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Dear
Friends,
In creating this forum, I have found the hardest task to be that
of selecting the masterpieces to be presented, as it frequently
implies the unpleasant decision of putting away some of the
greatest artists and their works to favor others. It has been
the case with Fra Angelico, possibly the most exquisite and
inspired painter and frescoist of the Early Renaissance (but
whose works, in my opinion, are still rather Mediaeval in their
conception and execution as compared with those of some of his
contemporaries), whom I opted at this release to replace with
Fra Fillipo Lippi, one of my favorites painters and frescoists
of that period for his sensitivity and expressiveness and, in
general, for his exceptional taste and a mastery of the art that
anticipated the works of his disciple Botticelli - whom he
undoubtedly influenced - and the great Leonardo da Vinci.
According to
the famous biographer Georgio Vasari, Lippi's life as a youth
was one of adventure. He was an orphan brought up in a convent,
who was persuaded by his elders to take vows (he pronounced the
vows of a Carmelite monk at Sta. Maria del Carmine). He then
caused a scandal by running off with a nun. Happily, the
Medici family had always observed his talent and bent their
powerful muscles to get the couple laicised.
Later on he was abducted with some
companions by the Moors on the Adriatic, and after 18 months of
slavery he was freed after he painted a portrait of his owner.
In 1437 Lippi returned to Florence, protected by the powerful
Medicis, where he was commissioned to execute several
altarpieces for convents and churches. This would be the real
starting point in his career.
Lippi's
majestic frescoes in the cathedrals of Spoleto and Prato gave
him the opportunity to paint crowd scenes. His Madonnas and
saints are holy, serene and unworldly, but his crowds are common
clay, men, women and children as he saw them. Moreover, they
would become more and more realistic, as a comparison of three
works in the London National Gallery shows. The third of them,
The Trinity and Four Saints, part of an altarpiece made
for a community chapel in Pistoia ten years later, is
incomparably the best one for its realism and authority, its
dignity and grace. The explanation is that the first two were
executed entirely in tempera, used in the traditional way, while
the third was painted in egg tempera with oil as the vehicle,
which accounts for its precision, depth, fluidity and sheer
bravura. (From Paul Johnson,
"Art: A New History".)
As always, your good
feedback is much appreciated.
Thank you.
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
GREAT MASTERS OF
PAINTING
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Madonna with the Child and two Angels (1)
by
Fra Filippo Lippi
born c. 1406, Florence
died Oct. 8/10, 1469, Spoleto, Papal States
Profile
(2)
Florentine painter in the second
generation of Renaissance artists. While exhibiting the strong
influence of Masaccio (e.g., in “Madonna and Child,” 1437) and
Fra Angelico (e.g., in “Coronation of the Virgin,” c. 1445), his
work achieves a distinctive clarity of expression. Legend and
tradition surround his unconventional life.
Fra Filippo Lippi was one of the leading painters in Renaissance
Florence in the generation following Masaccio. Influenced by him
in his youth, Filippo developed a linear, expressive style,
which anticipated the achievements of his pupil Botticelli.
Lippi was among the earliest painters indebted to Donatello. His
mature works are some of the first Italian paintings to be
inspired by the realistic technique (and occasionally by the
compositions) of Netherlandish pioneers such as Rogier van der
Weyden and Jan van Eyck. Beginning work in the late 1430s, Lippi
won several important commissions for large-scale altarpieces,
and in his later years he produced two fresco cycles that (as
Vasari noted) had a decisive impact on 16th-century cycles. He
produced some of the earliest autonomous portrait paintings of
the Renaissance, and his smaller-scale Virgin and Child
compositions are among the most personal and expressive of that
era. Throughout most of his career he was patronized by the
powerful Medici family and allied clans. The operation of his
workshop remains a matter of conjecture.
Technical data
(3)
Madonna with the Child and two Angels
1465
Tempera on wood
37
3/8
x 24
3/8
inches (95 x 62 cm)
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Added 5/15/2005
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