is by Frediani alone during the earlier and higher-quality phase of his development.21 The suggestion that some of the figures are based on designs by Filippino seems nonetheless correct, as Frediani certainly had close access to a number of Filippino’s drawings and paintings from this period. The two saints flanking the Madonna in another altarpiece formerly in Berlin (Kaiser Friedrich Museum, inv. 98), rightly attributed to Frediani by Fahy,22 are based on drawings by Filippino,23 and Frediani has been plausibly suggested as the author of the small, damaged copy (fig. 12.3) of Filippino’s great Corsini Tondo (Florence, Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, fig. 1.2), a work which presumably never left Florence.24 In all likelihood, Frediani was the artist responsible for transmitting knowledge of Filippino’s tondo back to Lucca, where around 1500 it was interpreted in a little-known tondo now at the Courtauld Institute in London (fig. 12.4). Currently bearing an implausible attribution to the anonymous Florentine known as the Master of the Holden Tondo,25 the Courtauld tondo is undoubt21

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Massagli, op. cit. (note 10), 72, suggested that although Frediani received the commission, the painting should be interpreted as ‘il segno di una partecipazione attiva, almeno a livello compositivo e stilistico, di Filippino Lippi.’ This idea was echoed by P. Zambrano, in P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 235-236, 238, who considered the painting designed by Filippino and executed by his workshop in collaboration with Frediani. The same author later suggested that the two kneeling saints were painted by Filippino himself; see P. Zambrano, ‘Matteo Civitali: Lucca (exhibition review),’ Burlington Magazine, 146 (2004), 637-639, esp. 638. Fahy, op. cit. (note 4), 177. The attribution to Frediani is sometimes rejected due to the painting’s high quality, but none of the alternative proposals – including Membrini, Filippino’s workshop, and Matteo Civitali – are convincing. As far as can be judged from photographs, the types and handling are characteristic of Frediani. For some of the alternative attributions, see A. Ugolini, ‘Due singolari pale e altri appunti lucchesi,’ Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 36 (1988), 81-92, esp. 85 (as Membrini); M. Tazartes, ‘Michelangelo di Pietro Mencherini, un Pistoiese a Lucca tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento,’ Storia dell’arte, 97 (1999), 300-310, esp. 303 (as Membrini); G. Dalli Regoli, ‘Eclettici Lucchesi: novità per Michele Angelo di Pietro,’ Critica d’arte, 8 (2000), 27-42, esp. 38 (as ‘bottega di Filippino e i pittori lucchesi’); and Zambrano, op. cit. ‘Matteo Civitali’ (note 21), 638 (as possibly Matteo Civitali). For Filippino’s drawings and their relationship to the altarpiece, see C. C. Bambach in G. R. Goldner and C. C. Bambach (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997, cats. 22, 25 (with previous bibliography). For the attribution to Frediani see Fahy, op. cit. (note 4), 178. Formerly at the New-York Historical Society (inv. 1867-320), the painting was sold at Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, on 9 October 1980 (lot 33) and remains untraced. The attribution to the Master of the Holden Tondo is due to Fahy, op. cit. (note 4), 171. Perhaps of Northern European origin, the Master of the Holden Tondo’s putative activity

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Figure 12.3 Vincenzo Frediani, Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1484, tempera (?) on panel, 43.2 × 29.2 cm. Present whereabouts unknown

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Figure 12.4 Anonymous Lucchese painter, Virgin and Child with Three Angels, c. 1500, oil on panel, 85 cm. (diameter). London, Courtauld Institute Galleries

edly Lucchese. It is certainly by the same hand as the large Annunciation at the Bode-Museum in Berlin (fig. 12.5), in which the figures are portrayed with the same spidery physiognomies and rope-like draperies and the setting is conceived with a similar proclivity for anecdotal detail.26 The Annunciation also

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in Florence may be confirmed by his obvious authorship of the Baptism of Christ frescoed in the Pieve di San Leolino in Panzano in Chianti, a work hitherto assigned to Raffaellino del Garbo. Recognized as Lucchese by G. Dalli Regoli in a 1985 letter to the museum (cited in Gemäldegalerie Berlin: Gesamtverzeichnis, Berlin 1996, 73), the Annunciation’s relationship

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Figure 12.5 Anonymous Lucchese painter, Annunciation, c. 1500-1510, oil on panel, 174.5 × 166.5 cm. Berlin, Bode Museum

notably includes a citation of another of Filippino’s Florentine compositions: the cloudlets of angels visible through the windows copied from those in the upper left corner of Filippino’s so-called Blue Madonna, an autograph late work at the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. to the Courtauld tondo was suggested by E. Fahy, ‘Some Early Italian Pictures in the Gambier-Parry Collection,’ Burlington Magazine, 109 (1967), 128-139, esp. 139 note 44, who later withdrew this proposal when he reassigned the Courtauld tondo alone to the Master of the Holden Tondo. An altarpiece of the Annunciation at San Michele a Corsanico in Massarosa, though of lower quality than both the Bode Annunciation or Courtauld tondo, is stylistically similar to them and may be a later work by the same hand.

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This later period of Filippino’s Florentine activity, rather than his Lucchese works of the early 1480s, was likewise most significant for Sano Ciampanti, the ex-Master of San Filippo. Like the anonymous painter of the Courtauld tondo, Sano borrowed Filippino’s compositions but never his figural style, choosing instead to invigorate the Florentine’s designs with his distinctive gnarled and highly expressive linearity. He freely adapted Filippino’s altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1496 for the Florentine church of San Donato a Scopeto (now Florence, Uffizi), in at least three paintings, including a tondo formerly on the Florentine art market;27 a predella panel now at the Detroit Institute of Arts (to which a virtually unknown Flight into Egypt formerly in the Otto Lanz collection in Amsterdam almost certainly belonged; fig. 12.6);28 and a beautiful Madonna of unknown whereabouts that was recognized as Sano’s by Federico Zeri (fig. 12.7).29 A predella panel at the Courtauld Institute, recently attributed to Sano but closer to the painter of the Courtauld tondo and the Bode-Museum’s Annunciation, similarly derives from the same altarpiece.30 27

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This tondo (panel, diameter 88 cm) last appeared at Sotheby’s, Florence, 23 May 1979 (lot 164) with an attribution to Bartolomeo di Giovanni. Sano Ciampanti’s authorship was suggested by Ugolini, op. cit. (note 22), 88, and accepted Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 108. Massagli, and later also Ugolini, followed Ferretti in assigning it to Membrini; see M. Ferretti, ‘Pisa 1493: Inizi di Niccolò pittore,’ in: M. Natale (ed.), Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, Milan, 1984, I, 249-262, esp. 260 note 37; Massagli, op. cit. (note 16); A. Ugolini, ‘Alcune pitture del tardo Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento fra Lucca e Napoli,’ Arte Cristiana 99 (2011), 185-196, esp. 187. For the Detroit panel (inv. 30.279; panel, 28.6 × 33.5 cm), see M. T. Filieri, ‘Tre note sull’arte Lucchese,’ in: K. Bergdolt and G. Bonsanti (eds.), Opere d giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europei dedicati a Max Seidel, 2001, 265-274, esp. 207, where it’s connected to the Nativity now in the Collezione Banca del Monte di Lucca and both are proposed as elements of the predella of Sano’s altarpiece painted in 1497 for San Jacopo della Tomba, Lucca. The central panel of this altarpiece last appeared at Finarte, Milan, 27 March 1990, lot 51. The Flight into Egypt, whose appearance is known to me from a photograph at the Villa I Tatti, Florence (inv. 123341), where it is filed as Liberale da Verona, can be associated with these two panels on the basis of its style and iconography. Though its dimensions are not recorded, the handling as perceptible in the photograph argues for a small-scale and matches the other two panels. As far as I have been able to ascertain, a photograph of the Flight has not yet been published. This painting last appeared at the sale of H. Granville Murray Stewart’s collection at Christie’s, London, 26 February 1926 (lot 41 as Lorenzo di Credi). Zeri’s undated attribution is recorded on the back of his photographs at the Fototeca Zeri, Bologna (photo inv. nos. 42953, 42954). The attribution to Sano Ciampanti is due to Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 107. The pasty handling and thin, tubular draperies in the Courtauld panel (inv. P.1966.GP.259) and its two companions (Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum, inv. 3473, 3478) are incompatible with Sano’s other predella panels (such as those mentioned in note 28) but seem to match the Bode Annunciation. It is worth considering whether or not the London-Maastricht

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Figure 12.6 Sano Ciampanti, The Flight into Egypt, 1497, tempera on panel, dimensions unknown. Present whereabouts unknown

Sano Ciampanti’s attention to Filippino’s Nerli Altarpiece for Santo Spirito in Florence (in situ) was also acute, as demonstrated by the several occasions in which he freely adapted the figure of Saint Catherine.31 His tondo at the Bob Jones University Museum in Greenville, South Carolina, likewise takes its figures of the Infant Christ and Saint John from the Nerli Altarpiece, while the two angels flanking the Madonna in this picture are more liberally interpreted from Filippino’s now fragmentary tondo divided between the National Gallery in London and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg.32

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panels form the predella of the Bode Annunciation. Their combined width (156 cm.) is a bit smaller than that of the altarpiece (166.5 cm) but this discrepancy could be resolved with the addition of dividing elements between the scenes and a fourth panel. This format would match the predella of Membrini’s Annunciation at Santissima Annunziata, Lucca. See, for instance, the Magdalen in the ex-Heim altarpiece (sold, Sotheby’s, London, 8 December 1993, lot 54) or the figure of Saint Lucy in the triptych at the Museo di Villa Gunigi, Lucca (fig. 12.8 in the present essay). The Greenville tondo’s citation of the Nerli Altarpiece and the London-Strasbourg fragments is noted by Nelson, in Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 21), 591. For repro­ duction of the Greenville tondo, see Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), fig. 109.

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Figure 12.7 Sano Ciampanti, Virgin and Child, late 1490s, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 64 × 46.5 cm. Present whereabouts unknown

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Although these later Florentine works by Filippino could have been introduced to Lucca during the painter’s little-known and apparently brief sojourn in the city in 1498,33 they could also have been stimulated by open, fluid contacts between the two cities that were maintained throughout the Quattrocento. This more dynamic situation for the Lucchese corresponds to what is known about the local artists’ careers prior to Filippino’s arrival in the 1480s. Among the painters, Michele Ciampanti, for instance, undoubtedly established a broad range of contacts during his documented activity for the Opera del Duomo in Pisa in 1467, where he would have crossed paths with a number of artists from throughout Italy, including Andrea Mantegna.34 Vincenzo Frediani was in Florence in 1493, when he was present at the baptism of Ghirlandaio’s daughter, Francesca, a suggestive indicator of the two painters’ close rapport.35 Michelangelo Membrini – no less a rival of Filippino and whose relentless pursuit of the antique was stimulated by at least one Roman sojourn and an early exposure to the domus aurea36 – may have first come into contact with Lippi’s 33

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On 29 December 1498 the comune of Pisa, where Filippino was apparently working, granted him fifteen days to travel to Lucca. On 5 January 1499 (modern style) this was extended to the entire month of January. For these documents, see M. Fanucci Lovitch, Artisti attivi a Pisa fra XIII e XVIII secolo, Pisa 1991, 106. Michele Ciampanti – if he is indeed identifiable with the ‘Michele da Lucca’ mentioned in the documents, as seems likely – executed two frescos for the Casa dell’Opera del Duomo in Pisa in 1467. On the numerous Florentine painters active in Pisa (including Gozzoli, Baldovinetti and Cosimo Rosselli in the 1460s and Botticelli and Ghirlandaio in the 1470s) and the Sienese artists in Lucca (among them Neroccio and Francesco di Giorgio), see Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 11-22, 44. On Mantegna’s invitation to the Opera del Duomo in Pisa in 1467, see E. Tietze-Conrat, Mantegna: Paintings, Drawings, Engravings. Complete Edition, London/New York 1955, 14. For the presence of ‘Vincenzo da Lucca…pittor[e]’ at the baptism of Francesca del Ghirlandaio on 26 March 1493, see L. Venturini (ed.), Ghirlandaria: Un manoscritto di ricordi della famiglia Ghirlandaio, Florence 2017, 213. The identification of this ‘Vincenzo da Lucca’ with Frediani, proposed by N. Baldini, ‘ “Tempi Felici”: La storia della famiglia del Ghirlandaio nelle carte conservate presso il fondo dell’Arciconfraternita del Gonfalone dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano,’ in Ghirlandaria (cit. above), 1-183, esp. 97-99, can be confirmed by Frediani’s absence from Lucca from 23 October 1492 until 17 April 1493 (he was again absent from 17 May 1493 until 24 February 1494). That Frediani was in Florence during these months rules out the proposal that he was working in Rome, suggested by R. Massagli, ‘Michele Angelo da Lucca nella Roma di Pintoricchio,’ in Pintoricchio, cat. exh. Perugia-Spello (Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria-Palazzo dei Priori), Milan 2008, 7591, esp. 81-83. It may be significant to remember here that when Frediani was sent to Florence in 1483 to execute the Del Voglia altarpiece (see note 20), he was asked to use Domenico Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece in Lucca Cathedral as a model. Membrini’s activity in Rome is attested by the inscription ‘MIC.ELANGOLO DA LUCA’ on the wall of the domus aurea and the large Flagellation in the Pinacoteca of San Paolo fuori le Mura, convincingly attributed to him by G. Dalli Regoli, op. cit. (note 22), 32-42. I am not

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works not in Lucca but during his training in Pistoia, where in 1479 Filippino painted a now lost altarpiece for the Bracali Chapel in the church of the Annunziata.37 Moreover, Lucchese painters frequently travelled to Florence to buy pigments; as Ferretti described, these trips certainly saw the painters acquiring more than just colours.38 Specifics aside, the fact that artistic transmission and dialogue was open, fluid and prolonged, should be central to our understanding of the artistic landscape of late fifteenth-century Lucca. With all this said, we are still left with the question of why the Lucchese painters’ engaged in this relentless cultivation of sources and motifs, and how can this can be understood within the city’s longstanding tradition of artisanal quality control. From here we can turn back to the neglected Antonio Corsi. In 1494 Lucchese officials had to write to Pietro Perugino, then operating out of Florence, to apologize for a menacing letter he received from Corsi, apparently seeking to thwart Perugino from securing local patronage.39 This situation calls into question the motivations behind the Peruginesque reflections in Corsi’s paintings, such as his altarpiece executed in 1489 for San Pietro di Vorno (fig. 12.1), which is undeniably related in both composition and tone to the Perugino altarpiece that successfully made it to Lucca, to the church of San Girolamo (now Chantilly, Musée Condé).40 Corsi’s metallic modeling and sharp treatment of light could not be more different from Perugino’s warm, diffuse lighting and the solemn composure of his figures. If style is what was at stake, then perhaps Corsi was overtly challenging Perugino by translating his design into something more personal. As perceptively noted by Ferretti in 1975, it might be dangerous to take this episode of Corsi’s biography as indicative of the Lucchese situation at large, but the frequency and nature of his antagonism, which was directed also toward the Pistoia-born Membrini, suggests a deeply competitive aspect of

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able to accept the suggestion that Membrini worked on Pinturricchio’s frescos in the Sala dei Semidei in the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri, Rome, or Pandolfo Petrucci’s camera bella in Siena, both proposed by N. Dacos, ‘De Pinturicchio à Michelangelo di Pietro da Lucca: Les premiers grotesques à Sienne,’ in: E. Cioni, D. Fausti, R. Guerrini (eds.), Umanesimo a Siena: letteratura, arti figurative, musica, Siena 1994, 320-324 (where the inscription in the domus aurea is discussed and linked to Membrini). For an in-depth discussion of Membrini’s Roman activity, see Massagli, op. cit. (note 35), 75-91. On the Bracali altarpiece, see N. Pons, ‘Importanti opere perdute di pittori fiorentini a Pistoia e una aggiunta al Maestro di Apollo e Dafne,’ in: C. D’Afflito (ed.), Fra Paolino e la pittura a Pistoia nel primo ‘500, cat. exh, Pistoia (Museo Civico), Venice 1996, 50-53. M. Ferretti, ‘Tre temi da approfondire,’ in Matteo Civitali, op. cit. (note 2), 176. For recent discussion of this famous letter, see Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 99. For the Perugino’s impact in Lucca and its supposed provenance from S. Girolamo, Lucca, see Ferretti, op. cit. (note 38), 177-178, where it is also noted that Corsi’s Vorno altarpiece borrows the shell niche from the Perugino at Chantilly.

