Fra Filippo Lippi’s Coronation of the Virgin

Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1469 of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, at the age of 63. He was born in Florence in 1406; two years later, his mother died while giving birth to his brother Giovanni. The boys were at first entrusted to an aunt, but she, being too poor to raise them properly, placed them in the city’s Carmelite priory in 1414. Filippo eventually joined the order and became a priest when he was still very young, perhaps less than 20. (“Fra” is the abbreviation of the Italian word “fratello – brother”, commonly used as a title for religious priests, as “don” is for seculars.) But he was clearly not well suited for the religious life, and after about seven years, left the monastery, although he was not released from his vows. (Irregularities of this kind were tolerated far too much before the Tridentine reform.)

The Madonna and Child with Two Angels, ca. 1460-65, by Fra Filippo Lippi. It is generally held that Lucrezia Buti, the mother of his children (as mentioned below), served as the model for the Virgin Mary. 

The sort of tour guides who spend more time telling anecdotes about artists than explaining their art have a lot to work with in the person of Fra Filippo. Most famously (or infamously), when he was fifty, and working in the city of Prato, about 12 miles to the north-west of Florence, he began a relationship with a Dominican novice nearly 30 years his junior, Lucrezia Buti, who bore him two children. The elder, a boy named for his father, is traditionally distinguished from him by the diminutive “Filippino”, and became a highly successful painter in his own right, after apprenticing first in his father’s workshop, and then with one of his father’s former students, Sandro Botticelli.

A self-portrait of Fra Filippo’s son Filippino, part of a painting which he added to the Brancacci Chapel in the 1480s, fifty years after Massaccio’s works there were first admired by his father.  

When the elder Filippo was still at the priory, the painter Masaccio was hired to fresco one of its side chapels, owned by a family named Brancacci. The Florentine art historian Giorgio Vasari recounts that Lippi, who had shown no aptitude at all for any kind of study, was so taken by Masaccio’s work that he took up drawing and painting himself. He quickly became good enough at this that he was able to embark on a career as an artist, at which he was very successful. However, his personal and professional conduct were so irregular that he was routinely broke, and therefore unable to consistently maintain a workshop, as an artist of his talent normally would, and as many less talented than he managed to do in those days of Florence’s great artistic flourishing.

The Tribute Money (the episode recounted in Matthew 17, 23-26), 1425, by Masaccio, one of the original paintings in the Brancacci chapel which inspired Filippo Lippi.

In 1439, he landed a very lucrative commission from a canon of the church of San Lorenzo named Francesco Maringhi. This priest was also the procurator of a Benedictine nunnery at a church dedicated to St Ambrose, for which the commission was made. The principal subject is the Coronation of the Virgin, a popular theme for women’s religious houses, and the painting is sometimes known as the Maringhi Coronation. Fra Filippo was also given enough money in advance to hire assistants to make and gild an elaborate frame, although this is now lost, along with all but one of the predella panels. (The frame seen here is modern.)

By this period, the Florentines had largely transformed the classic form of the late medieval polyptych, with Saints depicted each within their own discrete section of the frame, by removing the dividers to create a single continuous scene. Fra Filippo’s Coronation follows a trend set by earlier works such as The Coronation of the Virgin and The Adoration of the Magi by Lorenzo Monaco, and another, very famous depiction of the latter by Gentile da Fabriano.

Polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin, ca. 1410, by the Sienese painter Andrea di Bartolo (1360/70 - 1428), a work which would have been considered very old fashioned by the artist’s Florentine contemporaries.

The Coronation of the Virgin, 1414, by the Florentine painter known as Lorenzo Monaco, Lawrence the monk, since he was a member of the Camaldolese Order; ca. 1370 - ca. 1425. Notice the opening of the space between the panels, contrasted with Andrea di Bartolo’s retention of the divisions between the sections.

The Adoration of the Magi, 1423, by Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile was an exponent of the International Gothic, a style which revels in rich decoration, and of which the altarpiece shown above is considered one of the finest examples. Filippo, on the other hand, was a typical Florentine, and concentrated his efforts on the solidity and perspective of his figures. This is done especially by greatly varying the variety of shades within their robes. To give just one example, note how many different blues there are in the robes of God the Father and the Virgin Mary in the upper center.

