PLATE II.—FRA FILIPPO LIPPI
(1406–1469)
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
No. 1344.—MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS AND TWO ABBOTS
(La Vierge et l’Enfant Jésus entre deux abbés)
The Virgin stands before the throne holding the Infant Christ to the adoration of two kneeling abbots and surrounded by six angels carrying lilies. To the left a monk leans over the balustrade, and two small child-angels flank the composition on either side.
Painted in tempera on panel.
7 ft. 1½ in. × 8 ft. 0¼ in. (2·17 × 2·44.)
In 1457, the year that Fra Filippo’s son Filippino was born, his household effects and box of colours were seized for debt. He lived on until October 4, 1469, when he died of a sudden and somewhat mysterious illness. The Frate, who is the connecting link between Masaccio, the first blossom, and Raphael, the full flower of Florentine painting, was the master of Botticelli. A small Madonna and Child (No. 1345) has little claim to be regarded as the work of Fra Filippo.
In our attempt to unravel the skein of Italian art in this collection and to sketch its history in strict chronological order we may now consider two small predella panels of (a) St. Francis receiving the Stigmata and (b) An Incident in the Life of St. Cosmo and St. Damian (No. 1414) by Francesco Pesellino (1422–1457). The former deals with a subject we have already met with in this Gallery (No. 1312); the latter is a new theme. St. Cosmo and St. Damian were wealthy men and spent their time in doing charitable works as doctors without monetary reward, and are thus sometimes known as “the Holy Money-despisers.” According to the legend here represented, a Christian was one day praying to these saints in the church dedicated to them in Rome in the fervent hope that he might be healed of cancer in the leg. While thus at prayer he imagined that his leg was amputated and replaced by that of a dead Moor. In this small panel the saints are shown in the act of placing the black man’s limb on the body of the Christian, who, no doubt, will before long be healed. St. Cosmo and St. Damian being patron saints of the Medici family are often met with in Florentine art. We have already in this collection looked at a picture (No. 1293) by Fra Angelico illustrating their martyrdom. Pesellino, who studied the art of Fra Angelico, Masaccio, and Domenico Veneziano, and followed somewhat closely in the steps of Fra Filippo Lippi, can hardly have painted the small three-panel picture officially ascribed to him of (a) The Dead Christ, (b) A Cardinal supporting the Bodies of Two Men who have been hanged, and (c) A Cardinal appearing in a Vision to a Bishop. This small work (No. 1415), which was formerly in the Campana collection, has been claimed by Dr. Venturi and Mr. Berenson to be by the Umbrian artist, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo.
The Madonna and Child and St. Augustin, St. John the Baptist, St. Anthony, and St. Francis (No. 1661), which is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Florentine artist, and has been variously attributed to Andrea del Castagno, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Andrea Verrocchio, may be assigned to that nameless contemporary of Pesellino whose artistic personality was a few years ago constructed by Mrs. Berenson under the name of “Compagno di Pesellino.”
The art of the Umbrian artist, Piero dei Franceschi (1415?–1492), who is so well represented in the National Gallery, is not seen at the Louvre, where, however, a Madonna and Child passes under his name. This panel (the official number of which is given in the Catalogue as 1300B and on the frame as 1300a) was formerly in the Duchâtel collection before passing into that of the Duc de la Trémoïlle, from whom it was purchased in 1898 for £5200 by the Société des Amis du Louvre. It was recognised over twelve years ago by M. Ary Renan as the work of Alessio Baldovinetti (14271499), who, like Piero dei Franceschi, was formed on Domenico Veneziano, and was also influenced by the discoveries and methods of Uccello.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle also had made that attribution before the question was taken up by Mr. Berenson, who on morphological and æsthetic grounds unhesitatingly ascribes it to Baldovinetti. “Compared with Baldovinetti,” writes Mr. Berenson, “Piero dei Franceschi is sterner and harder and more monumental. Piero’s Madonnas have a fixed and severe physiognomy, massive structure and immobile pose; never a smile, never a touch of tenderness.” How different from all this is the Madonna by Baldovinetti before us, with her “refined features and her pensive gaze of adoration—a look that unveils her inner life, a look that will soon develop into the mystery which we feel in the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.” Vasari tells us that Baldovinetti was “extremely careful and exact in his work, and of all the minutiæ which Mother Nature is capable of presenting, he took pains to be the close imitator. He delighted in the representation of landscape, which he depicted with the utmost exactitude; thus we find in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, herbs, fruits, paths, fields, cities, castles, sands, and objects innumerable of the same kind.” A goodly number of these are included in the background of this picture.
With Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429–1498) and his brother Piero (1443–1496) we enter on a more scientific era in Florentine art. Masaccio had already advanced the study of the nude, and the influence of Donatello (1386–1466) and other sculptors had drawn the attention of all art-workers to the fuller significance of the human form. A more serious attempt was now made by the rising generation of sculptors and painters, among whom Antonio Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio (1435–1488) now played the leading parts, to impart to the human figure a more exact physiological accuracy and so give it greater effectiveness. The advance made by Baldovinetti in landscape tended also to a more real sense of movement in a natural environment. The Louvre catalogues no picture under the name of either of the Pollaiuoli, but a Madonna (No. 1367a) here credited to Bastiano Mainardi was probably executed by Piero, who frequently worked on his elder brother’s designs.