IV

PLATE VI.—THE VIRGIN AND CHILD(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)Painted at Prato, soon after the abduction of Lucrezia Buti by the amorous monk, the central group of thistondomay be reasonably assumed to portray Lucrezia and Filippo Lippi. The incidents in the background, which have been a source of inspiration for many succeeding artists, including Raphael himself, who echoes the figure of the basket-carrying woman in his "Incendio del Borgo," depict the birth of Mary, and the meeting of St. Anne and Joachim. The motif of the Birth of the Virgin is in reality a convenient excuse for the painting of a charmingly rendered scene of Florentine domestic life. The distribution of light and the harmonising of the strong colour-notes are managed with consummate skill.

(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)

Painted at Prato, soon after the abduction of Lucrezia Buti by the amorous monk, the central group of thistondomay be reasonably assumed to portray Lucrezia and Filippo Lippi. The incidents in the background, which have been a source of inspiration for many succeeding artists, including Raphael himself, who echoes the figure of the basket-carrying woman in his "Incendio del Borgo," depict the birth of Mary, and the meeting of St. Anne and Joachim. The motif of the Birth of the Virgin is in reality a convenient excuse for the painting of a charmingly rendered scene of Florentine domestic life. The distribution of light and the harmonising of the strong colour-notes are managed with consummate skill.

The plot came to a successful issue on the 1st of May 1456, during the celebration of the feast of the Madonna della Cintola—Our Lady of the Girdle. On that day it was the custom to exhibit at the Cathedral a sacred relic, purporting to be the miraculous girdle given to St. Thomas by the Virgin, who appeared to him after herdeath. That day was one of the rare occasions when the nuns of Sta. Margherita left the precincts of their convent to join the worshippers in the Duomo. On May 1, 1456, there were eight nuns who set out to pray before the sacred girdle—but seven only returned to the convent. Lucrezia Buti had been carried off by her monkish lover to his house; and if any attempts were made to induce her to return, either to Sta. Margherita, or to her relatives in Florence, she lent a deaf ear to these appeals. Vasari relates that "the father of Lucrezia was so grievously afflicted thereat, that he never more recovered his cheerfulness, and made every possible effort to regain his child." This, of course, is pure invention, since Francesco Buti had been mouldering in his grave for six years when the abduction took place.

And now we come to the most amazingchapter of this fifteenth-century romance. Fra Filippo Lippi, the monk who had broken his vow and was openly living at Prato with the equally guilty nun, actually continued to administer to the spiritual welfare of the nuns of the convent that had been so irretrievably disgraced by his conduct! That his misdeed was allowed to pass unpunished and uncensured, may have encouraged others to follow his and Lucrezia's example. Whether or not the Carmelite was instrumental in helping the other nuns to escape, the fact remains that before long Spinetta Buti had joined her sister in Filippo's house, whilst three other nuns deserted the convent to live in illicit union with their lovers. The unfortunate Abbess, Bartolommea de' Bovacchiesi, whose portrait is to be seen as kneeling donor in the so-called "Madonna della Cintola," now in the Municipal Palace atPrato, died of shame and grief before the year came to a close.

The remote resemblance of the figure of St. Margaret, on the extreme left of that picture, to Lucrezia Buti as she appears in authentic works by the master, in addition to the fact that the "Madonna della Cintola" was originally in the church of Sta. Margherita, has given colour to the theory that this is the very altarpiece which figures so prominently in the chief romance of Filippo Lippi's life. The same claim has been advanced for the "Nativity" (No. 1343) at the Louvre. Much as one would like to identify either the one or the other with the picture referred to by the chroniclers, if only for the sentimental interest that would be attached to it, neither of the two can be accepted as authentic works by our artist. The best recent expert opinion has ascribed the Paris panel in turn to FraDiamante, Pesellino, Stefano da Zevio, and Baldovinetti, agreeing only on the one point, that it cannot be by Fra Filippo. As regards the "Madonna della Cintola," critical analysis of the picture can only lead to the conviction that from beginning to end it is inferior bottega work, with never a trace of the master's own brush, although it may well be based on a design by Fra Filippo. It is true, the time that elapsed between the placing of the commission for the Sta. Margherita altarpiece and the abduction of Lucrezia was so short, that the picture may have been only just begun and left to be finished by some other inferior painter. On the other hand, there is no reason for this assumption, since Filippo Lippo continued to be connected with the convent in his capacity of chaplain.

