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Fra Filippo Lippi Biography

known as Lippo

(1406 - 1469)

Related Works

c.1452 The Relaxation of the Carmelite Rule (Sta Maria del Carmine, Florence)
1437 Madonna of Humility (Castello Sforzesco, Milan)
1437 Madonna Enthroned (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome)

1437 The Barbadori Altarpiece (Louvre, Paris)
1441 Coronation of the Virgin (Uffizi, Florence)
c.1445–7 Adoration of the Magi (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
c.1445 Coronation of the Virgin (Vatican Museum, Rome)
1447 St Bernard's Vision of the Virgin (National Gallery, London)
1452 Madonna and Child with Scenes from the Life of Mary (Pitti Palace, Florence)
1452–66 Lives of SS Stephen and John the Baptist (Prato Cathedral, Italy)
c.1460 The Virgin Adoring the Child (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

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(born 1406, Florence—died Oct. 8/10, 1469, Spoleto, Papal States) Italian painter. In 1421 he became a Carmelite monk at Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, where Masaccio was soon decorating the Brancacci Chapel with frescoes. Lippi himself painted frescoes in the church, much influenced by Masaccio's, then disappeared from the monastery in 1432. In 1434 he was in Padua, but in 1437 he returned to Florence under the protection of the Medici family and was commissioned to execute several works for convents and churches. His Madonna and Child (1437) and Annunciation ( 1442) show a maturing style characterized by warm colouring and attention to decorative effects. 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. In 1456, while painting in a convent in Prato, he fled with one of the nuns, Lucrezia Buti. The couple was later released from their individual vows and permitted to marry, and from that union was born the illustrious Filippino Lippi. The former friar returned often to Prato, and his frescoes in the cathedral there stand among his finest achievements.