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Lucca’s artistic climate.41 Viewing Corsi’s antagonism in the context of the predominately, but not exclusively, local patronage that the Lucchese enjoyed, it seems that the competition between the city’s artists was quite intense. The threat of losing patronage to precocious artists from nearby Florence, such as Perugino and Filippino, may have heightened the Lucchese need to appropriate the style of their competitors. Thus, as the Lucchese took more from Filippino, subsuming his works in a parallel artistic environment, there became less of need for Lucchese patrons to hire Filippino himself, reducing the competition to each other. It may therefore be no coincidence that this ‘stylistic anxiety’ toward Filippino first appeared after the arrival of his works in Lucca in 1482 and 1483, in the work of Frediani and the young Membrini, and was reignited after Filippino’s documented visit to Lucca in 1498, when Sano Ciampanti and the anonymous painter of the Courtauld tondo began vigorously modifying Filippino’s Florentine compositions. This scenario translates the previous notions of a ‘stylistic corporatism’ and ‘collectivism’ into an appropriative mentality, which would in turn be more reflective of the painters’ local workshop tactics – the regulation of a guild seemingly absent – than of a rigidly defined local idiom. In translating the situation of artistic influence into one of stylistic appropriation, the Lucchese assume a greater mobility, flexibility, and individuality in the cultivation of their distinctive manners, rather than merely succumbing to the influence of a Florentine ‘genius’ like Filippino. I would like to conclude with two reconstructive points, the first of which involves Filippino himself. As previously mentioned, compared to the frequency with which Sano Ciampanti adapted Filippino’s Florentine commissions, his attention to Filippino’s Lucchese commissions was limited. Filippino’s Bernardi Altarpiece nonetheless provided the model for the triptych by Sano Ciampanti now at the Museo di Villa Guinigi (fig. 12.8). Both complexes were conceived with a central image (sculpted in Filippino’s, painted in Ciampanti’s) flanked by side panels depicting pairs of full-length saints and a semicircular crowning element depicting the Annunciation. This latter element is still in place atop Ciampanti’s altarpiece, but Filippino’s is known only through its description in his altarpiece’s original contract, where it is simply described

41

See Ferretti, op. cit. (note 1), 1053 (‘Cosa c’è dietro questo episodio: solo la natura prepotente e accaparratrice del Corsi o il tentativo di difesa degli interessi pittorici locali?’). At the time Ferretti was writing, Corsi’s artistic personality was unknown. On Corsi’s difficulties with Membrini, attested by a documented of 1494 in which Corsi specifically requests Membrini not be placed on the arbitration committee for his Sant’Andrea di Compito altarpiece, see Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 99-100 (where Corsi’s actions are again viewed as a defense of a ‘rigido corporativismo cittadino’).

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Figure 12.8 Sano Ciampanti, Virgin and Child with Two Angels and Saints John the Baptist, Catherine, Lucy and Joseph, and with the Annunciation and God the Father above, c. 1505-1510, tempera and oil (?) on panel, 156 × 47 cm. (central panel); 105 × 43 cm. (each side panel); 42 × 155 cm. (lunette). Lucca, Museo Nazionale Villa di Guinigi Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 12.9 Filippino Lippi, God the Father, c. 1482, tempera on panel, 56.3 × 49.5 cm. Private collection

as a ‘medio tondo’ of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate.42 However, since Ciampanti so closely followed the composition of Filippino’s side panels, it is tempting to wonder if he also followed the composition of Filippino’s now lost lunette. If this is indeed the case then I am inclined to suggest that Filippino’s fragmentary God the Father (fig. 12.9), recently rediscovered in a private collection,43 may be one of its fragments. From the point of view of 42

43

For the contract of the Bernardi Altarpiece, see Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 21), 619-620. A relationship between the formats of Filippino and Ciampanti’s triptychs was independently noted by A. De Marchi in his essay ‘Rimpieghi e pale composite; gli ultimi grandi polittici.’ My thanks to Prof. De Marchi for sharing his study with me. The fragment was published by P. Zambrano, ‘Un “Iddio Padre” di Filippino Lippi,’ in: A. Bacchi and L. M. Barbero (eds.), Studi in onore di Stefano Tumidei, Venice 2016, 80-88, who dated it to the same period as Filippino’s Lucchese altarpieces and suggested that it

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both style and costume the fragment is identical to the saints in Filippino’s side panels, and it easy to imagine the figure occupying the apex of a lunette in a position comparable to that of God the Father in Ciampanti’s triptych. Finally, I would like to call attention to an unpublished Lucchese altarpiece at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (fig. 12.10). Given to the university in 1956 by the famous American psychic Jeane Dixon,44 the painting depicts the Holy Family and an angel flanked by Saints Genesius and Blaise at the left and a young martyr saint (probably Saint Torpes) and the Archangel Raphael with Tobias at the right. Bearing a traditional attribution to Innocenzo da Imola, the picture is undoubtedly by Ranieri di Leonardo, the ex-Master of the Crocefisso dei Bianchi. Not only are Ranieri’s characteristic bloated and restrained figure types clearly visible through the altarpiece’s heavily repainted surface,45 its unusual iconography – with a group of saints flanking a Nativity group rather than the customary Virgin and Child – allows it to be identified with the ‘Nascita di nostro Signore con l’arcangelo Raffaele e altri Santi,’ commissioned from Ranieri by the operai of San Tommaso in Pelleria, Lucca, on 26 March 1510.46 This church patronized Ranieri on more than one occasion, and it is known to have had a chapel dedicated to Saint Genesius,47 prominently depicted in the Washington painting to the right of the Holy Family; no doubt the painting was commissioned for the altar of that chapel. In any case, it is worth noting in the context of the present paper that the figure of may be the ‘Dio Padre con molti fanciulli’ described by Vasari in San Francesco al Monte, Florence, as the work of Filippino. My thanks to the painting’s owner for allowing me to study it firsthand. 44 Inv. NMC 18; panel (cradled), 198 × 119.4 cm. The only published reference to the work appears to be R. Montgomery, The Gift of Prophesy: The Phenomenal Jeane Dixon, New York 1965, 137-139, where it is not reproduced. According to Montgomery, Dixon first saw the painting at the 1939 World’s Fair and later acquired it from an unspecified jewellery dealer in Washington, D.C. The painting does not appear in the catalogue of paintings exhibited at the World’s Fair. I am grateful to Katherine C. Santa Ana and Shane T. MacDonald for facilitating my firsthand study of this picture and supplying me with its file. 45 The types in the Washington altarpiece correspond to those in Ranieri’s former namepiece (see note 46) and his altarpieces at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. B.215) and San Colombano in Capannori. I thank Neville Rowley for facilitating my firsthand study of the Berlin altarpiece. 46 The contract for this commission was published by Fantucci Lovitch, op. cit. (note 34), 260-261, and Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 97 note 258. San Tommaso in Pelleria is the same church that in 1507 commissioned from Ranieri his former name-piece, an altarpiece of the Marriage of Saint Catherine with Saints Anthony Abbot and Porphyrius. Later transferred to the Oratorio dei Crocefisso dei Bianchi, this painting is now in the sacristy of Lucca’s cathedral. 47 Tazartes, op. cit. (note 2), 75 note 162, notes that a chapel dedicated to Saint Genesius in San Tommaso in Pelleria is mentioned in Castellio’s Visita Pastorale of 1575.

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Figure 12.10 Ranieri di Leonardo, Holy Family with an Angel and Saints Genesius, Blaise, Torpes (?) and the Archangel Raphael with Tobias, 1510, oil on panel, 198 × 119.4 cm. Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America

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Saint Genesius directly derives from the same saint in a badly damaged altarpiece by Ranieri’s teacher, Vincenzo Frediani, for the parish church of Boveglio near Lucca.48 In addition, the figure of the Virgin is based on one of Filippino Lippi’s late Florentine compositions of the Nativity, now lost but known through many copies, the best being the fine tondo by the Master of Memphis at the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon. The Washington altarpiece can therefore be added to the later echoes of Filippino’s work in the paintings of the Lucchese, where it is integrated with the memory of the most industrious local workshop of the Quattrocento, that of Frediani.49 Acknowledgements Many of the ideas in this essay took root in a seminar on artistic geographies offered by my doctoral advisor, Stephen J. Campbell, at Johns Hopkins University in Fall 2016. They will be expanded in my PhD dissertation on late Quattrocento Lucchese painting, currently in preparation. I thank Dr. Campbell for his thoughtful advice and comments on early drafts of this essay and for his enduring enthusiasm for and support of my project. Thanks also to my colleagues Marica Antonucci and Miriam Grotte-Jacobs for their comments on early versions of the presentation and paper. I am grateful to Geoffrey and Paula Nuttall for the invitation to present at the conference, and to Jonathan Katz Nelson for his endless encouragement and support with all things Filippino.

48 49

For this painting, formerly in a private Swiss collection and sold at Koller, Zurich, on 18 March 1999 (lot 58), see M. Natale, ‘Maestri del quattrocento lucchese,’ La provincia di Lucca, 9, 1971, 101-105, fig. 1. The following paintings can be added to Ranieri di Leonardo’s oeuvre: Madonna adoring the Child with a Shepherd, tondo (sold Fischer, Lucerne, 21-27 June 1960, lot 1740, as Bartolomeo di Giovanni); Saints Blaise and John the Baptist, left wing of an altarpiece (Moscow, Pushkin Museum, inv. 2); Madonna and Child Enthroned, fragment of the central section of an altarpiece (present whereabouts unknown; photo, Fototeca Zeri, no. 26818, as by an anonymous fifteenth-century Florentine); Madonna and Child with Saints Stephen, Nicholas, Julian and Roch, an altarpiece (present whereabouts unknown; photo, Fototeca Zeri, no. 43044, as by an anonymous fifteenth-century Lucchese painter); and the Madonna and Child in Glory with Saints Donatus, Sebastian, Agatha and Matthew, an altarpiece, in S. Donato a Balbano, Lucca.

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Bibliography Baldini, N. ‘“Tempi felici”: La storia della famiglia del Ghirlandaio nelle carte conservate presso il fondo dell’Arciconfraternita del Gonfalone dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano,” in L. Venturini (ed.), Ghirlandaria. Un manoscritto di ricordi della famiglia Ghirlandaio. Florence 2017, 1-183. Baracchini, C. and Filieri, M. T., ‘Pittori a Lucca tra ‘400 e ‘500—1—: Annotazioni in margine,’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Ser. III, 16 (1986), no. 3, 743-772. Berenson, B., ‘Le pitture italiane nella raccolta Yerkes lasciate di recente al Metropolitan Museum di Nuova-York,’ Rassegna d’arte 6 (1906), 33-38. Bratchel, M. E., Lucca, 1430-1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic, Oxford 2004. Cimorelli, D. and Baracchini, C. (eds.), Matteo Civitali e il suo tempo: Pittori, scultori e orafi a Lucca nel tardo Quattrocento, cat. exh., Lucca (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi), Milan 2004. Dacos, N., ‘De Pinturicchio à Michelangelo di Pietro da Lucca: Les premiers grotesques à Sienne,’ in: E. Cioni, D. Fausti, R. Guerrini (eds.), Umanesimo a Siena: letteratura, arti figurative, musica, Siena 1994, 320-324. Dalli Regoli, G., ‘Eclettici Lucchesi: novità per Michele Angelo di Pietro,’ Critica d’arte 63 (2000), no. 8, 27-42. De Marchi, A. G., ‘Ipotesi sul percorso di Antonio di Francesco Corsi detto Corsetto,’ Antichità Viva 36 (1997), nos. 5-6, 82-86. Fahy, E., ‘A Lucchese follower of Filippino Lippi,’ Paragone 16 (1965), no. 185, 9-20. Fahy, E., ‘Some Notes on the Stratonice Master,’ Paragone, 12 (1966), no. 197, 17-28. Fahy, E., ‘Some Early Italian Pictures in the Gambier-Parry Collection,’ Burlington Magazine 109 (1967), no. 768, 128-139. Fahy, E., Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo, New York 1976. Fanucci Lovitch, M., Artisti attivi a Pisa fra XIII e XVIII secolo, Pisa 1991. Ferretti, M., ‘Percorso Lucchese (pittori di fine ‘400),’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Ser. III, 5 (1975), no. 3, 1033-1065. Ferretti, M., ‘Pisa 1493: Inizi di Niccolò pittore,’ in: M. Natale (ed.), Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, Milan 1984, I, 249-262. Ferretti, M., ‘Tre temi da approfondire,’ in: Matteo Civitali e il suo tempo: Pittori, scultori e orafi a Lucca nel tardo Quattrocento, cat. exh., Lucca (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi), Milan 2004, 165-189. Filieri, M. T., ‘Tre note sull’arte Lucchese,’ in: K. Bergdolt and G. Bonsanti (eds.), Opere e giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel, Venice 2001, 265-274. Gemäldegalerie Berlin: Gesamtverzeichnis, Berlin 1996.

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Ghilarducci, G., and Ferri, C., ‘Notizie biografiche,’ Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Ser. III, 16 (1986), no. 3, 774-824 Goldner, G., and Bambach, C. (eds.), The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997. Massagli, R., ‘Il pittore di Paolo Buonvisi: proposte per un’identità,’ Paragone 54 (2003), no. 52, 3-23 Massagli, R., ‘La bottega dei Ciampanti: il Maestro di Stratonice e il Maestro di San Filippo,’ Proporzioni 2/3, 2001/2002, 2003, 59-103. Massagli, R., ‘Michele Angelo da Lucca nella Roma di Pinturicchio,’ in Pintoricchio, cat. exh. Perugia-Spello (Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria-Palazzo dei Priori), Milan 2008, 75-91. Montgomery, R., The Gift of Prophesy: The Phenomenal Jeane Dixon, New York 1965. Natale, M., ‘Maestri del quattrocento lucchese,’ La provincia di Lucca 6 (1971), no.1, 101-105. Natale, M., ‘Note sulla pittura lucchese alla fine del Quattrocento,’ The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 8 (1980), 35-62. Pons, N., ‘Importanti opere perdute di pittori fiorentini a Pistoia e una aggiunta al Maestro di Apollo e Dafne,’ in: C. D’Afflito (ed.), Fra Paolino e la pittura a Pistoia nel primo ‘500, cat. exh, Pistoia (Museo Civico), Venice 1996, 50-53. Ragghianti, C., ‘Il Pittore dei Guinigi,’ Critica d’arte 8 (1955), 137-150. Symeonides, S., ‘An Altarpiece by the “Lucchese Master of the Immaculate Conception”,’ Marysyas 8 (1959), 55-66. Tazartes, M., ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – I. Vincenzo di Antonio Frediani “pictor de Luca”: il Maestro dell’Immacolata Concezione?’, Richerche di storia dell’arte 26 (1985), 4-17. Tazartes, M., ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – II. Michele Ciampanti: il Maestro di Stratonice?,” Ricerche di storia dell’arte 26 (1985), 18-27. Tazartes, M., ‘Anagrafe Lucchese – III. Michele Angelo (del fu Pietro “Mencherini”): il Maestro del Tondo Lathrop?’, Ricerche di storia dell’arte 26 (1985), 28-49. Tazartes, M., ‘Michelangelo di Pietro Mencherini, un Pistoiese a Lucca tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento,’ Storia dell’arte 97 (1999), 300-310. Tazartes, M., Fucina Lucchese: Maestri, botteghe, mercanti in una città del Quattrocento, Pisa 2007. Tietze-Conrat, E., Mantegna: Paintings, Drawings, Engravings. Complete Edition, Lon­ don-New York 1955. Ugolini, A., ‘Due singolari pale e altri appunti lucchesi,’ Ricerche di storia dell’arte (1988), 81-92. Ugolini, A., ‘Alcune pitture del tardo Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento fra Lucca e Napoli,’ Arte Cristiana 36 (2011), no. 864, 185-196. Zambrano, P., ‘Matteo Civitali: Lucca (exhibition review),’ Burlington Magazine 146 (2004), no. 1218, 637-639.

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Zambrano, P., ‘Un “Iddio Padre” di Filippino Lippi,’ in: A. Bacchi and L. M. Barbero (eds.), Studi in onore di Stefano Tumidei, Venice 2016, 80-88. Zambrano, P., and Nelson, J. K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004. Venturini, L. (ed.). Ghirlandaria. Un manoscritto di ricordi della famiglia Ghirlandaio. Florence 2017.

