Filippino Lippi

ca. 1457 - 1504

portrait of Filippino Lippi Florentine Renaissance painter, son of the painter fra (sic!) Filippo Lippi and the nun (sic!) Lucrezia Buti. Filippino worked for a while in the studio of Botticelli, whose influence is very clear in his early work.

His first major assignment (1484) is the completion of the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, first undertaken by Masaccio and Masolino. The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard , an altarpiece from 1486, is generally considered the highlight of Lippi's '80s work.

Through the agency of Lorenzo 'il Magnifico' Lippi i awarded the commission to create the frescoes in the S. Maria sopra Minerva (Cappella Caraffa) in Rome in 1488. Back in Florence Lippi too is subjected to the crisis in the art world invoked by the death of Lorenzo (1492); Lippi's work sometimes turns towards bizarre and fantastic. One exception to this change, is his 1496 Adoration of the Magi.

Filippino Lippi dies unexpectedly in Florence in 1504. His work carries much influence on many of the later Tuscan painters.

work by Filippino Lippi