In the year following that memorablefeast of the Sacred Girdle, Lucrezia presented the friar with a son, who was to become known to fame as Filippino Lippi. The house in which he was born bears a commemorative inscription put up by the citizens of Prato in 1869:

FILIPPO LIPPICOMPRÒ E ABITÒ QUESTA CASAQUANDO COLORIVA GLI STUPENDIAFFRESCHI DEL DUOMOE QUÌ NACQUE NEL MCCCCLIX FILIPPINOPRECURSORE DI RAFFAELLO

"Filippo Lippi bought and inhabited this house when he painted the stupendous frescoes of the Cathedral, and here was born in 1459 (it should read 1457) Filippino, the precursor of Raphael."

If proof were needed that the escape of the other nuns was closely connected with the abduction of Lucrezia, it may be found in the fact that, when Lucrezia, for some unknown reason, found it advisable to feignrepentance and to return to the convent of Sta. Margherita at the end of 1458, all the other fugitives followed her example. They had to submit to the formality of twelve months' probation before they took the veil again, in a solemn ceremony, in December 1459. Perhaps the reason for Lucrezia's return is not altogether dissociated from the financial troubles that beset her lover, as we have seen, about the time of Filippino's birth. The sincerity of her renewed vow of chastity is to be gathered not only from the fact that in 1465 she presented Fra Filippo with another child—a daughter, who was given the name Alessandra—but in the clear indictment set forth by an anonymous accuser in atamburazioneunder date of May 8, 1461. In thistamburazione, or secret accusation, addressed to the "officers of the night and monasteries of the city of Florence," a pretty state of affairs is revealed at the conventof Sta. Margherita, which "has been frequented and continues to be frequented by Ser Piero d'Antonio di Ser Vannozzo," who has "begot a male child in the said convent.... And if you wish to find him, you will find him every day in the convent, together with another man called frate Filippo. The latter excuses himself by saying that he is the chaplain, whilst the former says he is the procurator. And the said frate Filippo has had a male child by one called Spinetta. And he has in his house the said child, who is grown up and is called Filippino."

The anonymous accuser, of course, was mistaken in mentioning Spinetta, instead of her sister, as the mother of Filippino, who in his will expressly refers to "domine Lucretie ejus delicte matris et filie olim Francisci de Butis de Florentia," and thus removes every possible doubt as to his parentage. The mistake finds an easy explanation in the factthat both the sisters were for some time under Fra Filippo's roof.

PLATE VII.—THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH TWO ANGELS(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)Painted for the chapel in Cosimo de' Medici's palace, this picture was transferred to the Uffizi Gallery from the Royal store-rooms in 1776. More, perhaps, than in any other work by the master, the whole arrangement of the picture and the management of the planes reveal the influence of the relief sculpture by Donatello and his followers. It is particularly akin in spirit to the art of Rossellino. The landscape seen through a window opening behind the heads of the Madonna and the Infant Saviour, as well as the laughing angel in the foreground, are entirely new conceptions in Florentine painting. That the picture must have been much admired by Filippo Lippi's contemporaries is proved by the innumerable slightly modified versions of it which were produced by the next generation of Florentine painters.

(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Painted for the chapel in Cosimo de' Medici's palace, this picture was transferred to the Uffizi Gallery from the Royal store-rooms in 1776. More, perhaps, than in any other work by the master, the whole arrangement of the picture and the management of the planes reveal the influence of the relief sculpture by Donatello and his followers. It is particularly akin in spirit to the art of Rossellino. The landscape seen through a window opening behind the heads of the Madonna and the Infant Saviour, as well as the laughing angel in the foreground, are entirely new conceptions in Florentine painting. That the picture must have been much admired by Filippo Lippi's contemporaries is proved by the innumerable slightly modified versions of it which were produced by the next generation of Florentine painters.

What was the end of Lippi's romance? There are no contemporary records to throw clear light upon it. In Milanesi's edition of Vasari it is stated that Pope Eugene granted the monk a special dispensation to marry Lucrezia. If any such dispensation ever was granted, it must have been by Pius II., and not by Eugene. Under any circumstances, it seems very improbable that Fra Filippo, as we learn from the same source, should have refused to avail himself of this permission to legalise his union, because "he preferred to continue living the sort of life that pleased him." He was then a man of considerable age, near the end of his life, and past the times for "sowing his wild oats." The papal dispensation, if actually given, must have been sought for, in which case Filippo would presumably have availed himselfof it; or, if granted on the Pope's own initiative, could not have been lightly set aside by a humble member of the Church, who was largely dependent on the emoluments accruing from his clerical appointments. The mere fact that Lucrezia's features are to be recognised in the friar's latest works, the frescoes in the Cathedral of Spoleto, tends to prove that the old man's affection was not transferred to different quarters; and Vasari's suggestion that his death was due to the libertinism of his conduct, which led to his being poisoned by certain relatives of a woman with whom he had become entangled, may be dismissed as a fable.