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Chapter 13

‘L’un des plus grands maîtres de l’école florentine’: Filippino Lippi and His Workshop in French Collections Matteo Gianeselli France’s interest in the Italian Primitives needs little introduction: it is enough to recall the pioneering roles of François Cacault, Alexis-François Artaud de Montor and Cardinal Joseph Fesch.1 This paper2 focuses on several works by Filippino Lippi and his entourage, generally from the collections of the French amateurs of the nineteenth century, and today in French public collections – works that are usually wrongly classified and rarely discussed, despite their high quality. Collaboration within one single work is unsurprising in the context of the Renaissance workshop. For example, the collaboration between Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi on two cassone panels of the story of Esther, in the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Musée Condé, Chantilly, the Museo Horne in Florence, the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome and the Louvre, Paris.3 On the other hand, the participation of two rival workshops within one painting is less common. It usually takes place in the context of unfinished works, assigned to other artists following the departure or death of the artist who initially received the commission, as was the case with the Santissima Annunziata Deposition of the Cross, now in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, left unfinished when Filippino Lippi died in 1504 and eventually completed by Perugino;4 or the Virgin and Child in Glory formerly in the Kaiser FriedrichMuseum, Berlin, from San Francesco in San Casciano in Val di Pesa, completed 1 A. Collange-Perugi, ‘François Cacault-Pierre Cacault’, in: A. Tartuferi and G. Tormen (eds.), La fortuna dei Primitivi, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria dell’Accademia), Florence 2014, 390-393; A. Staderini, ‘Alexis-François Artaud de Montor’, in: idem, 422-426; P. Costamagna, ‘Joseph Fesch’, in: idem, 404-408. 2 The title is borrowed from an article by Berenson, see B. Berenson, ‘Un chef-d’œuvre inédit de Filippino Lippi’, Revue archéologique, 2 (1900), 238-243. 3 N. Pernac in: N. Garnier-Pelle, M. Laclotte and N. Volle (eds.), Fra Angelico, Botticelli… Chefsd’œuvre retrouvés, cat. exh. Chantilly (Musée Condé), Paris 2014, 110-117, no. 26-27. 4 F. Falletti and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino. La “Deposizione” della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro, Livorno/Florence 2004. ← Master of the Campana Cassoni, Triumph of Chastity, detail of fig. 13.1b Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 13.1a-b Bachiacca (workshop), The Triumph of Time and Master of the Campana Cassoni, The Triumph of Chastity, 1520-1530, oil on panel, 30 × 22 cm (double sided panel), Nevers, Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts

by Baccio della Porta following Domenico Ghirlandaio’s death in 1494.5 The most intriguing example, however, remains the San Girolamo sulla Costa Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre, which bears witness to the successive interventions of the Master of Memphis, Alonso Berruguete and Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio’s workshop.6 In the case of paintings intended for the decoration of private interiors or intended for domestic devotion, this kind of collaboration is even more unusual, as the deadlines for these commissions tended to be more constrained. We can mention the unpublished two-sided painting by Bachiacca and the Master of the Campana Cassoni in Nevers (fig. 13.1a-b), illustrating The Triumph of Time and The Triumph of Chastity, and for which a collaboration on such a 5 R. Longhi, Saggi e ricerche, vol. 2, Florence 1967, 281. 6 L. Waldman, ‘L’“Incoronazione della Vergine” per San Girolamo sulla Costa, nel passaggio fra Rinascimento e “maniera’’’ in: A. Natali, Norma e capriccio. Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della ‘maniera moderna’, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence 2013, 86-99.

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small scale and the links between the two artists have to be clarified.7 Another exception is The Virgin and Child by Mariotto Albertinelli and Giuliano Bugiardini, formerly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,8 a work resulting from the official collaboration between the two painters within a compagnia they established from 29 April 1503 until 1509. The tighter deadlines for works of domestic devotion did not generally allow for this kind of split execution. We could hardly imagine a Virgin begun by Botticelli and then retrieved and finished by Perugino. A tondo in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes (fig. 13.2), from the Robert Gower bequest in 1869, is a rare example of this type of collaboration.9 The painting, attributed to Filippo Lippi’s workshop, depends on the design of Lippi’s altarpiece for the Medici Chapel, now in Berlin. Indeed, it is Filippo Lippi who popularized this format, with the Virgin adoring the Christ Child, lying on the ground, as in Saint Bridget of Sweden’s account from her Revelations, published in Rome in 1455 – the same year as Filippo’s painting. However, the Nîmes tondo should be dated to the late fifteenth century, rather than the 1450s. Stylistically, the panel can be divided into two distinct parts. In the right hand section, the Virgin kneels in prayer, the perfect oval of her veiled head highlighted by the wall of the stable, her mantle fastened with a bejewelled clasp. Behind her, the ox and ass graze from a sarcophagus transformed into the manger, whilst in the background is seen a rolling landscape with a chapel, a fortified town and, on the left, the Annunciation to the Shepherds. The composition clearly emanates from Domenico Ghirlandaio’s workshop, most obviously the Adoration of the Shepherds, completed in 1485 for Francesco Sassetti’s chapel in Santa Trinita in Florence.10 Similar variants from the bottega11 also include the Christ child lying on a carpet of Turkish design, as in the tondo in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig;12 the rustic stable, stone 7

8 9 10 11 12

The Triumph of Time recalls the similar triumphal carts in the backgrounds of Bachiacca’s New Orleans Lute Player and Kassel Old Man. The quality of the Nevers panel tends to suggest a workshop production. A very close image (location unknown) has been pub­ lished by R. G. La France, Bachiacca. Artist of the Medici Court, Florence 2008, 299-300, no. 154. New York, Christie’s, 29 January 2014, lot no. 103. A. Chevalier in: G. Tosatto (ed.), Guide des collections. Musée des beaux-arts de Nîmes, Paris 2000, 12. J. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio. Artist and Artisan, New Haven and London 2000, 253254, no. 30. N. Pons, ‘La fortuna figurativa dell’“Adorazione” Sassetti di Domenico Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita,’ in: W. Prinz and M. Seidel (eds.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494, atti del convegno internazionale, Florence, 16-18 October 1994, Florence 1996, 165-174. E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York/London 1976, 217 (as Bastiano Mainardi). Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 13.2 Attributed to the workshop of Davide Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Christ Child, 1495-1499, tempera on panel, 57 cm. (unframed diameter). Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts

manger and the ox and ass, as in the Philadelphia Museum of Art;13 and above all in a panel in the Ambrosiana,14 where the figure of Mary is quoted directly 13 14

C. R. Scott, Paintings from Europe and the Americas in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1994, 194 (as Benedetto Ghirlandaio). E. Fahy in: P. C. Marani, B. W. Meijer, M. Rossi and A. Rovetta (eds.), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. Tomo primo: Dipinti dal medioevo alla metà del Cinquecento, Milan 2005, 248-249 (as Pseudo Granacci). It is an interesting example of the youthful production of the Pseudo Granacci, one of the most gifted followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio.

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Figure 13.3 Attributed to Davide Ghirlandaio, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, 1495-1499, tempera on panel, 56.2 × 55.9 cm. Bremen, Kunsthalle

from the Nativity in The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, itself a variant of the Sassetti Nativity.15 I believe the right-hand side of the Nîmes tondo can be attributed to Davide Ghirlandaio. Mary’s idealised beauty directly echoes that of several other works attributed to Davide, for example the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Kunsthalle in Bremen (fig. 13.3), the Berlin Sacra Conversazione16 or the Vienna Virgin.17 The Virgin’s upper body is reproduced almost identically in 15 16 17

J. W. Goodison and G. H. Robertson, Catalogue of Paintings. Italian School, 1967, 92-93 (as Bastiano Mainardi). Cadogan, op. cit. (note 10), 321, no. 3. Fahy, op. cit. (note 12), 137 (as the Master of the Saint Louis Madonna).

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the fresco-on-tile in Musée Bonnat-Helleu in Bayonne, for which I recently reasserted the attribution to the painter.18 In its typology and transcription, the landscape also seems attributable to Davide. Even if the overall composition of the tondo can be assigned to Davide (as for example in the Adoration formerly in the Art Institute of Chicago),19 the two figures on the left, the Infant Saint John the Baptist and the Christ Child, are clearly by another hand. The children’s faces recall Filippino’s late manner, as we can see in the Cleveland tondo or the San Domenico altarpiece in Bologna.20 The depiction of the veil covering Jesus also corresponds to the late works of the workshop, for example the Adoration of the Child, now in the Ministry of the Interior, Rome (on deposit from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice), exploiting effects of transparency and in its decorative aspects, recalling the veils of the group of women on the right of the Resurrection of Drusiana in the Strozzi Chapel.21 The Baptist reappears in a problematic tondo in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (fig. 13.4), which is more or less contemporary, its current attribution varying between Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo and Raffaello Botticini.22 In fact, this painting juxtaposes two motifs invented in the Filippinesque milieu. The Infant Saint John, if it was not created for the Nîmes panel, clearly stems from Filippino’s imagination. The fact that the Edinburgh Virgin and Child motif was also created in Filippino’s wake is attested by the important number of versions painted by Raffaellino del Garbo (for instance, New York, Christie’s, 19 April 2018, lot no. 5;23 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum24). 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

M. Gianeselli, ‘Les ateliers familiaux à Florence entre XV e et XVI e siècles. Quelques considérations à partir des Sellaio de Nantes’, in: A. Collange, C. Georgel and H. RousteauChambon (eds.), La collection Cacault, Italie/Nantes, 1810/2010: , 2016. B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 1963, 1, 72, already suggested Davide’s name. C. Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1993, 100-106 (as a follower of Domenico Ghirlandaio). This picture was deaccessioned and sold (Christie’s, New York, 5 June 2013, lot no. 50). J. K. Nelson in: P. Zambrano and J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 588-589, no. 42 and 604-605, no. 62. A. Scharf, Filippino Lippi, Vienna, 1935, 114 (as workshop of Filippino); Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 584-586, no. 40J. H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1993, 84-85, no. 645 (as Italian, early sixteenth century). With a wrong attribution to Piero del Donzello. J. Eriksson in: S. Norlander Eliasson, D. Prytz, J. Eriksson and S. Ekman (eds.), Italian Paintings. Three Centuries of Collecting. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Vol. 1, Stockholm 2015, 296-297, no. 123 (as Piero di Cosimo). Raffaellino seems to have relayed the invention to Piero di Cosimo’s entourage, such as the Virgin in Philadelphia as C. R. Scott, op. cit.

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Figure 13.4 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, c. 1500, oil on panel, 87.5 cm. (unframed diameter). Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland

The sections of the Nîmes tondo also differ in their technique. Indeed, the handling of Mary’s face is typical of the Ghirlandaiesque use of tempera, with small parallel strokes rigorously defining the flesh. In contrast, the handling of (note 13), 255 tends to suggest. These works thus indirectly bring new elements to the already rich file of the narrow connections linking Piero to Filippino. They also testify to the links between the Florentine workshops at the end of the fifteenth century.

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the Child’s face and hair is freer, as evident from comparison of the treatment of the Virgin with clear small parallel lines, whereas the Child depends on a twirling movement of the brush. The difference in the treatment of the veils could suggest that Mary’s was executed in tempera whereas the transparency of Christ’s suggests a freer use of oil. The Nîmes tondo, therefore, postdates Domenico Ghirlandaio’s death in 1494, when Davide took over the workshop, and it also bears the mark of the Filippino workshop. Was the latter’s workshop taking part in an unfinished work, overpainting the motif of the two children? As Paula Nuttall has pointed out, it might also have been finished by a painter trained in Filippino’s workshop working for Davide Ghirlandaio.25 In this case, it would explain the lack of cohesion of the artistic language within the workshop after Domenico’s death. The question remains open. More advanced technical inquiries would certainly provide answers. The close ties between Raffaellino del Garbo and his master are manifest in a Virgin and Child from Évariste Fouret’s collection at the Musée de Tessé in Le Mans (fig. 13.5).26 The composition, with a half-length Virgin and Child seated on a ledge relates to works by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his bottega in the 1480s,27 and updated by Baccio della Porta (Los Angeles, County Museum of Art) at the turn of the sixteenth century.28 This format also echoes Virgins from Botticelli’s late workshop (Florence, Galleria Moretti, 2016 and Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais), and its reinterpretation by the young Filippino in one of his earliest Virgins (Paris, Musée du Louvre).29 The strong resemblance of the Le Mans Virgin to Filippino explains why its attribution to him has never been completely abandoned: it was reasserted in oral communications to this author by Michel Laclotte, Andrea De Marchi and Keith Christiansen.30 Indeed, the painting shows profound similarities to 25 26 27

28 29 30

Verbal communication, 2019. Bought by the city during the Fouret sale in 1863 (C. Dury, Peintures italiennes et hispaniques. Collections du musée de Tessé, XIV e-XVIII e siècles, cat. exh. Le Mans (Musée de Tessé), Ghent 2017, 94-95, no. 24. For instance, formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich-Museum (G. de Francovich, ‘Sebastiano Mainardi’, Cronache d’arte, 4 (1927), 179; Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum (C. E. de JongJanssen et al., Catalogue of the Italian Paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Maastricht, 1995, 46-47, as workshop of Domenico); Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (L. Kanter, Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. 13th-15th Century, Boston 1994, 169-171, no. 49). S. Padovani in: S. Padovani (ed.), L’età di Savonarola. Fra’ Bartolomeo e la Scuola di San Marco, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti/Museo di San Marco), Venice 1996, 57-60, no. 6. For these last two paintings, see M. Laclotte and E. Moench, Peinture italienne. Musée du Petit Palais. Avignon, Paris 2005, 81, no. 51. Oral communication by the first in 2013, and 2007 by the last two.

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Figure 13.5 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Virgin and Child, c. 1490, oil on panel, 50 × 28 cm. Le Mans, Musée de Tessé

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Filippino’s late style. The brilliant depiction of the veils evokes the Peralada Lamentation of Christ at the Tomb,31 and Mary’s idealised features and her slight contrapposto pose are reminiscent of the Berlin Allegory of Music (Ge­ mäl­degalerie).32 It should, however, be assigned to Raffaellino del Garbo, as Berenson previously asserted.33 Indeed, Raffaelino’s taste for golden and decorative flourishes is to be found in the theatricality of the canopy held above the sacred figures by flying cherubs, a motif which is a feature of Raffaellino’s oeuvre, as in the Holy Family in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 13.6).34 The canopy itself is adorned with pearls, another recurring feature of Raffaellino’s work,35 and the shimmering, brilliant effects perfectly correspond to the artist’s masterpieces, such as the Glasgow tondo or the Edinburgh Adoration.36 In my opinion, the painting belongs to an early phase of Raffaellino’s career, whilst still very much under the influence of his master. Indeed, its relationship to Filippino prototypes parallels the relationship between Raffaellino’s tondo in Glasgow and Filippino’s in Cleveland; similarly, Raffaellino’s Virgin at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York relates to Filippino’s Virgin in Mexico City (Museo Soumaya),37 and his London (The National Gallery) Portrait parallels Filippino’s Dublin Musician (fig. 6.9).38 These examples additionally demonstrate Raffaellino’s importance in the diffusion of models invented by his master, to which the Le Mans Virgin also testifies.

31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38

C. B. Strehlke in: A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011, 202-3, no. 44. E. Capretti in: Cecchi, op. cit. (note 31), 162-163, no. 30. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. A List of the Principal Artists and their Works, Oxford 1932, 478. F. Zeri, Italian Paintings. A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Florentine School, New York 1971, 173-174. As in San Francisco, Palace of the Legion of Honor (F. R. Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Italian Schools XV-XVI Century, New York 1968, 117) and London, The National Gallery (C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery Complete Illustrated Catalogue with a Supplement of New Acquisitions and Loans 1995-2000, London 2001, 555). Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 609, no. R27 (as Raffaellino del Garbo in Filippino’s workshop) and 589, no. 43 (as Filippino). The Edinburgh panel was attributed to Raffaellino by A. Cecchi, ‘Considerazioni su una recente monografia di Filippino Lippi’, Paragone, 59 (2008), 64-65. Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 611, R34 (as young Raffaellino in Filippino’s workshop and maybe after one of his drawings) and 610, no. R30 (only as a workshop product). E. Capretti in: Cecchi, op. cit. (note 31), 138-139, no. 22 (as Raffaellino around 1500) and Zambrano in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 342-344, no. 29.

