Fra Filippo Lippi: a Reluctant Friar—a Brilliant Painter

Fra Filippo Lippi - Adoration of the Child with Saints - c. 1463 - Tempera on wood, 140 x 130 cm - Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (click photo for larger image)Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) was a Florentine painter in the second generation of Renaissance artists. While exhibiting the strong influence of Masaccio and Fra Angelico, his work achieved a distinctive clarity of expression. Later critics have recognized in Lippi a “narrative” spirit that reflected the life of his time and translated into everyday terms the ideals of the early Renaissance.

From the mid-1450s through the mid-1460s, Filippo Lippi evolved a new presentation of the Virgin and Child that became popular in the second half of the Quattrocento in Florence. The composition and iconography were grounded in two traditions: St Bridget of Sweden's account of her vision of the Virgin adoring the Christ Child lying upon the ground, and early Renaissance Tuscan depictions of the Nativity. Fra Filippo transformed the subject into a distinct devotional image set within an elaborated forested landscape with a rich imagery of sylvan flora, geological features, and atmosphere, which functioned as visual metaphors for the Incarnation, penitence, and eremitical religious devotion.