Early Italian Renaissance

Fra Flippo Lippi

Filippo Lippi's father and mother died when he was in his early teens, and he then lived with an aunt in Florence. When she could no longer control him, at about age fifteen, she shipped him off to become a Carmelite monk. Frescoes by Masaccio were being painted in the Brancacci chapel of the Carmelite monastery. These frescoes were probably Lippi's first contact with art.

In his early twenties Fra Lippi painted frescoes in the church and in the cloister of the monastery, and became increasingly impatient of the monastic life. When he was 26, he left the monastery. According to Varsari, who wrote the Lives of the Painters, Lippi was abducted by the Moorish pirates on the Adriatic and held as a slave for 18 months. He was freed only after he painted a portrait of his owner.

He was always a man dominated by love affairs and impatient of methodical or tranquil conduct. When he was 36, Lippi became rector of the church of S. Quirico at Legnaia. His amorous adventures culminated at age 50 when he fled from Prato, a small city near Florence, with one of the nuns from the convent in which he was painting. Some say he abducted her. Her name was Lucrezia Buti and Fra Lippi was later given permission to marry her by the Pope. They had a son, Filippo, called Filippino to distinguish him from his father. Filippino was trained by his father, and he later became a noted Florentine painter in the second half of the century.

Madonna and Child
1465
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Madonna and Child with
Scenes from the life
of St. Anne
1452
Palazzo Pitti,
Florence Italy

The Annunciation
1430
San Lorenzo
Florence, Italy.

Annunciation
about 1449

A Man and Woman
Metropolitan Museum
New York, NY, US