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Figure 13.6 Raffaellino del Garbo, Holy Family with an Angel, c. 1490, tempera on canvas, transferred from wood, 55.9 × 38.1 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The question of drawing is of course essential to our understanding of Renaissance workshop practice, as the drawings stored in the workshop allowed assistants to reuse an idea developed by the master. This is probably what happened with the depictions of Saint Jerome in his Study and explains the success of this specific iconography derived from the painting by Jan van Eyck in the Medici collection (possibly Detroit, Institute of Art).39 Several works more or less linked to an autograph painting of Saint Jerome by Filippino in El Paso (Museum of Art) exist.40 A drawing in Cleveland (Museum of Art, inv. 24.532) shows numerous common points with the El Paso panel, especially in the detail of the saint’s drapery, in his pensive attitude and in some elements of the scenery. This study or a similar one must have been used for an engraving which shows Saint Jerome in a setting closer to the Cleveland drawing than the panel in El Paso, in particular, the crucifix on the saint’s desk and the lion at his feet. Another painted version has recently been rediscovered in the Archbishop’s palace in Rouen (fig. 13.7). It was executed on an arched panel and is more imposing than that in El Paso (the American and French panels respectively measure 48.9 × 35.5 cm and 75 × 43 cm), though it is also more simplistic and summarily executed. Certain delicate passages, especially the face of the Rouen saint, are of such quality as to suggest that it was executed under the master’s close supervision. This group of works illustrates how different techniques and methods were used to diversify the original inventions of the master.41 In this context, the fresco of the Laocoon, executed by Filippino at Poggio a Caiano, and repeated by the Master of Serumido, perhaps via a drawing recording Filippino’s design located in the Uffizi (inv. 169 F), is also relevant,42 further demonstrating that drawing plays a role beyond the confines of the workshop, 39

40

41 42

J. Bogers in: B. J. Meijer (ed.), Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi. 1430-1530. Dialoghi tra artisti : da Jan van Eyck a Ghirlandaio, da Memling a Raffaello..., cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti), Livorno 2008, 86-88, no. 1. It could have entered the Medici collections through Niccolò Albergati, who spent the last years of his life in Florence in the papal court. Albergati’s executor was Tommaso Parentucelli, the future Nicholas V. This last could have given the work to Cosimo de’ Medici. M. Gianeselli, ‘L’atelier du peintre: l’original multiple’ in: E. Moench (ed.), Primitifs italiens. Le vrai, le faux, la fortune critique, cat. exh., Ajaccio (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts) Cinisello Balsamo 2012, 91-93. The work was given to the archbishop’s palace by Abbé Alphonse Duhamel at the beginning of the 1980s (he died in 1982). As in the case of the Centaur by Filippino in Oxford (Christ Church), repeated within the workshop by the Master of Memphis, in the Chambéry panel (Musée des Beaux-Arts); see M. Gianeselli in: Moench, op. cit. (note 40), 114-115, no. 10. For the fresco and the copy, see Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 589590, no. 44 and 590, no. 44.1.

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Figure 13.7 Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Saint Jerome, c. 1500, oil on panel, 75 × 43 cm. Rouen, Palais archiépiscopal

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Figure 13.8 Attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo, Achilles in Skyros discovered by Ulysses, c. 1490, pen and brown ink, 19.5 × 19.7 cm. Chantilly, Musée Condé

ensuring the diffusion of compositional models as well as the graphic style of the master. This point is well made in a study in the Musée Condé in Chantilly (inv. DE-15; fig. 13.8).43 This sheet is a free interpretation – not a copy as is generally claimed – of the motif from the left side of a Roman sarcophagus depicting Achilles in Skyros discovered by Ulysses.44 The very Warburgian motif of the 43

44

C. Caron-Lanfranc de Panthou, Dessins italiens du musée Condé à Chantilly. Autour du Pérugin, Filippino Lippi et Michel-Ange, cat. exh. Chantilly (Musée Condé), Paris 1995, 7778, no. 16 (as anonymous from Florence or Siena); G. Hallé and N. Joyeux in: N. GarnierPelle, M. Laclotte and N. Volle, op. cit. (note 3), 126-127, no. 31 (as a Florentine artist of the end of the fifteenth century, circle of Sandro Botticelli). P. P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture. A Handbook of Sources, London 1986, 151, no. 121.

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floating folds of drapery45 probably justified an old attribution to Sandro Botticelli.46 Even earlier, however, Berenson placed its execution in the wake of the late Filippino.47 The sketchy handling of the pen is close to certain studies by Lippi, such as the Mermaid in the Musée du Louvre (INV 9876).48 The annotation at the lower edge of the sheet, made by its eighteenth-century owner Padre Sebastiano Resta (“Mantegna bisogna tlo [sic] / per mantegna sono stimati. ma le fisonomie mi paiono di quelle dipinse nella capella di S. Tom. alla minerva sopra la volta di Raffaelino del Garbo. Per…”), rejects an earlier attribution to Mantegna and highlights its affinity to the work of Filippino’s workshop in the Carafa Chapel.49 This relationship is justified by the all’antica iconography and the agitated grace of the figures, which recall certain drawings by Filippino, such as the Minerva in the Uffizi (inv. 1255 E, verso), and some characters in Carafa’s burial chamber, especially the central one.50 The nervousness of the dry and continuous line, and the depth of the shadows formed by a dense gridwork of hatchings, brings to mind Giuliano da Sangallo’s manner, as its clear links to the Dresden Saint John the Baptist (Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. C 16) confirm.51 Two studies, also in Dresden (inv. C 18 recto and verso), are also close to Filippino’s graphic style, and identified by Lorenza Melli as copies after the master;52 the dishevelled hair, the outline of the face and the claw-like hands are all comparable. Giuliano, in Rome in the service of Popes Alexander VI and Julius II, would have had access to the original sculpture, conserved since the fourteenth century on the steps of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, as well as the model of Filippino’s contemporary examples in the Carafa Chapel. To finish, I would like to tackle a problematic drawing now in Dijon, at the Musée Magnin (inv. 1938 DE 412; fig. 13.9), which has never been adequately 45 46

47 48 49

50 51 52

R. Recht, L’Atlas Mnémosyne, Paris 2012, 124-125. F. Reiset, Description abrégée des dessins de diverses écoles, Paris 1850, 15, no. 11, describes it as a preparatory sketch for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, an idea shared by A. Warburg (Essais florentins, Paris 1990, 63). On the Warburgian motif, see Recht, op. cit. (note 45), 124-125, no 39. B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, New York 1903, 271, no. 1371. Berenson, op. cit. (note 47), 267, no. 1361. Hallé and Joyeux in: Garnier-Pelle, Laclotte and Volle, op. cit. (note 3), 126-7, no. 31. About the chapel, see Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 579-584, no. 39. For Raffaellino del Garbo’s participation, see M. G. Carpaneto, “Raffaellino del Garbo. I. Parte”, Antichità viva 4 (1970), 8-11. Nelson in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 586, no. 40.d.6 and 579-582, no. 39J-39L. L. Melli, I disegni italiani del Quattrocento nel Kupferstich-Kabinett di Dresda, Florence 2006, 144-148, no. 27. Melli, op. cit. (note 51), 139-143, no. 26 (copy after the 141 F in the GDSU).

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Figure 13.9 Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Study for a seated male figure, late 1470s-mid 1480s, silverpoint heightened with white on coloured grey prepared paper, 21 × 15 cm. Dijon, Musée Magnin

discussed.53 It is a metalpoint study heightened with white body colour, possibly retouched at a later date with red chalk on grey prepared paper. It shows a seated male figure, wearing a berretta, dressed in a heavy robe and holding a book in his right hand, a composition typical of workshop studies exemplifying the ‘pratica disegnativa libera e intensamente sperimentale’ which Patrizia Zambrano has discussed in relation to some of Filippino’s studies.54 Indeed, it is an exercise meant to train the artist’s eye and hand in the representation of the human figure. The artist is interested in the posture, the attitude, the position of the limbs, in the rendition of the coiling folds of the drapery, and finally in the treatment of the light, falling from the left onto the flesh and drapery. To achieve this effect, he drew a dry contour with the metalpoint, which was then animated, modelled by a tratteggio which forms a grid of parallel lines of varying thickness, meant to suggest depth. These areas contrast with those high­ 53 54

A. Brejon de Lavergnée, Catalogue des tableaux et dessins italiens. XVe-XIXe siècles, Paris 1980, 162, no. D. 24 (as later imitation of Filippino Lippi). Zambrano in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 205. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 13.10 Workshop of Filippino Lippi, Study for a seated male figure, late 1470s-mid 1480s, silverpoint heightened with white on coloured grey prepared paper, 20.5 × 13.5 cm. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana

lighted by the body colour, which has been subtly applied, in particular along the ridges of the folds. The model must have been a garzone, posing in a simple and spontaneous attitude. Such studies from life were a daily exercise for the master, and for the apprentices who learnt from a common source how to handle drawing tools, as other sheets apparently showing the same garzone in a different posture would suggest.55 The Dijon drawing seems to be a copy after a sheet located in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Codice Resta, inv. F 261 inf., no. 13, 7; fig. 13.10), which I believe has been wrongly attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio’s circle.56 The movement and depth of the folds match more closely the Filippinesque manner, the Mi55

56

Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. C. 39, verso; Melli, op. cit. (note 51), 124-129, no. 23 / Paris, Musée du Louvre, Inv. 2348. E. Cropper, ‘Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Introduction’, in : Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Mag­ nificent, conf. proceedings, Florence (Villa Spelman), Florence 1992, 11, n. 23. L. Melli and L. Montalbano in: C. Frosinini, Leonardo e Raffaello, per esempio…, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Medici Riccardi), Florence 2008, 93-98, no. 8. My intuition was con­ firmed by Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Nelson (oral communications, 2017). Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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lan drawing being, freer, and technically more vigorous, especially in the subtle description of the drapery over the stomach, brilliantly enhanced by the combination of metalpoint and body colour, indicating that the Milanese drawing was probably executed by one of Filippino’s more accomplished assistants. As discussed in Michelle O’Malley’s essay in this volume, this type of drawing is typical of those found in libri di disegni, to be used as models for a later project, or copied by a garzone. It is likely that the Dijon drawing fulfilled such a function, and that it was probably executed in Filippino’s workshop, following the Milan drawing so closely that in all probability this was its immediate source. It is known that such a libro existed in Filippino’s bottega because of several sheets which share a common technique and format, produced on grey prepared paper, with studies on the recto and verso, as in the example in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (inv. EBA 187).57 The particular attention paid to the fall of light and the sinuous, heavy folds of drapery is akin to studies in Chantilly (Musée Condé, inv. 10) and Chatsworth (Devonshire Coll., inv. 886B),58 dateable to the late 1470s, and contemporary with the Adoration of the Magi, no. 1124 in the National Gallery, London. It also reflects the development of Filippino’s graphic manner, developed while he was working in the Brancacci Chapel in the 1480s, one of the most prestigious commissions of his career.59 Here, Filippino was deeply engaged with compositional examples and the rhetoric of narrative, that were to coexist alongside Masaccio’s brilliant experimentations of fifty years before. Consequently, Filippino studied his predecessor’s style, attempting to transpose his own preliminary studies into the same monumental format. This attention to the volume and monumentality of the human figure is apparent in other preparatory drawings at this time, their technique exactly corresponding to studies such as that for the Vision of Saint Bernard (fig. 7.3), also painted around 1484 (Florence, GDSU, inv. 129 E).60 The Milan and Dijon drawings illustrate Filippino Lippi’s manner between the London Adoration at the end of the 1470s and the libro di disegni in the middle of the following decade. If the relationship between the two cannot be entirely proven, it nevertheless questions the workshops practices of ‘un des plus grands maîtres de l’école florentine’, as Berenson characterised Filippino Lippi. 57 58 59 60

G. Goldner in: G. Goldner and C. Bambach, The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle, cat. exh. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997, 145-147, no. 24. Caron-Lanfranc de Panthou, op. cit. (note 43), 104, no. 28; M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Col­ lection of Italian Drawings, London 1994, 72, no. 38. On this commission, see P. Zambrano in: Cecchi, op. cit. (note 31), p. 26-39. A. Cecchi in: Cecchi, op. cit. (note 31), 140-141, no. 23.

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Figure 13.11 Unknown German Painter working in Rome, Portrait of a Monk, 1800s, oil on panel, 32 × 23 cm. Dijon, Musée Magnin

To conclude on a lighter note, I would like to refer to the Portrait of a Monk, also from the Musée Magnin in Dijon (fig. 13.11).61 It took Federico Zeri’s keen eye to recognize a nineteenth-century painting beneath the figure’s attire. It was probably painted by a German artist working in Rome who parodied another Portrait of an Old Man (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 1890 no. 1485), which was assumed at the time to be by Filippino Lippi, for instance by Berenson.62

61 62

Brejon de Lavergnée, op. cit. (note 53), 150, no. R19. Zambrano in: Zambrano and Nelson, op. cit. (note 20), 339, no. R7 (as Domenico Ghir­ landaio?); B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, with an Index of their Works, New York 1896, 116.

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I have borrowed the title of my paper from the same Berenson, and we come back to him for my conclusion, and particularly to his article published in French on Filippino Lippi, in the Revue archéologique in 1900, in which he wrote that facing works such as the ones discussed here, the task of the art historian quite often belongs, ‘au domaine du connoisseur, de l’archéologue et de l’explorateur.’63 Bibliography Baker, C., and Henry, T., The National Gallery Complete Illustrated Catalogue with a Supplement of New Acquisitions and Loans 1995-2000, London 2001. Berenson, B., The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, with an Index of their Works, New York 1896. Berenson, B., “Un chef-d’œuvre inédit de Filippino Lippi”, Revue archéologique, 2 (1900), 238-243. Berenson, B., The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, London 1903. Berenson, B., Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. A List of the Principal Artists and their Works, Oxford 1932. Berenson, B., Italian Painters of the Renaissance, Florentine School, 2 vols., London 1963. Bober, P.P. and Rubinstein R., Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture. A Handbook of Sources, London 1986. Brejon de Lavergnée, A., Catalogue des tableaux et dessins italiens. XVe-XIXe siècles, Paris 1980. Brigstocke, H., Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edin­ burgh 1993. Cadogan, J., Domenico Ghirlandaio. Artist and Artisan, New Haven/London 2000. Caron-Lanfranc de Panthou, C., Dessins italiens du musée Condé à Chantilly. Autour du Pérugin, Filippino Lippi et Michel-Ange, cat. exh. Chantilly (Musée Condé), Paris 1995. Carpaneto, M.G., “Raffaellino del Garbo. I. Parte”, Antichità viva, 4 (1970), 3-23. Cecchi, A. (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011. Cecchi, A., “Considerazione su una recente monografia su Filippino Lippi,” Paragone 2008, 60-67. Cropper, E., “Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Introduction”, Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, conf. proceedings, Florence (Villa Spelman), Florence 1992, IX-15. 63

B. Berenson, op. cit. (note 1), 239.

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Dury, C., Peintures italiennes et hispaniquers. Collections du musée de Tessé, XIV e-XVIII e siècles, cat. exh. Le Mans (Musée de Tessé), Ghent 2017. Fahy, E., “Some Early Pictures in the Gambier-Parry Collection”, The Burlington Magazine 109 (1967), 128-139. Fahy, E., Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York/London 1976. Falletti, F. and Nelson, J.K., Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino. La Deposizione della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro, Livorno/Florence 2004. La France, R.G., Bachiacca. Artist of the Medici Court, Florence 2008. de Francovich, G., ‘Sebastiano Mainardi’, Cronache d’arte, IV (1927), 169-193 and 256270. Frosinini, C., Leonardo e Raffaello, per esempio…, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Medici Riccardi), Florence 2008. Garnier-Pelle, N., Laclotte, M., and Volle, N., Fra Angelico, Botticelli… Chefs-d’œuvre retrouvés, cat. exh., Chantilly (Musée Condé), Paris 2014. Gianeselli, M., “L’atelier du peintre : l’original multiple” in: E. Moench, Primitifs italiens. Le vrai, le faux, la fortune critique, cat. exh. Ajaccio (Palais Fesch-Musée des BeauxArts), Cinisello Balsamo 2012, 83-99. Gianeselli, M., ‘Les ateliers familiaux à Florence entre XV e et XVI e siècles. Quelques considérations à partir des Sellaio de Nantes’, in: A. Collange, C. Georgel and H. Rousteau-Chambon, La collection Cacault, Italie/Nantes, 1810/2010: (published in 2016). Goldner, G., and Bambach, C., The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle, cat. exh. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997. Goodison, J.W., and Robertson, G.H., Catalogue of paintings, 2, Italian Schools, Cam­ bridge 1967. Jaffé, M., The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings, London 1994. de Jong-Janssen, C.E., Catalogue of the Italian Paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht 1995. Kanter, L., Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. 13th-15th Century, Boston 1994. Laclotte, M., and Moench E., Peinture italienne. Musée du Petit Palais. Avignon, Paris 2005. Lloyd, C., Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1993. Longhi, R., Saggi e ricerche, 2 vol., Florence 1967. Marani, P.C., Meijer, B., Rossi, M., and Rovetta, A., Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. Tomo primo: Dipinti dal medioevo alla metà del Cinquecento, Milan 2005. Meijer, B. (ed.), Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi. 1430-1530. Dialoghi tra artisti : da Jan van Eyck a Ghirlandaio, da Memling a Raffaello..., cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti), Livorno 2008.

