This and the companion picture by the same artist (667) were painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's crest—three feathers tied together in a ring), and are identified with a story told by Vasari, which Browning worked up in his poem on the artist. Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways, kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker done, but Lippi one night contrived a way of escape, and "from that time forward," adds Vasari, "Cosmo gave the artist more liberty, and was by this means more promptly and effectually served by the painter, and was wont to say that men of genius were not beasts of burden, but forms of light." Filippo was the son of a butcher, and, being left an orphan, was committed to the charge of the monks of the Carmelite convent close to which his parents had lived. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was induced to take the vows of the order. At this time he must have seen Masaccio painting in the famous Branacci chapel of the conventual church, S. M. del Carmine. Lippi himself executed some works (now destroyed) in the church, and having by this time found his true vocation, he was in 1431 permitted to leave the convent in order to be free to practise his art. Vasari relates that during an excursion on the Adriatic, Lippi was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. But after a while he found opportunity to draw a whole-length portrait of his master with charcoal on a white wall, which the pirates deemed so marvellous that they set him at liberty. This tale, however, is inconsistent with the facts of Lippi's life as now known from documentary evidence. Lippi enjoyed the patronage of the Medici, and he received sinecure offices also from the Pope. During the years 1431-53 many of his best panel pictures were painted. Among these may be mentioned the "Coronation of the Virgin" (Academy, Florence), in which is introduced a portrait of himself with the tonsure, and bearing a scroll inscribed Is perfecit opus, and the "Virgin adoring the Infant, borne by two Angels" (Uffizi), which was selected by Ruskin for one of his four "Lesson Photographs," and is fully described by him in Fors, 1875, p. 307. At the end of the period in question Lippi undertook the principal work of his life, which occupied him for several years, the series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Prato. "These magnificent paintings," says Morelli, "were executed at about the same time as those equally celebrated by Mantegna in the Cappella degli Eremitani at Padua. Whoever would learn to know the aspirations and artistic power of that period in the highest utterances, has only to study those two wall-paintings. If we are carried away by Fra Filippo's grandeur of conception and his pure dramatic vividness, we are enthralled, on the other hand, by Mantegna's greater fulness of expression and his perfect execution" (German Galleries, p. 71). While engaged on these frescoes, the friar-painter was appointed chaplain to the convent of Santa Margherita. Here he became enamoured of one of the nuns, Lucrezia Buti, and having persuaded the abbess to let Lucrezia sit to him for a study of the Madonna, he carried her off to his house. She remained with him for two years, and bore him a son, the renowned painter, Filippino Lippi (293). Her portrait is to be seen in the Virgin of the "Assumption," now in the Communal Gallery at Prato. She was induced to return to the convent, and took fresh vows, but again escaped to seek the friar's protection. The scandal now became serious, and Filippo was threatened with punishment. But Cosmo de' Medici intervened, and the Pope issued a bull releasing the erring pair from their vows and sanctioning their marriage. Lippi's last work was a series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Spoleto. Here he died, from an illness ascribed by some to poison, leaving the work to be finished by his assistant, Fra Diamante. He was buried in the Duomo. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of the friar-painter. "His art," says Ruskin, "is the finest, out and out, that ever monk did, which I attribute myself to what is usually considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty novice out of a convent.... The real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them—and too foolishly believed by us—to have been a shameful person"[163] (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xxii. 4; Ariadne Florentina, vi. § 5 n.). In other words, Lippi, while true to his religion, did not shut himself out from the world—to use the theological language, he "sanctified," not "crucified," the flesh. His pictures are "nobly religious work,—examples of the most perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human nature yet produced in this world" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 187). "The human element, with him so naïve and spontaneous, gives," says Burton, "a singular charm to his works. His colour is golden and broad, and his drapery finely cast and of fascinatingly broken tones." Among his pupils (besides his son) were Pesellino and Botticelli.
Here the traditional legend of the Annunciation is faithfully adhered to, and there is much "unusually mystic spiritualism of conception" in the dove, the Spirit of God, proceeding in rays of golden light from the hand of an unseen Presence; but the painter delights to elaborate also every element of human interest and worldly beauty. Note, for instance, the prettiness of the angel's face, the gracefulness of his figure, the sheen of his wings, and the dainty splendour of the Virgin's chamber.
667. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND SAINTS.
Fra Filippo Lippi (Florentine: 1406-1469). See 666.
Lippi's general characteristics, noticed above under the companion picture (666), may again be seen here. The "other saints" are Sts. Francis (on the spectator's right, with the stigmata), Lawrence, and Cosmas; on the left Sts. Damianus, Anthony, and Peter Martyr—this last a particularly "human" saint. Lippi was a monk himself, and drew his saints in the human resemblance of good "brothers" that he knew. "I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved. First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man—if such innocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him as its gentleness and rest." It is characteristic of Lippi, too, that the saints should be represented sitting in so pretty a garden. Secondly,—"a little thing it seems, but was a great one,—love of flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies" (Ariadne Florentina, vi. § 9).
668. THE BEATO FERRETTI.
Carlo Crivelli (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). See 602.
Gabriele Ferretti (to whose family Pope Pius IX. belonged) was Superior of the Franciscans in the March of Ancona, and died in 1456. Thirty years later his body was found incorrupt, and was deposited in a sarcophagus in the church of S. Francesco ad Alto at Ancona. It is conjectured that the present picture was painted for that church in commemoration of the discovery of the body. The artist shows us the holy man in enjoyment of the vision of the beatified. "The Beato (in Franciscan habit) has been reading or praying, at the entrance of a cave near a church, in a quiet country spot from which a road leads to a town in the distance. Suddenly in the sky the Virgin and Child appear (surrounded by the Vesica glory, see No. 564). He has laid down his book, put off his sandals, and kneels in prayer and adoration.... The masterly treatment of the drapery, the perfection of the forms, the architecture, the sense of spaciousness in the landscape, all point to the maturity of Crivelli's art.... The landscape, for general effect, is one of his best, though the treatment of the rocks and of the foreground is still conventional. The most striking objects in it are the leafless tree-stems, the counterpart, as it were, of the hard and bony human figures of which he was so fond, and therefore an illustration of his love for anatomical forms. His seeking after realism again appears in the two ducks painted with minute precision. In contrast to them we get the festoon of fruit at the top of the picture, illustrating the conventional and decorative aspect of his art. No picture of his suggests more completely both the range and the limitations of Crivelli" (G. M. Rushforth: Carlo Crivelli, pp. 65, 87).
669. ST. SEBASTIAN, ST. ROCH AND ST. DEMETRIUS.
L'Ortolano (Ferrarese: died about 1525).