Florence - We know more about Filippino Lippi (Prato c. 1457 - Florence 1504) than virtually any other artist of the period and this wealth of information gives us a glimpse at the life and times of a major painter during the "Golden Age" of Florence. His personal and profession lives were closely linked with that of Botticelli. Fra' Filippo Lippi's most important student was Botticelli, and Botticelli's most important student was Fra' Filippo's son, Filippino. He studied with Botticelli in the early 1470s, and during that decade they collaborated on several paintings. In 1482 and 1483 Filippino carried out his first surviving and documented paintings, two altarpieces for Lucca, and in 1483-1484 he made the Annunciation for San Gimignano.
As for his undocumented projects, the most important was the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, where Filippino completed the famous cycle left unfinished by Masaccio. In c. 1484 he painted his most famous painting, the Vision of Saint Bernard, and he received a very prestigious commission for an altarpiece in the Palazzo Vecchio, the Madonna and Child with Saints, dated 1486. In 1487 he signed a contract with the wealthiest man in Florence, Filippo Strozzi to decorate his memorial chapel in Santa Maria Novella. But Filippino did not begin the Strozzi Chapel frescoes until 1493, and finished in 1502; he was busy with an even more important commission. In 1488, when Cardinal Olivero Carafa needed a painter to decorate his Chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, Lorenzo the Magnificent recommended Filippino. Botticelli's former student had thus become his professional rival, and in a poem written in the 1480s, Filippino was described as the finest painter in Florence. Between 1488 and 1493 he worked on the Carafa chapel in Rome, then returned to Florence with an ancient inspired art which led to his extraordinary fame throughout the 1500s.
As for his "civic existence" Filippino's father was a friar, and to make the story even richer, his mother was a nun. In 1456, Fra' Filippo had become chaplain in the small nunnery of Santa Margarita in Prato where he met the young Lucrezia Buti. According to Giorgio Vasari the artist fell in love with the young beauty, used her as a model for his painting of Madonna della Cintola (Madonna gives her Belt to Saint Thomas), and abducted her during the feast of the Holy Belt in Prato, where the relic is kept. A letter of 31 August 1457 recount how King Alfonso of Naples had a good laugh about Fra Filippo, and another letter of 27 May 1458 mentions the friar's "error". Both probably refer to the birth of Filippino, who is first named in a 1461 anonymous accusation against the friar. According to Matteo Bandello, writing in the mid 1550s, Leonardo da Vinci recounted the "love story" to a group of gentlemen during the period when he was painting the Last Supper in Milan.
In the eyes of Vasari, Fra Filippo left his son with "a stain" which Filippino covered up with his exemplary behavior and the excellence of his art, but to be the son of Fra Filippo gave the young painter more reason for honor than shame. A letter in Milan ca. 1493 identified Filippino as the "son of the most singular master of his times"; this same letter described Filippino as the equal of Botticelli. If Filippino's birth did constitute a "stain", it was buried under this gilded marble tomb in the Cathedral of Spoleto which he designed for his father. This was commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici "the Magnificent", the most important patron of the day, and contains and inscription by Politian, the finest poet of the period. A few years earlier, most probably Lorenzo and Politian had "collaborated" with Botticelli on his most famous work, the Birth of Venus.
Around this time, Filippino did not conceal his origins when he made housing arrangements for his mother. In 1485, he set up Lucrezia in a room across the street from the convent where, as a nun, she had met Fra Filippo. Nearly twenty years later, Filippino's earliest years in Prato even counted in his favor. In 1503, he received a commission for the town hall there because, among other reasons, he had been raised in Prato.Filippino certainly enjoyed a much quieter life than Fra Filippo. In 1494 Filippino married Maddalena Monti, and their three sons were thus legitimate. The artist did not marry until he was thirty seven, rather old for a first marriage by Florentine standards; he waited until he had purchased a home and returned to Florence after completing his important commission in Rome. Before he married, Filippino regularly attended meetings at one of the strictest flagellant confraternities in Florence. The accurate records of the San Paolo confraternity allow us to document his religious practice and travels from the time he joined, on 18 August 1481, until he was taken off the books on 23 April 1503. Members met each Saturday evening for prayer, confession, singing, meditation, and flagellation, then slept in the confraternity dormitory. In 1480 the membership rolls counted over two hundred members from different social backgrounds, ranging from manual laborers to artists (including Domenico Ghirlandaio) to illustrious citizens such as Lorenzo de' Medici and Politian.
For over a dozen years, the San Paolo confraternity constituted the only family in Florence for the illegitimate artist. Here he also could talk informally with colleagues and potential patrons. Between 1482 and 1487 Filippino went to an average of over twelve meetings a year, and he remained in the confraternity for about twenty one and a half years. The attendance books allow us to determine Filippino's whereabouts with great precision; we often know just where Filippino spent his weekends five hundred years ago. Like most members, Filippino came to fewer meetings after he became a husband and father. In 1503 his name was removed from the membership lists, probably because he had joined the brotherhood of Saint Job.
During this time Filippino lived comfortably in his own property on what is now via degli Alfani. According to the 1504 inventory the ground floor included the workshop, kitchen, bedroom, a courtyard, a vegetable garden, and a loggia. Upstairs was a second kitchen, an antechamber, the study, and the sala (living room). This served a variety of functions. It contained "a round table for eating, a large and a small bed, a bench, and no less than nine chairs. Filippino filled the rooms with objects that reveal his taste, also found in many late paintings, for glittering gems, brightly colored fabrics, gleaming precious metals, and exotic odds and ends.
Most of Filippino's trove was kept in the sala, including "6 small silver spoons with a gilded pomegranate on top", "a small, mother of pearl horn, for children, with silver finishings, with a Lamb of God with five little pearls and rubies", an "ivory comb" and "crystal glass". But after all those years flagellating himself at meetings of his confraternity, Filippino did not have a religious image in the most important room. He had only one religious book, a Bible, but also read Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Dante. In his study, Lippi kept his large lute in its case and "5 good recorders in a small bag", which helps explain the emphasis on music seen in some paintings on view, such as the Portrait of a Musician, the Madonna and Child with Singing Angels, and the Allegory of Music.
Filippino, too, did not skimp on his wardrobe. In contrast to the artist's sixteen shirts, his wife had only six, which ranged "from good to sad". For many items Filippino had a choice of fabrics, colors, and styles. Did he want a: giubbone in velluto nero, raso rosso (vest in black velvet or red silk. Should he carry his the leather bag or the black velvet one, both with silver trimmings? Surely, Filippino gave comparable consideration to how he dressed up the figures in his fashionable paintings. When he was only about 47 Filippino died of angina, according Vasari, on 20 April 1504. He was buried the next day at the church of San Michele Visdomini and when the procession passed on via dei Servi, all the shops closed their shutters, as was the tradition for great men.