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Melli, L., I disegni italiani del Quattrocento nel Kupferstich-Kabinett di Dresda, Florence 2006. Moench, E., Primitifs italiens. Le vrai, le faux, la fortune critique, cat. exh. Ajaccio (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts), Cinisello Balsamo 2012. Norlander Eliasson, S., Prytz, D., Eriksson, J., and Ekman, S. (eds.), Italian Paintings. Three Centuries of Collecting. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Vol. 1, Stockholm 2015. Padovani, S., L’età di Savonarola. Fra’ Bartolomeo e la Scuola di San Marco, cat. exh. Florence (Palazzo Pitti/Museo di San Marco), Venice 1996. Pons, N., “La fortuna figurativa dell’Adorazione Sassetti di Domenico Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita,” in: W. Prinz and M. Seidel (eds.), Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494; atti del convegno internazionale, Florence, 16-18 October 1994, Florence 1996. Recht, R., L’Atlas Mnémosyne, Paris 2012. Reiset, F., Description abrégée des dessins de diverses écoles, Paris 1850. Scharf, A., Filippino Lippi, Vienna 1935. Scott, C.R., Paintings from Europe and the Americas in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1994. Shapley, F.R., Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Italian Schools XV-XVI Century, New York 1968. Tartuferi, A., and Tormen, G., La fortuna dei Primitivi, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria dell’Accademia), Florence 2014. Tosatto, G., Guide des collections. Musée des beaux-arts de Nîmes, Paris 2000. Waldman, L., “L’Incoronazione della Vergine per San Girolamo sulla Costa, nel passaggio fra Rinascimento e ‘maniera’”, in: A. Natali, Norma e capriccio. Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della ‘maniera moderna’, cat. exh. Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Flo­ rence 2013, 86-99. Warburg, A., Essais florentins, Paris 1990. Zambrano, P., and Nelson, J.K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004. Zeri, F., Italian Paintings. A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Florentine School, New York 1971.

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Chapter 14

Sfortuna di Raffaellino del Garbo Alessandro Cecchi Pochi artisti hanno goduto di una sfortuna critica di così antica data come Raffaello di Bartolomeo di Giovanni di Carlo o Carli, meglio noto col nome d’arte di Raffaellino del Garbo (fig. 14.1) dalla Via del Garbo, l’odierna Via della Condotta, ove tenne in affitto, dal 1499 in poi, una bottega di dipintore. I giudizi impietosi riservatigli dal Vasari, suo primo detrattore, ne hanno infatti allontanato l’interesse degli studiosi con una conseguente, scarna, bibliografia, a fronte di quella, ben altrimenti consistente, su Filippino e Perugino, gli artisti a cui si rifece. Scriveva infatti l’aretino, in chiusura della prima edizione delle Vite inserendolo fra coloro che avevano chiuso miseramente la loro esistenza come il Botticelli: Era in una fantasia d’andare inanzi con l’arte di continuo, et ogni dì peggiorava. In Santo Spirito sotto le porte della sagrestia fece due altre tavole, nelle quali declinò tanto da quel primo buono che queste cose non parevano più di sua mano: et ogni giorno l’arte dimenticando, si ridusse poi, oltra le tavole e quadri che faceva, a dipignere ogni vilissima cosa; e tanto avvilì per la grave famiglia de’figliuoli che aveva, ch’ogni valor dell’arte trasmutò in goffezza. Per che sovragiunto da infermità et impoverito, miseramente finì la sua vita di età d’anni LVIII. Fu sepolto dalla Compagnia della Misericordia in San Simone di Fiorenza nel MDXXIIII.1 Diciotto anni dopo il giudizio non era mutato, anche se erano scomparse, come nelle altre biografie, le tirate moralistiche della prima edizione: Raffaello del Garbo, il quale essendo mentre era fanciulletto chiamato per vezzi Raffaellino, quel nome si mantenne poi sempre, fu ne’suoi ­principii di tanta espettazione nell’arte che digià si annoverava fra i più eccellenti, cosa che a pochi interviene: ma a pochissimi poi quello che 1 G. Vasari, Vita di Raffaellino del Garbo pittor fiorentino in Le vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, a cura di R. Bettarini e P. Barocchi, Firenze, 19661997, vol.6, IV, 117-119. ← Raffaellino del Garbo, The Resurrection, detail of fig. 14.2

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Figure 14.1 Cristofano Coriolano after Giorgio Vasari, Portrait of Raffaellino del Garbo, from the frontispiece to the Life of 1568, engraving on paper, 13 × 11 cm. London, Royal Academy of Arts

intervenne a lui, che da ottimo principio e quasi certissima speranza si conducesse a debolissimo fine, essendo per lo più costume così delle cose naturali come delle artificiali, dai piccoli principii venire crescendo di mano in mano fino all’ultima perfezione.2 Quanto alla critica ‘moderna’, basti per tutti la lapidaria definizione datane da Bernard Berenson: Restano da spiegare le straordinarie oscillazioni stilistiche di quest’unico maestro, ora filippinesco-botticelliano, ora umbro-ghirlandaiesco. Esse sono plausibili soltanto in un maestro di secondarissima importanza, passivamente eclettico ed incerto.3

2 Vasari, op. cit., 115. 3 B. Berenson, I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, Milano, 1961, I, 166-181; II, 118-123, 142-144.

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Figure 14.2 Raffaellino del Garbo, The Resurrection (The Capponi Altarpiece), late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, oil on panel, 174.5 × 186.5 cm. Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia

E invero Raffaellino sfugge ad una piana classificazione del suo stile, per l’eclettismo che caratterizza la sua produzione e il diseguale livello della sua produzione artistica, che va dal suo capolavoro, la Resurrezione Capponi, datata variamente fra il 1497 e i primi anni del Cinquecento, già in Monteoliveto e oggi all’Accademia (fig. 14.2), a un dipinto di minore qualità (dovuta fors’anche al carente stato di conservazione) come la Messa di San Gregorio di Sarasota, firmata e datata 1501, già sull’altare della cappella Antinori in Santo Spirito (fig. 14.3). A complicare ulteriormente le cose e la ricostruzione di un suo catalogo ragionato, l’artista si è firmato in due modi diversi, Raffaello di Bartolomeo Capponi, fra il 1499 e il 1501, in omaggio alla nobile famiglia fiorentina che l’aveva Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 14.3 Raffaellino del Garbo, Mass of St Gregory, 1501, oil and tempera on canvas, 204.5 × 198.8 cm. Sarasota, Ringling Museum of Art

adottato sull’inizio degli anni ottanta e poi, più correttamente, Raffaello di Bartolomeo dei Carli, come nella maggioranza dei documenti collazionati di recente dal Waldman in un suo articolo, imprescindibile punto di partenza per la ricostruzione della vita e dell’opera dell’artista.4 Era inevitabile allora che s’ingenerasse una confusione che ha portato alla creazione, fra Otto e Novecento, di diverse personalità artistiche, da parte del Cavalcaselle, dell’Ulmann, del Milanesi e del Morelli, fino al Berenson, nel 1961, che ne ha distinte due nel

4 L. A. Waldman, ‘Raffaellino del Garbo and his world: commissions, patrons, associates’, Artibus et historiae, 27 (2006), 54, 51-94.

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campo della pittura e ben tre in quello grafico.5 Lo studioso americano doveva poi giungere a dar ragione agli ‘antidivisionisti’ (Scharf nel 1933 e Smyth nel 1949)6 concludendo che i pittori da lui identificati con Raffaellino del Garbo e con Raffaele dei Carli, dovessero essere considerati un unico artista, nelle sue varie maniere. Nel suo catalogo andranno mantenuti, come proposi nel 1997,7 l’affresco e la sinopia staccati dal Capitolo del Cestello, oggi Santa Maria Maddalena de’Pazzi, raffiguranti il Cristo crocifisso e San Bernardo che il Waldman ha pensato di riferire all’ancora sconosciuto Sperandio di Giovanni. Il confronto con un’opera ch’egli attribuisce a quest’artista, la Madonna col Bambino in trono e i Santi Pietro, Paolo, Girolamo e Francesco di San Pietro al Terreno, a Figline Valdarno non convince per il suo stile duro e legnoso, con reminescenze crediane nella Madonna col Bambino, in luogo di quello, memore di Filippino e del Perugino, così tipico del nostro, che connota l’affresco.8 Qualche commissione non dovette andare oltre lo stadio iniziale, a giudicare dalla sinopia con la Madonna col Bambino in trono fra i Santi Lucia, Michele Arcangelo, Alessio e forse Agnese (fig. 14.4) ritrovata sotto un affresco giovanile, di soggetto pressochè identico, del Pontormo, databile agli anni 1513-1514 e già nella distrutta chiesa fiorentina di San Ruffillo, dietro l’Arcivescovado. Eseguita dopo il 28 novembre del 1500, data del testamento del committente, il rettore ser Michele di Alessio di Papi, pubblicato dal Waldman,9 la sinopia era stata già dal Berti giustamente ritenuta ‘di disegno e di composizione del tutto diversi [da Pontormo], prossimi a Raffaellino del Garbo’.10

5

6 7 8 9 10

J. A. Crowe e G. B.Cavalcaselle, Storia della pittura in Italia, VII, Firenze, 1896, 135-177; H. Ulmann, ‘Raffaellino del Garbo‘, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft’, 17 (1894), 90-115; G. Vasari, Le Vite…, a cura di G. Milanesi, Firenze, 1878-1885, vol.9, IV, 233-253; G. Morelli, Die werke italienischen Meister in den Galerie von München, Dresden and Berlin, trad. ital. Bologna, 1886, 71-73, 126; Idem, Kunstkritische Studien über Italienische Malerei (Die Galerie zu Berlin), III, 1893; Idem, Kunstkritische Studien über Italienische Malerei (Die Galerie Borghese und Doria Pamphili in Rom), trad. ital. Milano, 1897, 32-76, 110-111; Berenson, op. cit. (nota 3). A.Scharf, ‘Die frühen Gemälde des Raffaellino del Garbo’, Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 54 (1933), 151-166; C. H. Smyth, ‘The Earliest Works of Bronzino’, Art Bulletin, 31 (1949), 85-207, passim, 209 ss. A. Cecchi, Filippino and His Circle, Designers for the Decorative Arts in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, catalogo della mostra a cura di G. Goldner e C. Bambach, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1997, 37-44 (39-44 su Raffaellino). L. A. Waldman, op. cit. (nota 4), 59-64. L. A. Waldman, ‘Michele d’Alessio di Papi: the Patron of Pontormo’s S.Ruffillo Altarpiece’, Apollo, 158 (2003), 40-45. L. Berti, L’opera completa del Pontormo, Milano 1973, 89 n.19.

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Figure 14.4 Attributed to Raffaellino del Garbo, Madonna and Child with Saints Lucy, the Archangel Michael, Alessio and (?) Agnes, after 1500, detached sinopia, Florence, Santissima Annunziata, Chapel of St Luke

Pittore di riferimento in Santo Spirito agli inizi del Cinquecento, come attestano le ben quattro pale d’altare commissionategli per le cappelle Nasi (Compianto di Cristo, della fine del Quattrocento, a Monaco di Baviera), Antinori (Messa di San Gregorio, datata 1501, a Sarasota), Frescobaldi (Madonna col Bambino e i Santi Girolamo e Bartolomeo, e Angeli datata 1502, a San Francisco), e Segni (Madonna col Bambino fra i Santi Giovanni Evangelista, Lorenzo, Stefano e Bernardo datata 1505), l’unica rimasta in situ nella preziosa cornice del Barili senese (fig. 14.5), Raffaellino si dedicò anche alle arti decorative e suntuarie e, in particolare alla fornitura di disegni per ricami. Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Figure 14.5 Raffaellino del Garbo, Madonna and Child with Saints John the Evangelist, Lawrence, Stephen and Bernard (The Segni Altarpiece), 1505, oil on panel, 285 × 283 cm. Florence, Santo Spirito

Lo attesta la piccola Pietà con la Vergine e San Giovanni Evangelista dipinta su pergamena (fig. 14.6), incastonata come una gemma preziosa entro la sua cornice originale a forma di pace in argento dorato e smalti translucidi. Oggi in San Michele a San Salvi, faceva parte in origine del corredo liturgico del monastero femminile vallombrosano di San Giovanni Evangelista fuor della Porta a Faenza, distrutto nel 1529, al tempo dell’assedio. L’operina è, come proposi nel catalogo della mostra dei disegni di Filippino del 1997 a New York11, da assegnare inequivocabilmente a Raffaellino e datare sul finire del Quattrocento, quando più decisa era la sua dipendenza da Filippino, seppur con un tono più dolce e aggraziato di quello del rivoluzionario maestro. Attesta, se ve ne fosse bisogno, una certa fortuna del nostro fra i 11

Cecchi, op. cit. (nota 7), p.41.

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Figure 14.6 Florentine goldsmith and Raffaellino del Garbo (attr.), Pax with the Pieta with the Virgin and St John, late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, silver gilt, translucent enamel, tempera on parchment, 19 × 13 cm. (entire object), Florence, San Michele a San Salvi

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Figure 14.7 Raffaellino del Garbo, Angel Annunciate, design for embroidery, 1500-1510, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with lead white over black lead, contours pricked for transfer, 9.7 cm. (unframed diameter). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vallombrosani che diede luogo a commesse importanti quali il San Giovanni Gualberto in trono e Santi di Vallombrosa, compiuto nel 150812, e l’Incoronazione della Vergine e Santi di Avignone, in origine sull’altar maggiore di San Salvi, ultimata nel 151113 e chiara eco dell’Assunta e Santi del Perugino per Vallombrosa e oggi alla Galleria dell’Accademia. 12 13

M. G. Carpaneto, ‘Raffaellino del Garbo: II Parte’, Antichità Viva, 10 (1971), n.1, 3-19, 11 fig. 41. Ibid., 14, fig. 44.

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Un aspetto sin qui trascurato dell’attività del nostro riguarda i suoi disegni per ricami, conservati principalmente nel Gabinetto Disegni degli Uffizi e in quello Nazionale delle Stampe a Roma e, in minima parte, in alcune collezioni straniere come il tondo, forato per lo spolvero, con l’Angelo annunziante del Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 14.7).14 A questi fogli, in gran numero, e ai ricami che ne furono tratti, il Vasari dedica queste parole: et in ultimo si ridusse a far ogni lavoro meccanico: et ad alcune monache et altre genti, che allora ricamavono assai paramenti da chiese, si diede a fare disegni di chiaro scuro e fregiature di santi e di storie per vilissimo prezzo; per che, ancora che egli avesse peggiorato, talvolta gli usciva di bellissimi disegni e fantasie di mano, come ne fanno fede molte carte, che poi doppo la morte di coloro che ricamavono si son venduti qua e là; e nel libro del signore Spedalingo [Don Vincenzo Borghini] ve n’è molti che mostrano quanto valesse nel disegno.15 Alle opere oggi note, in una produzione artistica nient’affatto minore, che meriterebbe maggior attenzione da parte degli studiosi, va aggiunto il ricamo con San Pietro in trono di collezione privata fiorentina (fig. 14.8) che, come osservato dalla Bahremburg Barbetti in una comunicazione scritta, va attribuito a un disegno di Raffaellino come quello per il San Paolo in trono del Louvre, e doveva far parte della bordura di un piviale che annoverava anche il Sant’Andrea in trono del Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra, di identiche misure e composizione, e nella medesima, raffinata, tecnica a ‘or nué’.16 14 15 16

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund 12.56.5a, penna e acquerello marrone con tocchi di biacca e tracce di spolvero, diametro mm 97. Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1), 118-119. Il ricamo di collezione Carnevali è stato studiato nel 2004, su incarico dei proprietari, da Anne E. Bahremburg Barbetti. Ringrazio Liana e Carlo Carnevali per avermi consentito di pubblicare il loro ricamo e fornito la documentazione prodotta dalla studiosa che l’ha attribuito a Raffaellino del Garbo e datato attorno al 1513. Il ricamo del Victoria and Albert Museum, con Sant’Andrea, presenta quasi le stesse dimensioni (cm. 39.4 × 21.6) di quello fiorentino e lo stesso impianto del disegno del Louvre con San Paolo (Parigi, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques inv. RF 520, carboncino, penna e acquerello marrone, acquerello rosso, matita nera e rossa su carta beige, mm 205 × 125). I due ricami e quello relativo al disegno della collezione francese dovevano far parte di una stessa pianeta o altro paramento liturgico. Il ricamo è stato, di recente, esposto a Trento, cfr. M.Carmignani in Fili d’oro e dipinti di seta. Velluti e ricami tra Gotico e Rinascimento, catalogo della mostra a cura di L. Dal Prà, M. Carmignani, P. Peri, Trento (Castello del Buonconsiglio), Trento, 2019, pp.189-190, n.4.1.