Different shades of blue are also used to make a rather oddly striped heaven in the background of the lateral sections. This is often described as a reference to the seven heavenly spheres, but there are eleven bands on the left side, and twelve on the right. I suspect that they may rather be a reference to the original striped habit of the Carmelite Order to which Fra Filippo belonged.

I chose this altarpiece as a good example of Fra Filippo’s work partly because yesterday was the feast of the Most Holy Rosary. Of course, no such feast existed in his time, and indeed, the rosary itself was still an emergent custom, but by a happy coincidence, this painting contains not just the last Glorious Mystery, its principal subject, but also the first Joyful one, the Annunciation, in the two small round panels mounted into the frame. This was obviously a very popular subject everywhere, and was worked into countless altarpieces in a variety of ways. For many Tuscans, including the Florentines, the Annunciation also held a special significance, since it was not just a major feast and a break in the austerity of Lent, but also the civil New Year’s Day. (This custom remained in use in Florence, and what later became the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, until 1749.)

I also have another reason to write about this painting today. Several years ago, while looking at it in the Uffizi Museum in Florence where it is now kept, I noticed something interesting about the other Saints included in it: there is one prominent figure for each of the months from June to December. St John the Baptist (June 24), who is a major patron of Florence, is at the extreme right; St Mary Magdalene (July 22) is the women in red in the lower middle, directly beneath the Virgin’s feet. (Although it is not very clearly visible, she is holding a jar of ointment under a veil.) St Lawrence (August 10), whose grill is almost invisible, is to the right of her, and of course, the Assumption is also celebrated in August.

The man mostly blocking the view of Lawrence is St Eustachius, who is celebrated on September 20th together with his wife Theopista (the woman staring out at the viewer) and their sons Agapitus and Theopistus: one of the altars of the church for which the painting was commissioned was dedicated to them. The bishop in green next to Mary Magdalene is St Martin (November 11), while St Ambrose (December 7), the titular saint of the church, is depicted at the lower left in Advent violet.

Assuming this arrangement to be deliberate, October is thus far unaccounted for. One might expect St Francis, whose feast is on the 4th, to make an appearance, especially in Tuscany, where his order was very popular and influential, and a significant contributor to the region’s artistic culture. But he is not present.

After my visit to the Uffizi, I happened to pass a used bookstore, where I found a mid-19th century copy of the breviary supplement for the archdiocese of Florence, which solved the mystery. In it, I discovered that today is the feast of a virgin martyr called Reparata, whose legendary acts say that she was beheaded during the persecution of Decius (250-51 AD) at Caesarea Maritima, a port city on the coast of what is now the northern part of Israel. Parts of her relics were translated to various places in Italy, including Florence, and she was the titular Saint of the city’s previous cathedral. (Extensive remains of this older structure were discovered under the floor of the new church during excavations conducted from 1965-74.)

The woman to the left of Theopista, wearing green and looking down, is usually described by art history books, if she is mentioned at all, as one of the several “Saints without identifiable attribute” in this painting. It seems likely to me that she must St Reparata, who would complete the series of the months. The woman to the left of her, also without attribute, might therefore be St Pelagia, who shares Reparata’s feast day, and was venerated in many parts of Italy, including Milan, where she was formerly a co-titular of the cathedral.

There are possibly further mysteries to this painting yet to be explored; for example, there does not seem to be any convincing explanation for the presence of Job to the left of St Martin. Suffice it to note for now that the figure on the right kneeling behind John the Baptist, with the banderole that reads “Is(te) perfecit opus – this man completed the work”, was formerly assumed to be Lippi himself, but is now generally thought to be the commissioner. The figure more likely to be the artist’s self-portrait is the man in the white habit looking out at the viewer on the lower left. And perhaps it is not too much to speculate that the other Carmelite next to him, who seems rapt in his vision of God and the Virgin in heaven, indicates Filippo’s awareness of his failure in his first and greater calling, as he himself stares out at the world instead.