Vasari is at fault again in ascribing the commission for the decoration of the chapel in the Church of Our Lady at Spoleto, Fra Filippo's last important work, to the influence of Cosimo de' Medici. Fra Filippowent to Spoleto in 1467, and Cosimo had been buried in 1464. If any member of the Medici family had acted as mediator, it must have been Piero, who had always been a patron and protector of our artist. Of the four frescoes at Spoleto illustrating the Life of the Virgin, only the "Coronation" and the "Annunciation" are, so far as one can judge in their much restored condition, from the master's own hand. "The Death of the Virgin" and the "Nativity," though undoubtedly designed by him, are vastly inferior in execution, and are almost entirely the work of his assistant, Fra Diamante, who accompanied him to Spoleto, and stayed there several months after his master's death to complete the unfinished work.

Fra Filippo died on the 9th of October 1469, and left his son Filippino under the guardianship of Fra Diamante. He was buried in the church which had witnessedhis last labours. The esteem in which he was held by those who knew how to appreciate his art—and among them, surely, the Medici must be placed at the top—found expression in the rivalry between Florence and Spoleto over his remains. When Lorenzo the Magnificent, some years after the great Carmelite's death, passed through Spoleto as ambassador of the Florentine Commonwealth, he demanded Fra Filippo's body from the Spoletans, for re-interment in the Duomo of Florence. The Spoletans' reply is characteristic of the spirit of the age: they begged to be left in possession of the remains of the master, since they were so poorly provided with distinguished men, whereas Florence had enough and to spare. Lorenzo must have been touched by a request presented in such flattering terms, for he not only allowed Filippo Lippi's body to remain in its originalresting-place, but he commissioned from Filippino Lippi, the inheritor of the monk's artistic genius, a marble tomb, on which can be seen to this day the jovial features of the master thus honoured, the arms of Lorenzo and of the Lippi, and the commemorative inscription composed by the great humanist, Angelo Poliziano.

CONDITVS HIC EGO SVM PICTVRE FAMA PHILIPPVSNVLLI IGNOTA MEÆ EST GRATIA MIRA MANVS;ARTIFICIS POTVI DIGITIS ANIMARE COLORESSPERATAQVE ANIMOS FALLERE VOCE DIV:IPSA MEIS STVPVIT NATVRA EXPRESSA FIGVRISMEQVE SVIS FASSA EST ARTIBVS ESSE PAREM.MARMOREO TVMVLO MEDICES LAVRENTIVS HIC MECONDIDIT, ANTE HVMILI PVLVERE TECTVS ERAM.

It is not within the scope of this brief sketch of the life and art of Fra Filippo Lippi to enter into a detailed critical discussion of his extant works. I am not here concerned with questions of debatable attributions, or with the share that Fra Diamante and other assistants or pupils may have had in the execution of works that pass generally under his name. All that can here be attempted is, to gather from the cumulative evidence of the pictures that are unquestionably by the master's own hand, the real significance of his great achievement and the place he occupies in the evolution of Italian art. In the progress of his style from the early "Nativities" to the Prato frescoes is reflected the whole course of Early Renaissance art from Gothic awkwardness to full freedom. Of course, FraFilippo lived in a period of transition and of passionate striving for expression; and to a certain extent every artist is the product of the spirit of his time. The tendencies which resulted in the full blossoming of Renaissance art were at work, and would, no doubt, have conquered in the end, even if Filippo Lippi had never existed. Nevertheless, he was one of the greatest initiators of the Renaissance in painting; and it is his peculiar merit that, at a period of artistic pupilage, when every painter's training was directed towards the close assimilation of his particular master's peculiarities, and when progress consisted largely in the grafting of some personal note or other on to the inherited tradition, Fra Filippo not only liberated himself from the narrow confines of his early training by his readiness to benefit from the example of any native or "foreign" master who had added somenew word to the language of art, but he was also ever ready to learn direct from the greatest source of artistic inspiration—from Nature.