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Figure 14.8 Unknown embroiderer after a design by Raffaellino del Garbo, St Peter enthroned, silk and gold thread embroidery, 39.4 × 21.6 cm. 1500-1510, Florence, Carnevali Collection Paula Nuttall, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Michael Kwakkelstein 978-90-04-43461-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/01/2024 02:29:25AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Il ricamo con San Pietro si richiama dappresso a quelli della consunta Pianeta della Collegiata di San Martino a Pietrasanta databile, su base documentaria, al 1511, e i cui disegni preparatori si sono voluti recentemente, a torto, dividere fra Botticelli, autore, secondo la Digilio,17 dei cartoni per l’Apostolo leggente e il Gesù Salvatore o un Santo con libro, e Raffaellino, responsabile invece, dell’ideazione dei ricami nella loro totalità. La vita dell’artista non si sarebbe conclusa nel 1524 come afferma l’apparentemente preciso e attendibile Vasari, che ne indica l’età in 58 anni e la sepoltura in San Simone da parte della Compagnia della Misericordia18. Fu dopo il marzo-aprile del 1525, nuova data corretta dal Goldthwaite per il Census della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, per cui il Rubinstein aveva proposto l’aprile del 1527.19 Il pittore vi è citato come ancora operante nella sua bottega in Via del Garbo, con il figlio e un garzone. Se ne ignora la data di morte ma non dovette passare molto tempo se, com’è probabile, Andrea del Sarto fu chiamato a subentrargli come disegnatore per i restanti ricami del Paramento Passerini del Museo diocesano di Cortona, iniziato sì prima del 26 maggio 1515, ma portato avanti dal 1517, quando Silvio venne creato cardinale, e di certo ultimato entro il 28 aprile del 1526, quando Margherita Passerini, sua madre, lo legò per testamento alla cattedrale di Cortona.20 L’ipotesi più plausibile è quella di una commissione iniziale a Raffaellino, come ipotizzato a suo tempo da diversi studiosi, invece di una collaborazione fra lui e il Sarto, a cui avevo pensato nel 1997, sulla scorta della errata datazione del Census al 1527.21 Lo giustifica il gran numero di ricami, ben 15, riconducibili a suoi disegni (tondi con la Madonna col Bambino, di cui è conservato il disegno preparatorio al Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Dio padre, Cristo in pietà, Santi vari nella pianeta e nel piviale, fra cui il Battista, di cui esiste agli Uffizi il disegno preparatorio e Santa Margherita e Sant’Antonio Abate nel 17

D. Digilio in Arte sacra nella Versilia medicea: il culto e gli arredi, catalogo della mostra (Seravezza, Museo Mediceo) a cura di C. Baracchini e S. Russo, Firenze, 1995, 91-92, 97-98; D. Digilio in G. Cambini, La pianeta della Collegiata di San Martino a Pietrasanta. Storia e restauro, testi di G.Cambini e D. Digilio, Lucca 2011. Per l’attribuzione dei disegni a Raffaellino vedi Cecchi, op. cit., 42. 18 Vasari, op. cit. (nota 1), 119. 19 Per la datazione del Census al 1527 vedi N. Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532, Oxford 1994. Per la correzione della data vedi R. A. Goldthwaite, ‘An Entrepreneurial Silk Weaver in Renaissance Florence’, I Tatti Studies . Essays in the Renaissance, 10, 2005, 69126. 20 C. Ragghianti, Andrea del Sarto a Cortona in ‘La Critica d’arte’, 8 (1949), 117, ill. 86-91; C. Caneva in: Andrea del Sarto 1486 – 1530. Dipinti e disegni a Firenze, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, 1986) a cura di M. Chiarini, Milano 1986, 118-121, n. XIV. 21 Cecchi, op. cit., 41-42.

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paliotto). Solo sei ne eseguì invece il Sarto che completò la fornitura dei disegni per i tondi del paliotto – di cui quelli alle estremità, con i Santi francescani, erano stati forniti da Raffaellino – con la Madonna col Bambino e i quattro Evangelisti e la Trasfigurazione nel cappuccio di piviale. Per quanto discontinua sul piano qualitativo ed eclettica riguardo allo stile, la produzione di Raffaellino non giustifica, a nostro vedere, i giudizi negativi di cui è stato oggetto il nostro artista, dal Cinquecento ad oggi, e si avverte sempre più la mancanza di una monografia che faccia il punto sugli studi e ne raccolga le ‘disiecta membra’ nel campo del disegno, della pittura e delle arti applicate, rendendogli finalmente giustizia. Bibliografia Baracchini, C. e Russo, S., Arte sacra nella Versilia medicea: il culto e gli arredi, catalogo della mostra a cura di C. Baracchini e S. Russo, Seravezza (Museo Mediceo), Firenze, 1995. Berenson, B., I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, Milano 1961 Berti, L., L’opera completa del Pontormo, Milano 1973 Cambini, G. e Digilio, D., (eds.), La pianeta della Collegiata di San Martino a Pietrasanta. Storia e restauro, Lucca, 2011. Caneva, C., in: Andrea del Sarto 1486 – 1530. Dipinti e disegni a Firenze, catalogo della mostra a cura di M. Chiarini, Firenze (Palazzo Pitti 1986), Milano 1986, 118-121, n.XIV. Carmignani, M., in Fili d’oro e dipinti di seta. Velluti e ricami tra Gotico e Rinascimento, catalogo della mostra a cura di L. Dal Prà, M. Carmignani, P. Peri, Trento (Castello del Buonconsiglio), Trento, 2019, 189-190, n.4.1. Carpaneto, M. G., ‘Raffaellino del Garbo: II Parte’, Antichità Viva, 10 (1971),3-19, n.1. Crowe, J. A. e Cavalcaselle G. B., Storia della pittura in Italia, VII, Firenze 1896 Goldner, G. e Bambach, C., The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, catalogo della mostra a cura di G. Goldner e C. Bambach, New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York 1997. Goldthwaite, R., ‘An Entrepreneurial Silk Weaver in Renaissance Florence’, I Tatti Studies . Essays in the Renaissance, 10 (2005), 69-126. Morelli, G., Die werke italienischen meister in den Galerie von München, Dresden/Berlin, trad. ital. Bologna 1886. Morelli, G., Kunstkritische Studien über Italienische Malerei (Die Galerie zu Berlin, III), Dresden/Berlin 1893 Morelli, G., Kunstkritische Studien über Italienische Malerei (Die Galerie Borghese und Doria Pamphili in Rom), trad. ital. Milano 1897. Ragghianti, C., ‘Andrea del Sarto a Cortona‘, Critica d’arte, 8 (1949) 113-24.

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Rubinstein, N., The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532, Oxford 1994. Scharf, A., ‘Die frühen Gemälde des Raffaellino del Garbo’, Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 56 (1933), 151-166. Smyth, C. H., ‘The earliest works of Bronzino’, Art Bulletin, 31 (1949), 185-207. Ulmann, H., ‘Raffaellino del Garbo’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 17 (1894), 90115. Waldman, L. A., ‘Michele d’Alessio di Papi: the Patron of Pontormo’s S. Ruffillo Altar­ piece’, Apollo, 158 (2003), 40-45. Waldman, L. A., ‘Raffaellino del Garbo and his world: commissions, patrons, associates’, Artibus et historiae, 27 (2006), 51-94. Vasari, G., Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, a cura di G. Milanesi, vol. 9, Firenze, 1878-1885. Vasari, G., ‘Vita di Raffaellino del Garbo pittor fiorentino’ in: Le vite de’ più eccellenti ­pittori, scultori ed architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, a cura di R.Bettarini e P. Barocchi, vol. 6, Firenze 1966-1997.

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APPendix

A Note on the Identification of the Saints in the Background of the London Adoration of the Magi Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge

The many unusual aspects of the design and iconography of the small panel of the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery have provoked recent discussion, most extensively by Patrizia Zambrano.1 In considering the identity of the figures that inhabit the rocky background, she followed Martin Davies2 in identifying (from left to right) Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, Saint Jerome in the Desert, Tobias and the Angel (in the far distance), Saint Mary of Egypt (although Davies’s alternative suggestion of the penitent Magdalen seems equally likely) and Saint Benedict. She also proposed that the scenes left unidentified by Davies most probably showed, at the right edge, Saint Gregory dictating his epistles and, at the well-like structure towards the left, Saint Ambrose baptising Saint Augustine, thereby completing the Fathers of the Church. These identifications were accepted by Nicoletta Pons in her entry on the painting in the catalogue of the Filippino Lippi and Sandro Botticelli exhibition held in Rome in 2011.3 The cleaning of the painting immediately before that exhibition, however, revealed that the saint in the upper left could not be Saint Francis, since, following removal of the discoloured varnish, his habit is clearly a creamy white colour and he is shown praying, rather than with outstretched arms. He must be Saint Bernard, to whom the Virgin is appearing in a vision. Confirmation of this identification has been supplied in an unexpected way as a result of infrared reflectography.4 The infrared reflectogram (fig. A.1) shows areas of ele­ gantly economical underdrawing and several significant pentimenti, including 1 P. Zambrano and J. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, 169-178. 2 Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised ed., London 1961, 287. 3 A. Cecchi (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, cat. exh., Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011, 108. 4 The painting was examined following cleaning using an OSIRIS digital infrared camera with an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) sensor. ← Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, detail of fig. 3.7

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Figure A.1 Filippino Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, fig. 3.7, infrared reflectogram after cleaning and restoration (red boxes indicating the locations of details A.2, A.3 and A.4). London, National Gallery

Figure A.2 Infrared reflectogram, detail of A.1

Figure A.3 Infrared reflectogram, detail of A.1

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the addition of figures to the main composition. These changes – which are not the subject of this addendum – were also visible during the treatment of the painting, since they were often exposed by flaking of the uppermost paint layers. Given their minute scale, it is not surprising that there is no underdrawing for the background figures, and they are all painted over the completed landscape. Along the upper edge, however, within the ruled and incised borders that appear at all four sides (and not easily explained in relation to the present design), the names of five of the saints were written, apparently in the same liquid medium used for drawing the figures and landscape. The forms of some of the letters suggest that the hand is plausibly the same as that to be seen in autograph Filippino documents.5 The names appear at irregular intervals and not necessarily in the positions in which the figures appear in the painting. The first, at the left end, is in an area of loss and dark paint cracks. As a result it is fragmentary and no longer legible, but after that the names ‘bernardo’, ‘girolamo’, ‘gregorio’ and ‘ambrogio’ can just be deciphered (figs. A.2-A.4). They were presumably written down as an instruction or as an aide-memoire. The importance given to their inclusion may serve as a further clue to the purpose and patron of this intriguing and distinctive painting.6 Bibliography Cecchi, A. (ed.), Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, cat. exh. Rome (Scuderie del Quirinale), Milan 2011 Davies, M., National Gallery Catalogues: the Earlier Italian Schools (revised ed.), London 1961 Schumacher, A. (ed.), Florence and its Painters: from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, cat. exh. Munich (Alte Pinakothek), Munich 2018 Zambrano, P. and Nelson, J.K., Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004 5 Particularly the prayer to Saint Job on the verso of his preparatory study for the figure of Parthenice in the Strozzi Chapel (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, KdZ, inv. no. 2367). We are grateful to Alexander Röstel for drawing our attention to this. 6 For a possible identification of the patron see A. Röstel in: Florence and its Painters: from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, cat. exh., Munich (Alte Pinakothek), 2018, 248-249, cat. no. 51.

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Photographic Credits

Photographic Credits In most cases illustrations have been made from digital images provided by the owners of the works or their agents. Those for which credit or thanks are due are listed below. Arezzo, Pieve di Santa Maria: 8.2. Berlin and Florence, © Alamy Stock Photo: 3.1, 3.10, 9.2, 11.2. Berlin, the Bode Museen: 12.5. Bremen, Kunsthalle Bremen: 13.3. Chantilly, courtesy of the Musée Condé: 13.8. Copenhagen, © Statens Museum for Kunst: 0.1. Christopher Daly with permission: 12.2, 12.3, 12.6, 12.7. Denver, © Denver Art Museum Collection/The Simon Guggenheim Memorial Collection: 6.11. Dijon, © Musée Magnin: 13.9, 13.11. Dresden, © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/ Herbert Boswank; 3.2. Dublin, © National Gallery of Ireland: 6.9. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, bequest of David Laing: 13.4. Geoffrey Nuttall with permission, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara: 4.6, 4.7. Florence, © Zvonimir Atletic / Alamy Stock Photo: 9.14. Florence, © La società S.A.R: 10.1-10.9. Florence, © Collezione Carnevali: 14.8. Florence, © San Michele e San Salvi: 14.6. Florence, Badia Fiorentina: 7.3. Florence, © the Santissima Annunziata: 14.4. Florence, © Gabinetto fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi: 3.3, 3.4, 4.5, 4.11, 4.12, 5.12, 6.10, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7. Florence, © Scala Florence: 3.1, 3.5. Florence, © Scala/Fondo Edifici di Culto-Ministero dell’Interno: 9.3, 9.10, 9.11, 9.12, 9.13. Florence, © Scala/ Ministero Beni e Attività Culturale e del Turismo: 14.2. Florence, © Scala/ Musei Civici Fiorentini: 14.5. Florence, © Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze: 1.2. Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett: 2.9. Le Mans, courtesy of the Musée de Tessé: 13.5. London, © The Courtauld Institute Galleries: 12.4. London, © Royal Academy of Arts: 14.1. London, Tate Britain: 1.1. London, © The National Gallery, London: 2.16, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 4.8, 7.2, A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4. London, permission of The Warburg Institute: 2.5, 2.8, 2.10. London © Trustees of the British Museum: 2.6, 2.7, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14, 9.8, 9.9. Lucca, © Archivio fotografico Diocesano di Lucca: 4.4. Lucca, © La Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e il Paesaggio per le province di Lucca e Massa Carrara: 4.1, 4.2(b), 4.3, 12.1, 12.8. Milan, © Mondadori Portfolio: 6,1, 6.8. Milan, Mondadori Portfolio, Archivio Quattrone/Antonio Quattrone: 6.3, 6.4, 6.5. Milan, permission of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana: 13.10. Milan, © Mandragora Editrice: 7.9. Modena, permission of the Galleria Estense: 5.11. New York, © Morgan Library and Museum: 2.1. New York, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund: 2.2. New York, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of the Julius Bache Collection: 7.8. New York, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of the Rogers Fund: 11.4. New York, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of the Bequest of Benjamin Altman: 13.6. New York, © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence: 14.7. New Haven, permission of The Yale University Art Gallery: 5.6. Nevers, permission of the Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts: 13.1a-b.

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Nîmes, permission of the Musée des Beaux-Arts: 13.2. Oxford, © The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology: 5.7. Oxford, © Governing Body of Christ Church: 2.3, 2.4, 5.8. Paris, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Franck Raux: 2.15. Paris, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Picasa: 5.10. Private Collection, with permission: 12.9. Pasadena, © The Norton Simon Foundation: 4.2a, 4.2c, 4.9, 4.10. Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli: 8.5. Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva: 8.1, 8.4, 8.7, 8.8. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini: 5.13. Rouen, courtesy of Le diocese de Rouen: 13.7. San Gimignano, © and permission of the Musei Civici di San Gimignano: 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5, 5.9. Sarasota, © The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art: 14.3. Siena courtesy of the Commune di Chiusdino: 5.4. Turin, Galleria Sabauda: 7.1. Venice, courtesy of the Seminario Patriarcale Pinacoteca Manfrediniana: 7.10. Vienna, Albertina Graphische Sammlung: 8.3. Washington, D.C., © Catholic University of America: 12.10. Washington D.C., © National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund: 11.6. Washington D.C., © National Gallery of Art, A. W. Mellon Collection: 6.2.

