A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

293. VIRGIN AND CHILD: STS. JEROME AND DOMINIC.

Filippino Lippi (Florentine: 1457-1504).

Filippo Lippi, the younger (called "Filippino" to distinguish him from his father), was the son of Fra Filippo Lippi (see 666), and the nun, Lucrezia Buti. In his will, Filippino left an annual provision of corn, wine, oil, and other necessaries to his beloved mother Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti. There is perhaps no other case in art-history of father and son attaining such nearly equal excellence as did the two Lippis. Owing to his father's death when Filippino was still a boy, the latter became the pupil of Botticelli, and so good a pupil was he that the critics are often in doubt, as explained in the footnote, to which master to ascribe pictures.[138] The genius of Filippino seems to have been the more gentle, that of Botticelli the more impetuous. The grace and charm of Filippino are nowhere better shown than in the "Vision of St. Bernard," in the church of the Badia at Florence—a work executed when he was about 23. A copy of it is in the Arundel Society's collection. The pictures in our Gallery which are indubitably by Filippino (namely, this picture and 927), show the same quiet beauty. Filippino was also employed upon important frescoes—in the Branacci Chapel, in Sta Maria Novella, and (at Rome) in Sta Maria Sopra Minerva; in these works he shows great skill in composition, appropriate action, and refined feeling. Filippino lived a busy and a blameless life; and the peace and beauty of his pictures were a reflection of his character. "Having been ever courteous, obliging, and friendly, Filippino was lamented," says Vasari, "by all who had known him, but more particularly by the youth of Florence, his native city; and when his funeral procession was passing through the streets, the shops were closed, as is done for the most part at the funerals of princes only."

This picture is identified by the arms of the Rucellai family below, as the one described by Vasari as "executed in the church of San Pancrazio for the chapel of the Rucellai family." After the suppression of the church, it was removed to the Palazzo Rucellai until it was purchased for the National Gallery.