PLATE VIII.—THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS AND TWO ABBOTS(In the Louvre, Paris)This altarpiece was commissioned in 1437 by the Company of Orsanmichele for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito. It is the picture referred to by Domenico Veneziano in a letter to Piero de' Medici, dated April 1, 1438, in which he says that by working day and night Fra Filippo could not finish it within five years, which was probably a correct estimate of the time actually taken. Even in its present state of deterioration this stately altarpiece, which shows how much Filippo had learnt from the study of Masaccio's Carmine frescoes, justifies the high praise bestowed upon it by Vasari. The two figures kneeling before the steps of the throne are St. Augustine on the right, and St. Fredianus on the left.

(In the Louvre, Paris)

This altarpiece was commissioned in 1437 by the Company of Orsanmichele for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito. It is the picture referred to by Domenico Veneziano in a letter to Piero de' Medici, dated April 1, 1438, in which he says that by working day and night Fra Filippo could not finish it within five years, which was probably a correct estimate of the time actually taken. Even in its present state of deterioration this stately altarpiece, which shows how much Filippo had learnt from the study of Masaccio's Carmine frescoes, justifies the high praise bestowed upon it by Vasari. The two figures kneeling before the steps of the throne are St. Augustine on the right, and St. Fredianus on the left.

From his earliest beginnings, which rather suggest illuminated miniatures on a large scale, we see him grow step by step, acquire knowledge of perspective, of design, of colour harmonies, of the effect of light and atmosphere, of movement. We find him initiating advance in many directions. The circular composition, which was scarcely known before his days, is carried by him to such perfection, that it becomes the favourite device of most later Florentine painters. He is the first Florentine who shows a real appreciation of the beauty of Nature, who allows real daylight to enter into his pictures, and who studies reflections. The Florentine School was never a school ofpaintersin the strict sense of the word, like the Venetian School.Its work was always based on linear design, upon which colour was superadded—an afterthought, as it were. The Florentine did not think in terms of colour. But Fra Filippo, without abandoning the essentially Florentine insistence on linear design, came nearer the true pictorial conception than any of his contemporaries or successors. In his first "Nativity" at the Florentine Academy he gives not the slightest hint of the astounding development his art was to undergo before he left Florence for Prato. The colour is purely localised, like the flat tones of the Gothic miniaturists in whose school he had been trained. The Madonna looks as if she were cut out and pasted on to the landscape. What a step from its hard delineation to themorbidezza, and the cool shimmering tones and all-pervading sense of atmosphere in his "Coronation of the Virgin," which, in this respect, remains aunique achievement in Florentine art. Both his Florentine "Nativities" are as awkward and clumsy in design as could be. Lopped-off figures of praying monks are squeezed into the extreme corners; the landscape background is seen in steep perspective, almost as in a bird's-eye view, and has no relation to the figures in the foreground; the perspective and the whole arrangement of the ruined building in the one are childish. And a few years later he had arrived at the noble architectonic design of the "Virgin Enthroned," at the Louvre, in which, notwithstanding here and there a reminiscence of Gothic awkwardness, the figure of the angel on the left foreshadows the easy grace of similarly poised figures in Andrea del Sarto's art.

Again and again Fra Filippo acts as initiator and sets the fashion for whole generations of artists. He is one of thefirst to experiment with devices for producing the illusion of depth, either by the interpolation, between the foreground and the background figures, of architectural elements, as in the Louvre "Madonna"—the idea had already served Donatello in the sister-art of sculpture—or by the skilful disposition and lighting of the subsidiary figures in the background, as in the episodes from the life of St. Anne, which form the setting to the adorable "Madonna and Child" of the Pittitondo. If Michelangelo's nude athletes in the background of his "Holy Family"tondoare based upon the similar figures in Luca Signorelli's circular "Madonna and Child" at the Uffizi, Signorelli himself clearly derived from Filippo Lippi the use of the background figures, one of whom turns his back to the spectator just like the women on the extreme right of Lippi'stondo, for the purpose of enhancing the sense of depth and space.This woman with the boy clinging to the folds of her dress, as well as the one by whom she is preceded—a rapidly moving figure, with clinging diaphanous garments and with a basket poised on her head—will be found again and again during the next half-century of Florentine art, just as the Uffizi "Madonna adoring the Divine Child," who is supported by two boy-angels, became the prototype of a long succession of similar pictures. In the dancing "Salome" of the Prato frescoes, again, we have the forerunner of the type of figure and movement that received its highest development in the art of Botticelli, Filippo Lippi's greatest pupil.