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Index

Index

Index abisso 145-146, 176 Acres, Alfred 148 Adornes, Anselm 190 Aestheticism 13, 27 Albert the Great 135 Alberti, Leon Battista 65, 69 Albertinelli, Mariotto, Virgin and Child, formerly New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 325 Alexander VI, Pope (Rodrigo Borgia) 337 Alighieri, Dante 177-178 Altopascio, Hospital 108 Andrea di Bonaiuto, Navicella, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Spanish Chapel 248 Andreucci, Clemente di Antonio 91, 95 Angiolini, Bartolo di Angelino 157 Anonimo Magliabecchiano 277 Anonymous Florentine, figure studies: Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett; Florence, Uffizi; Hamburg, Kunsthalle; London, British Museum 45- 54 Anonymous Florentine, Triumph of Aemilus Paullus (engraving) 241 Anonymous German painter, Portrait of a Monk, Dijon, Musée Magnin 341 Anonymous Lucchese painter 313 Anonymous Lucchese painter, Virgin and Child with Three Angels (tondo), London, Courtauld Galleries 304308 Anonymous Lucchese painter, Annunciation, Berlin, Bode Museum 306-308 apparati 233, 235, 241 Aquinas, Saint Thomas 135, 213, 216 Summa theologica 217-218, 224 Arasse, Daniel 144 Arnolfini family 106 Arnolfini, Bartolomeo 106-107 Artaud de Montor, Alexis-François 323 Baader, Hanna 177 Bachiacca, Francesco, Triumph of Time, Nevers, Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts 324-325 Baccio della Porta, see Fra Bartolomeo

Bahremburg Barbetti, Anne 356 Baldassare di Biagio, Assumption of the Virgin, Lucca, San Paolino e San Don­ ato 88, 112 Baldini, Baccio, Prophets and Sibyls (engra­ vings) 136, 244 Bambach, Carmen 40, 46 Baudelaire, Charles 20, 21, 25 Baxandall, Michael 68 Belcari, Feo 136 Bellini, Giovanni 65 Saint Francis in the Desert, New York, Frick Collection 65 Bellucci, Jacopo 146 Benedetto di Domenico d’Andrea 58-59 Berenson, Bernard 25, 27, 45, 298, 332, 337, 340-342, 348, 350 Bernardi Altarpiece, see Filippino Lippi Bernardi family 90, 103, 108, 112, 114 Antonio di Giovanni 103 Bernardino di Stefano 106-107 Girolamo di Jacopo 106, 114 Giannino di Giovanni (Abbot of San Salvatore a Sesto) 85, 103-109, 112 Giovanni di Landuccio 86 Nicolao di Stefano 85- 86, 103, 105, 107-108, 112, 297 Berruguete, Alonso, Coronation of the Virgin, Paris, Louvre 324 Berti, Luciano 351 Bertini, Domenico 90 Bertoldo, di Giovanni 294 Bientina, see Sesto Blake, William 26 Bobbio, Abbey of San Colombano, see pilgrimage tokens 132 Boccaccio, Giovanni 177 Bonaventura di ser Giuliano Turi di Pilli 105 Bono, Francesco, see Virgin at the Well, relief sculptures 134 Bork, Sidonia von 28-29 Boskovits, Miklós 160 Botticelli, Sandro 3-4, 11, 14-16, 18- 22, 24-25, 27, 31-33, 39, 46, 52-54, 57- 60, 65, 79, 81, 114, 148, 154, 159, 162, 166, 168, 170, 187-188, 323, 347, 358

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Index Botticelli, assistants 58-60 Botticelli, portrait in Brancacci ­Chapel 169 Adoration of the Magi (Lama Altarpiece), Florence, Uffizi 69- 72, 74, 169 Adoration of the Magi (tondo), London, National Gallery 74 Adoration of the Magi (with Filippino Lippi), London, National Gallery 187-188 Birth of Venus, Florence, Uffizi 32 Cestello Annunciation, Florence, Uffizi 145 Female Heads 59 Judgement of Paris, Venice, Cini Foundation 59 Madonna of the Magnificat 59 Mystic Nativity, London, National Gallery 16 Nastagio degli Onesti panels, Madrid, Prado, 59 Portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici 59 Portrait of a Young Man, Florence, Galleria Palatina 158 Primavera, Florence, Uffizi 23 Saint Augustine, Florence, Ognissanti 124 Temptation of Christ, Rome, Sistine Chapel 180 Venus images 59 Virgin and Child images (workshop) 54, 57, 59, 330 Botticini, Francesco Nativity, Florence, Galleria Palatina 30 Bouts, Dirk, Virgin and Child, London, National Gallery 200 Braccesco, Carlo, Annunciation, Paris, Louvre 139-140, 142 Braccesi, Alessandro 179-180 Bramante, Donato Cloister, Rome, Santa Maria della Pace 285 Tempietto, Rome, San Pietro in Montorio 285 Bugiardini, Giuliano, Virgin and Child, formerly New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 325 Burckhardt, Jacob 15, 24 Burke, Jill 53, 177 Burne-Jones, Edward 11, 16, 18, 30

Adoration of the Magi and Shepherds, London, Tate 17 King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, London, Tate 11 Sidonia von Bork, London, Tate, 28, 29, 31 Wheel of Fortune, Paris, Museé d’Orsay 29 Buti, Lucrezia 26, 27 Cacault, François 323 Canigiani, Bartolomeo 146 Carafa, Cardinal Oliviero 154, 213, 216, 219 Carpaccio, Vittorio 65 Castelnuovo, Enrico 155 Castruccio Castracani degli Antel­ minelli 102 Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista 15, 30, 350 Cecchi, Alessandro 169, 172 Cellini, Benvenuto 285, 290 Cenami, Martino 94 Champion, Matthew 139 Chastel, André 145 Christiansen, Keith 330 Ciampanti, Michele 300-302, 311 Ciampanti, Sano di Michele 301-302, 308-309, 313 Flight into Egypt, whereabouts unknown 308 Virgin and Child, whereabouts unknown 308 Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and Angels, Greenville, Bob Jones Museum 309 Virgin and Child with Saints and Annunciation, Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 313, 316 Cima da Conegliano 65 Civitali, Matteo 301 Clement VII, Pope (Giulio de’ Medici) 290 Cole, Michael 248 Condivi, Ascanio 278, 284-285 Conti, Sigismondo de’ 155 Corsi, Antonio di Francesco 302, 312-313 Virgin and Child with Saints, Capannori, Pieve di San Pietro di Vorno 302 Virgin and Child with Saints, Capannori, Sant’ Andrea di Compito 302 Cort, Cornelis, after Federico Zuccaro, Annunciation (engraving) 133

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Index

Corvinus, Matthias 156 Costelloe, Mary 25 Crowe, Joseph Archer 15, 30 Dalli Regoli, Gigetta 45-46, 52-54 Daniel, Prophet 135 Davide di Pietro di Pistoia, Altarpiece, Crasciana, San Jacopo 109 Davies, Martin 363 De Marchi, Andrea 164, 230, 255, 330 Del Serra, Alfio 261 Del Voglia family 102,302 Dempsey, Charles 136 Didi-Huberman, Georges 134 Donatello 294 Donatello, Raising of Drusiana, Florence, San Lorenzo, Old Sacristy 244 Dunkerton, Jill 78 Ezekiel, Prophet 135-136 Fahy, Everett 121-122, 298, 304 Ferrari, Francesco Bianchi, Annunciation, Modena, Galleria Estense 140, 142 Ferretti, Massimo 99, 300, 302, 312 Fesch, Cardinal Joseph 323 Festival decorations, see apparati Ficino, Marsilio 79 Finiguerra, Maso 53 Florence Compagnia dei Tessitori dei Drappi 102 Compagnia di Sant’ Agnese 156 Loggia dei Tessitori 102 Palazzo Corsini 11, 29 Palazzo Vecchio, Sala del Maggior Consiglio 277 San Marco 101, 102 Santa Croce, Peruzzi Chapel 244 Santa Maria del Carmine Brancacci Chapel 4-5, 153-154, 156-157, 159-160, 162, 164, 166-169, 172-174, 177, 180, 279, 281, 340 Santa Maria Novella 4, 232 Strozzi Chapel (Chapel of Filippo Strozzi) 4-5, 7, 23, 25, 32, 33, 164, 202, 203, 223, 229-257, 261-275, 277-278, 283, 285, 288-290, 328 Tomb of Filippo Strozzi 230, 233, 249, 288

Spanish Chapel 248 Strozzi Chapel (north transept) 249, 254 Tornabuoni Chapel 4, 166, 202, 251, 253-254, 256 Santa Maria Nuova 102 San Miniato al Monte, Cardinal of Portugal’s Chapel 96, 252 San Lorenzo 244, 287, 289-290 Santo Spirito 352 Santa Trinita Bartolini-Salimbeni Chapel 135 Sassetti Chapel 4, 202, 213, 251 Fra Angelico 21 Annunciation (Armadio degli Argenti), Florence, Museo di San Marco 137 Fra Bartolomeo 192, 330 Vision of St Catherine of Siena, Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa ­Guinigi 102 Virgin and Child in Glory, formerly Berlin Kaiser Friedrich Museum 323-324 Franciotti family 106 Giorgio di Galeotto 106-107 Gianfrancesco di Piero 106 Frediani, Vincenzo 99, 102, 300, 302, 311, 313, Virgin and Child with Saints (del Voglia Altarpiece), destroyed 95, 96, 112, 302, 304 Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Eustace, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalen and Vitus, Montignoso, Sant’ Eustachio 100 Virgin and Child with Saints Genesius and James, formerly Boveglio, SS. Jacopo e Ginese 318 Friedman, David 252, 254 Gaskell, Elizabeth 14 Gautier, Théophile 26 Geiger, Gail 211 Ghirlandaio, Davide Annunciation, San Gimignano, ­Collegiata 123 Virgin and Child (tondo), Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts (see also Filippino workshop) 325-330 Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, Bremen, Kunsthalle 327-328

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371

Index Ghirlandaio, Domenico 4, 40, 154, 190, 277-278, 281, 294, 298, 301, 311, 323, 325, 330, 339 Calling of the Apostles, Rome, Sistine Chapel 281 Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence, Santa Maria Novella 166, 202, 251, 253-254, 256 Sassetti Chapel 202, 213, 251 Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints (Santa Maria Novella Altarpiece), Munich, Alte Pinakothek 103 Virgin and Child with Saints Peter, Clement, Sebastian and Paul, Lucca, Cathedral 91,95-96,102, 298 Ghirlandaio, Francesca di Domenico 311 Ghirlandaio, Ridolfo, Coronation of the Virgin, Paris, Louvre 324 Ghivizzano family Agostino 93 Jacopo 93 Nicodemo 93 Paolo 93 Pietro 93 Tommaso 95 Gigli family 97 Giotto Arena Chapel, Padua 142 Peruzzi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence 244 Giovanni di Benedetto di Giovanni Cianfanini 59 Goldner, George 40, 46 Gospels Saint Luke 124, 129-132, 139, 143 Proto-Gospel of James 129-132, 134, 139, 142, Pseudo-Matthew 130-132 Gosse, Edmund 14 Gozzoli, Benozzo, Project for Annunciation, San Gimignano, Palazzo del Commune 123-24 Granacci, Francesco 167-68, 279, 281 Grave, Johannes 230 Gucci, Pietro 87 Guicciardini Luigi 114 Piero 156, 168 Guinigi, Roberto di Piero 91, 95

Holbein, Hans 170 Isaiah, Prophet 135, 137 Jameson, Anna 20 Jacopo di Domenico di Papi 58-59 James, Henry 27 Jarves, James Jackson 24 Jeremiah, Prophet 135 Julius II, Pope (Giuliano della Rovere) 91, 106, 294, 337 Kugler, Franz 15, 23 Laclotte, Michel 330 Lagrange, Léon 20-22, 24 Landino, Cristoforo 178-179 Lee, Vernon 25 Leonardo da Vinci 4, 22, 29, 40, 53, 66, 162, 172, 248 Adoration of the Magi, Florence, Uffizi 293-294 Medusa (formerly attributed to), Florence, Uffizi 14-15 Levy, Michael 15 Liédet, Loyset 124 Lippi, Filippo 3-4, 26-27, 30-31, 60, 74, 124, 134, 146, 148, 154, 168, 188, 199 Adoration of the Child (Medici Chapel Altarpiece), Berlin, Gemäldegalerie 65, 325 Annunciation (Martelli Altarpiece), Florence, San Lorenzo 132-133 Annunciation, Rome, Palazzo ­Barberini 146 Annunciation, Wiltshire, Corsham Court 145-146 Annunciation, Spoleto, Cathedral 124, 157 Coronation of the Virgin, Florence, Uffizi 157 Funeral of Saint Jerome, Prato, Museo del Opera del Duomo 157 Lives of Saints Stephen and John the Baptist, Prato, Cathedral 157 Portrait of a Man and Woman at a Casement, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 157

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Index

Lippi, Filippo (cont.) Portrait of a Woman, Berlin, Gemälde­ galerie 157 Virgin and Child (Bartolini Tondo), Florence, Galleria Palatina 142, 144 Lippi, Filippino Antiquity and 5, 288 Architecture and 8, 285, 288 Netherlandish painting and 5, 7, 81, 125, 162, 172-173, 187-188, 196-198, 297, 301 Technique 68-69, 172-173, 261-265, 281, 338-340 cassoni panels, Story of Esther 323 design for the façade of Florence Cathedral 233 designs for the Triumphal Entry of Charles VIII 235 drawings Adoration of the Magi, Florence, Uffizi 72-73 Dream of the Warrior, Florence, Uffizi 31 Figure study, Chantilly, Musée Condé 340 Figure study, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 40-41, Figure study, Oxford, Christchurch Picture Gallery 41-42, 47, 52-53 Head of a Youth in Profile, Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica 167 Head of a Youth Wearing a Cap, Florence, Uffizi 174-176 Man wearing a cap, Paris, Louvre 167 Male Head, Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection 154 Male Head, Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste 154, 167 Mermaid, Paris, Louvre 337 Minerva, Paris, Louvre 28-29, 31 Sacrifice of Laocoon, Moscow, Pushkin Museum 285 Saint Martin Dividing his Cloak with the Beggar, Florence, Uffizi 97 Saint Jerome, Cleveland, Museum of Art 334 Sea Creatures and Tritons, Florence, Uffizi 112 Seated and Standing Man, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett 67-69

Two Standing Men, Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection 340 drawings, workshop Head of the Virgin, Florence, Uffizi 24 Seated male figure, Dijon, Musée Magnin 337-340 Seated male figure, Milan, ­Ambrosiana 339-340 paintings Adoration of the Magi (San Donato a Scopeto Altarpiece), Florence, Uffizi 30, 154-155, 167, 196-198, 202-203, 294, 308 Adoration of the Magi, London, National Gallery 7, 73-81, 190-191, 198, 340, 363-365 Adoration of the Magi (with Botticelli), London, National Gallery 187, 188, 198 Allegory of Music, (see Erato) Annunciation, San Gimignano, Pina­ coteca 7, 121-131, 134, 139,142-148, 192, 195-196, 198 Angels (fragments of a tondo), London, National Gallery and Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts 309 Brancacci Chapel 4, 5, 154, 156, 160, 162, 172-173, 340 Dispute with Simon Magus and Crucifixion of Saint Peter 162, 164, 167-169, 174, 279 Saint Paul visiting Saint Peter in Prison 166 Saint Peter liberated from Prison 162, 164 Raising of the son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned 162, 167, 177, 180, 279 Carafa Chapel 4, 7, 8, 107, 114, 209-225, 277, 285, 291, 337 Annunciation 154, 195, 200, 211, 213,216, 219, 224, 292 Assumption of the Virgin 209, 216, 219, 292 Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix 220, 224 Sibyls 252, 284

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373

Index Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas 222-223, 285, 289 Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint Francis (central panel, Valori Altarpiece), destroyed 5, 103 Deposition (completed by Perugino), Florence, Galleria dell’ Accademia 323 Double Intercession, Munich, Alte Pinakothek 192 Double Portrait of Piero del Pugliese and Filippino Lippi, Denver, Museum of Art 167, 172, 176-180 Entombed Christ Supported by the Virgin, Magdalen and Joseph of Arimathea, Cherbourg, Musée Thomas ­Henry 57 Erato, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie 5, 256, 332 God the Father (fragment), Private collection 107, 315 Lamentation, Peralada, Museo del Castillo 332 Laocoon, Poggio a Caiano, Villa ­Medici 334 Meeting at the Golden Gate, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst 5-6, 290 Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Casali Altarpiece), Bologna, San Domenico 5, 287, 328 Noli me tangere and Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Venice, Seminario Patriarcale 100-101, 203-205 Pietà, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art 198 Portrait of a Musician, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland 172-174, 176, 332 Portrait of a Young Man, Paris, ­Louvre 169, 170, 172 Portrait of a Young Man, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art 159-162, 169 Saint Eustace, Ferrara, Pinacoteca 97100 Saint Jerome, El Paso, Museum of Art 334 Saints Benedict and Apollonia, Paul and Donatus (Bernardi Altarpiece),

Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum 7, 85, 95, 103, 106-109, 112, 114, 192, 198, 297, 313-315 Saints John the Baptist and Mary Magdalen (wings of Valori Altarpiece), Florence, Galleria dell’ Accademia 5, 100, 103 Saints Roch, Sebastian, Jerome and Helena (Magrini Altarpiece), Lucca, San Michele in Foro 5, 7, 85, 94-96, 99, 100, 102-103, 114, 198, 297 Saints Sebastian, John the Baptist and Francis (Lomellini Altarpiece), Genoa, Palazzo Bianco 142 Stories of Lucretia and Virginia, Paris, ­Louvre 5 Strozzi Chapel 4-5, 7, 23, 25, 32-33, 107, 164, 223, 229-257, 261-275, 277-278, 285, 288-289 Abraham 252 Adam 248-249, 251-252, 283 Jacob 252 Noah 252 Crucifixion of Saint Philip 247-248 Exorcism of the Temple of Mars by Saint Philip 202-203, 244-246, 253, 269, 288-289, 290 Failed Martyrdom of Saint John 248, 270 Raising of Drusiana 244, 251, 278, 328 Tobias and the Angel, Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art 57 Virgin and Child (Strozzi Virgin), New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bache Collection 200 Virgin and Child, (Wernher Tondo), Blackheath (London), Ranger’s House 198 Virgin and Child with Angels, Paris, Louvre 54, 57, 330 Virgin and Child with Angels (Corsini Tondo), Florence, Banca CR 11, 29, 30, 31, 196, 304 Virgin and Child with Angels (tondo), Cleveland, Museum of Art 25, 328, 332 Virgin and Child with Saint John, London, National Gallery 54, 57, 198

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Index

Lippi, Filippino paintings (cont.) Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist (Blue Madonna), Mexico City, Museo Soumaya 307, 332 Virgin and Child with Saints Anthony, Peter, Paul and John Baptist, formerly Pistoia, SS. Annunziata, Bracali Chapel 312 Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic (Rucellai Altarpiece), London, National Gallery 172, 196, 198 Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius, (Palazzo Vecchio Altarpiece), Florence, Uffizi 196, 198 Virgin and Child with Saints Martin of Tours, Catherine and Donors (Nerli Altarpiece), Florence, Santo Spirito 93, 102, 155, 202, 309 Vision of Saint Bernard, Florence, Badia 65, 66, 146, 153, 172, 176, 191-192, 196, 281, 340 Worship of Apis, London, National Gallery 253 Wounded Centaur, Oxford, Ash­ molean 191 paintings, attributed Althaea and her maid, Florence, Uffizi 15 Portrait of an Old Man, Florence, Uffizi 341 Portrait of a Man, Florence, Uffizi 172 paintings, workshop Saint Jerome, Rouen, Palais Archièpiscopal 334 Virgin and Child (tondo), Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts (see also Davide Ghirlandaio) 325-330 Longhi, Roberto 33 Lorenzetti Ambrogio, Annunciation, Montesiepi, San Galgano 125-126 Lorenzetti Pietro, Tarlati Polyptych, Arezzo, Pieve di Santa Maria 210 Lorenzo di Credi 22, 192, 308 Lucca Compagnia della Croce 91, 95

Cathedral of San Martino 91 Hospital of San Luca and the Misericordia 108 Palazzo Cenami 106 Piazza di San Michele in Foro 90-91, 93, 94 Porta San Donato 109, 112-113 Sant’ Andrea di Croce di Brancoli, Ponte a Moriano 103 San Bartolomeo in Salice 108 San Donato Fuori le Mura 107 San Francesco 91 San Frediano 96 San Giovanni e Reparata 106 San Girolamo 88, 90, 94 San Michele in Foro 5, 85, 93, 95, 297 San Paolo 109 San Pietro Cigoli 104 San Pietro Fuori le Mura 107 San Ponziano 106, 107 San Romano 95, 102, 302 San Salvatore in Mustolio 103, 109 San Tommaso in Pelleria 316 Sant’ Agostino 103, 108 Santa Maria del Corso 85, 103-109, 113, 297 Sesto, near Lucca, Abbey of San Salvatore 103-105, 112 Sesto, Lake (also known as Lake of Bientina) 103-104, 108, 112-114 Lucchese painting 8, 297-318 Magrini Altarpiece, see Filippino Lippi Magrini family 112 Bartolomea di Francesco 94, 100 Benedetto di Jacopo 94 Camilla di Jacopo 94 Caterina di Francesco 94, 100 Elena di Jacopo 94, 97 Francesco di Jacopo (patron of the Magrini Altarpiece) 85-91, 93-97, 100-103, 112 Girolamo di Francesco 88, 91 Girolamo di Jacopo 88, 97 Jacopo (da Carmignano) 86-87 Jacopo (called Giachetto) di Francesco 89, 91, 95 Maiano, Benedetto da 105 Saint Anthony Abbot (see also Filippino Lippi, Bernardi Altarpiece), Lucca,

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Index Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 85, 95, 103, 108, 109, 297 Manni, Baldassare 88 Marti, Francesco di Leonardo 112, 301 Mantegna, Andrea 5, 11, 155, 156, 311, 337 Double Portrait of Galeotto Marzio and Giano Pannonio, destroyed 179 Marignole, Santa Maria alle Campora 153 Martini family (of Lucca) Bartolomeo di Nicolao 91, 95 Maddalena di Bartolomeo 91 Martini, Simone Annunciation, Florence, Uffizi (see also Lippo Memmi) 135 Masaccio 7, 69, 166, 281, 294 Brancacci Chapel 4, 153-154, 156-157, 162, 167-168, 172, 340 Trinity, Florence, Santa Maria Novella 237, 239-240 Masolino da Panicale 4, 156, 281 Master of the Campana Cassoni, The Triumph of Chastity, Nevers, Musée de la Faïence et des Beaux-Arts 324-325 Master of the Castello Nativity 66 Master of the Holden Tondo 304 Master of the Immaculate Conception, see Vincenzo Frediani Master of the Lathrop Tondo, see Michelangelo di Pietro Membrini Master of the Crocefisso dei Bianchi, see Ranieri di Leonardo da Pisa Master of Memphis Nativity, Avignon, Musée du Petit Pa­ lais 318 Coronation of the Virgin, Paris, Louvre 324 Master of the Saint Ursula Legend, The Sudarium born by Angels, Venice, Seminario Patriarcale 100-101, 203-205 Master of San Filippo, see Sano Ciampanti Master of Serumido 334 Matteo dii Giovanni Ciudi da Settignano 104-106 Maximus the Confessor, Life of the Virgin 136-137, 139 McGee, Timothy 173 Medici family 199, 200, 255, 334 Lorenzo de’ 113-114, 156, 187, 198, 256 233, 241

Giulio, see Clement VII portraits in Filippino’s San Donato Adoration of the Magi 154-155 Meinhold, Wilhelm 28 Meliore di Jacopo 71-72 Melli, Lorenza 167, 176, 337 Membrini, Michelangelo di Pietro 298, 302, 311-313 Virgin and Child with Angels, Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 107 Memling, Hans 125 Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints John the Baptist and Lawrence (Pagagnotti Triptych), Florence, Uffizi and London, National Gallery 101-102, 112-113, 192 Portrait of a Young Man, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Collection 200 Memmi, Lippo Annunication, Florence, Uffizi (see also Simone Martini) 135 Maestà, San Gimignano, Palazzo del Commune 124-125 Mengin, Urbain 124 Michelangelo Buonarroti 4, 8, 22, 29-30, 40, 277-294 Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, San Lorenzo 287 David, Florence, Galleria dell’ Accademia 277 Medici Chapel (New Sacristy), Florence, San Lorenzo 287, 289-290 Study for the Tomb of Julius II, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 288 Tomb of Julius II, project for 288, 290 Sistine Chapel 114, 180, 212 Ceiling 279, 281, 284-285, 289-290, 294 Ancestors of Christ 284 Creation of Adam 281 Delphic Sibyl 284 Drunkenness of Noah 279 Libyan Sibyl 284 Temptation 281 Ignudi 279 Last Judgement 212, 278, 290-291, 293-294 Milan cathedral, see Francesco di Bono Milanesi, Gaetano 350

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Index

Monaco, Lorenzo, Annunciation, Florence, Santa Trinita, BartolinI-Salimbeni Chapel 135 Montefeltro, Guidobaldo da 179 Monza, cathedral, see pilgrimage tokens Morelli, Giovanni 350 Morris, William 17 Moore, Albert Joseph 26 Natali, Mauro 300-301 Naples 200, 224, 233 Neilson, Katharine 203 Nelson, Jonathan 3, 6, 39, 134, 153, 177, 211 Neri di Bicci 58 Nerli, Tanai de’ 97, 202 Neroccio de’ Landi, Assumption of the Virgin (with Vecchietta), Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 105 Noceto, Nicolao 90, 91 Nova, Alessandro 155 Nuttall, Geoffrey 192 Nuttall, Paula 330 Offner, Richard 298 O’Malley, Michelle 340 Orsini, Giordano, see Baldini, Prophets and Sibyls Østermark-Johansen, Lene 29 Pacioli, Luca 5 Padua, Arena Chapel 142 Pagagnotti Benedetto di Luca 101-102, 192 Parlato, Enrico 164, 167 Pater, Walter 15-16, 18-19, 21, 24-25, 27, 31, 33 Pazzi Conspiracy 59, 114 Penny, Nicholas 77 Perugino, Pietro 66, 312-313, 347 Annunciation, Fano 66 Assumption of the Virgin, formerly Sistine Chapel 212-213, 291 Assumption with Saints, Accademia, Florence 355 Deposition (begun by Filippino), Florence, Galleria dell’ Accademia 323 Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Paul, Chantilly, Musée Condé 312 Petrarch, Francesco 174

Piero della Francesca 179 Piero di Cosimo 179 Death of Procris, London, National Gallery 32 pilgrimage tokens 132 Pinturicchio, Glorification of Saint Bernardino, Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Bufalini Chapel 213 Pittore di Paolo Buonvisi, see Vincenzo Frediani Pittore Compitese, see Antonio di Francesco Corsi Pistoia, SS. Annuziata, Bracali Chapel 312 Pius III, Pope (Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini) 91-92, 95 Poliziano, Angelo 200 Pollaiuolo, del 77 Pollaiuolo, Antonio del 168, 248 Antonio del Pollaiuolo, portrait in Brancacci Chapel 168 Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo, Saints James, Vincent and Eustace (San Minato Altarpiece), Florence, San Miniato al Monte, Cardinal of Portugal’s Chapel 96 Pons, Nicoletta 363 Pontormo, Jacopo 351 Noli me tangere (after Michelangelo), Busto Arsizio, private collection 290 Noli me tangere (after Michelangelo), Florence, Casa Buonarroti 290 Visitation, Carmignano, San Michele e San Francesco 290 Pope-Hennessy, John 154-155 Prato, Cathedral 157 Pre-Raphaelites 15, 18, 23, 25-27, 31, 33 Prettejohn, Elizabeth 27 Pseudo-Augustine, De assumption Beatae Mariae Virginis 218-219 Pugliese, Francesco del 187, 204 Pugliese, Piero del 146, 153, 156, 168, 176-180 Pulci, Luigi 168 Quercia, Jacopo della, Virgin and Child with Saints Ursula, Lawrence, Jerome and Richard (Trenta Altarpiece), Lucca, San Frediano, Trenta Chapel 96

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377

Index Raffaello di Carlo or dei Carli, see Raffaellino del Garbo Raffaello di Bartolomeo Capponi, see Raffaellino del Garbo Raffaellino del Garbo 5, 99, 347-359 designs for embroidery 358-359 Angel Annunciate, (design for embroidery), New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 356 embroideries designed by Saint Peter Enthroned, Florence, Carnevali Collection 356 Saint Paul Enthroned, Paris, Louvre 356 St Andrew Enthroned, London, Victoria and Albert Museum 356 Chasuble, (attributed to), Pietrasanta, Collegiata di San Martino 358 Paramento Passerini, Cortona, Museo Diocesano 358-359 paintings Coronation of the Virgin with Saints, Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais 55 Crucified Christ and Saint Bernard, Florence, Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi 351 Lamentation (Nasi Altarpiece), Munich, Alte Pinakothek 352 Mass of Saint Gregory (Antinori Altarpiece), Sarasota, Ringling Museum 349, 352 Pietà (set in pax), Florence, San Michele a San Salvi 353 Portrait of a Man, London, National Gallery 332 Resurrection (Capponi Altarpiece), Florence, Galleria dell’ Accademia 349 Saint Giovanni Gualberto and Saints, Vallombrosa, Abbey 355 Virgin and Child, Le Mans, Musée de Tessé 330, 332 Virgin and Child, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 332 Virgin and Child and Saint John with Angels (tondo), Glasgow, City Art Gallery 332 Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Bartholomew and Angels (Frescobaldi

Altarpiece), San Francisco, Museum of Fine Art 352 Virgin and Child with Saints John the Evangelist, Lawrence, Stephen and Bernard (Segni Altarpiece), Florence, Santo Spirito 352 Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist, attributed to, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland 328 Virgin and Child with Saints (sinopia), attributed to, Florence, SS. Annunziata 351 Raffaello di Lorenzo di Fruosino Tosi (il Tosso) 59 Ragghianti, Carlo 45-46, 52-54 Ranieri di Leonardo da Pisa 300, 316, 318 Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, Capannori, San Colombano 91-92 Holy Family and Saints, Washington D.C., Catholic University of America 316 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 294 Madonna di Foligno, Rome, Vatican Museums 155 Resta, Sebastiano 337 Rio, Alexis-François 15, 20, 24 Ripafratta, Molino Grassotti 113 Robetta, Cristofano 290 Adoration of the Magi (engraving) 294 Rome Belvedere of Innocent VIII 5 Domus Aurea 237, 311 Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Bufalini Chapel 213 Santa Maria della Pace 285 Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Carafa Chapel 4-5, 7-8, 107, 114, 154, 195, 200, 209-225, 252, 277, 284, 285, 289, 291-292, 337 San Paolo Fuori le Mura 109 San Pietro in Montorio 285 Sistine Chapel 4-5, 212-213, 281, 285, 290-291, 293-294 Rosi, Giuseppe 261 Rosselli, Cosimo, Virgin and Child with Saints Eufrosino, John the Baptist and Bartolomeo Canigiani (Canigiani Altarpiece), Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento 145-46

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378

Index

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 17, 19-20, 26, 28 Rossetti, William Michael 17-18 Rovere, Lucina della 106 Ruskin, John 17 Sale, John 254 Salvatore, Tommaso 177, 179 Sangallo, Giuliano da Achilles in Skyros Discovered by Ulysses, Chantilly, Musée Condé 336-337 Saint John the Baptist, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett 337 Savonarola, Girolamo 230, 232, 237 Salvucci, Angelo Romeo de 147 Sandonnini, Nicolao 95 San Gimignano, Palazzo del Commune, Audience Hall 125-126, 142-143, 145-146 Sarto, Andrea del 22, 358 Scacceri, Giovanni Antonio, see Ferrari, Francesco Bianchi Scala, Bartolomeo 93, 101, 114 Scharf, Alfred 351 Sellaio, Jacopo del 66 Sesto, see Lucca Shakespeare, William 26 Shearman, John 146 Siena, Oratorio di San Bernardino 105 Sixtus IV, Pope (Francesco della Rovere) 92, 104-106, 168, 212, 289,291 Sizeranne, Robert de la 11 Spoleto 124, 157, 168 Soderini, Piero 278 Soderini, Tommaso 156, 168 Solomon, Simeon 16, 18 Spada, Paolo 95 Sperandio, di Giovanni 351 Steel, Carlos 79 Steinberg, Leo 146 Stratonice Master, see Michele Ciampanti Strozzi family 229-230, 249, 253, 255 Strozzi, Filippo 187, 200, 233, 251-252, 254-256 Strozzi, Zanobi, Annunciation, London, National Gallery 132 Swinburne, Charles Algernon 7, 14-30, 32-33 Symonds, John Addington 16

Takuma, Ito 249 Tazartes, Maurizia 298 Tintori, Leonetto 261 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) 26 Tocco, William de 224 Torriani, Gioacchino 223 Trenta Missal 96 Trenta, Lippa di Cristoforo 103 Trenta, Stefano di Federigo 97 Uccello, Paolo, Annunciation, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 132 Ulmann, Hermann 350 van Eyck, Jan 69, 170 Annunciation, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art 198 Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata 187188, 190-192, 200, 204 Saint Jerome, Detroit, Institute of Art 199, 334 Virgin and Child (Lucca Virgin), Frankfurt, Städel 198 van der Goes, Hugo, Portinari Triptych, Florence, Uffizi 155, 192, 195-196, 198, 202-203 van der Weyden, Rogier Lamentation, Florence, Uffizi 81, 196, 198 Saint Columba Altarpiece, Munich, Alte Pinakothek 80-81, 148, 200 Virgin and Child (Duràn Virgin), Madrid, Prado 200 Virgin and Child, San Marino, Huntington Library and Art Collection 200 Vasari, Giorgio 3, 26, 41, 107, 153-155, 157, 167-169, 176, 180, 232, 247, 255, 278-279, 285, 288, 290, 347, 356, 358 Vecchietta, Lorenzo di Piero, Assumption of the Virgin (with Neroccio de’ Landi), Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi 105 Vellutelli, Nicolao 103 Verino, Ugolino 179 Verrocchio, Andrea del 40, 66, 190 Christ and Saint Thomas, Florence, Orsanmichele 68 Venus and Cupid (drawing), Florence, Uffizi 15

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379

Index Via Francigena 108 Vicopelago, Villa Arnolfini 106 Vicopisano 114 Villabasilicata, Jacopo di Marco da 91, 96, 102, 112 Virgil 135 Virgin at the Well (see also Gospels) baptistry wall painting, Dura-Europos, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery 131-132 ivory Diptych, Milan, Cathedral Treasury 132 mosaic, Venice, San Marco 132 relief sculptures, Milan, Cathedral

Voragine, Jacobus de 142 Waldman, Louis 350-351 Warburg, Aby 148, 154 Whistler, James 23, 26 Wilde, Oscar 14, 28-29 Wilde, Johannes 291 Winternitz, Emanuel 233, 237 Zambrano, Patrizia 3, 54, 79, 96, 99, 125, 211, 338, 363 Zeri, Federico 341 Zuccaro, Federico, see Cornelis Cort 133

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