Every phase of the triumphant progress of Renaissance art finds an echo in Filippo Lippi's painting. Masaccio helped him to shake off Gothic awkwardness and to achieve a certain degree of statuesque dignity. From Gentile da Fabriano hetook the delight in gay, festive attire and sumptuous pageantry, which is clearly expressed in Sir Frederick Cook'stondo, and in a modified form in the Academy "Coronation." Pier dei Franceschi's great conquest of the realm of light and air did no more fail to leave its mark upon the Carmelite's art, than did Paolo Uccello's discoveries in the science of perspective. The classic thrones of his Madonnas and the architectural backgrounds of some of his pictures proclaim his enthusiasm for the forms and decorative details of the Renaissance churches and palaces that were then rising, under the influence of the new learning, in every part of Florence. Nor is it possible to over-estimate the prodigious effect produced upon the artist-monk's receptive mind by his study of the works of Donatello. The Uffizi "Madonna" is in reality a relief by Donatello or oneof his followers translated into paint. Take any photographic reproduction of that picture, and examine the head of the roguishly smiling angel, the arms of the Infant Saviour and of the Madonna, and the way the whole group is set against the window-frame. The illusion is extraordinary. If it were not for the landscape seen through the opening in the background and the transparent folds of the veil over the Virgin's head, it would be pardonable to mistake the picture thus reduced to black and white for a bas-relief of the Donatello School.

Thus, with the shrewd intelligence of which his features in the auto-portrait introduced into the "Coronation" are so eloquent, Fra Filippo knew how to take hints and suggestions from the art of all his great contemporaries. But he applied the same keen intelligence to the study ofthe living world around him. The knowledge imparted to him by other masters was thus allowed to filter through his personal observation of Nature. And whilst it is possible to trace in his work the most varied artistic influences, his own personality was never eclipsed or obscured. Always ready to learn and to assimilate new principles, he never stooped to the imitation of mere mannerisms. From any such inclination he was saved by his temperament, his human sympathy, his artistic curiosity. Only to his earliest Madonnas cling reminiscences of Giottesque types and formulas. Even before he had reached full maturity, the typical had become ousted by the individual. And in this respect he was again an initiator in Florentine art. He was one of the first painters of his school who makes us feel that almost every character in his pictures isthe result of personal observation—is practically a portrait. He is the first true genre painter of his school. Benozzo Gozzoli, it is true, went far beyond him as a pictorial raconteur of Florentine fifteenth-century life; but the origin of Benozzo's genre-like treatment of scriptural incidents, which makes his frescoes at Pisa and San Gimignano such precious documents, is to be found in Fra Filippo Lippi.

The Prato frescoes introduce several delicious incidents of this nature, like the leave-taking of St. John from his parents, or the child-birth scene in the episode in the life of St. Stephen. But they are not absent either from his altarpieces. The exquisitely recorded happenings in the house of St. Anne, which form the background of the Pitti "Madonna and Child," are pure genre-painting, and are, moreover, a daring departure from all the earlier conventionswhich ruled the rendering of this favourite subject. The earlier "Coronation of the Virgin" shows something of the same tendency in the charming group of a female saint and two children in front of the kneeling monk. The saint, like the Virgin Mary herself, is just an elegantly attired Florentine lady of the period. The very angels surrounding the throne of the Heavenly Father are humanised, as it were, by being divested of their wings. Even in the stately and formal "Virgin Enthroned," at the Louvre, Fra Filippo could not resist the temptation to introduce a roguish urchin on each side peeping over the balustrade, and thus transferring the scene from the heavenly region to this earth.

Fra Filippo loved the world in which he found so much beauty. For all that, his art reveals neither sensuality nor worldliness. He was indeed, as Mr. Berensonso happily describes him, a genre-painter, whose genre was that of the soul, as that of others was of the body. But he expressed the soul through the body. As M. André Maurel has it: "Before painting faces, he looked at them, which was a new thing.... He was a great painter, because he was a man."

The plates are printed byBemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and LondonThe text at theBallantyne Press, Edinburgh

Footnotes1The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, by Bernhard Berenson (G. P. Putnam's Sons).2He retained this post until July 1452.

Footnotes

1The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, by Bernhard Berenson (G. P. Putnam's Sons).

2He retained this post until July 1452.

Transcriber's NoteTable of Contents added by Transcriber.

Transcriber's Note

Table of Contents added by Transcriber.

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