Forbidden Love: The Sex Scandal behind a Renaissance masterpiece
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Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Filippo Lippi, 1465, Uffizi, Florence.
Matched in sweetness and humanist rendering of the Madonna in a natural setting only by Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks (London version), and an elegant representation of a woman’s veil that would later be so admiringly adopted by Botticelli, this painting also features one of the most engaging angels in Renaissance art. So much invites the eye of the viewer, it is surprising for us to see the Christ child presented with the face of an adult (a style common for its time, but abandoned later in the Renaissance).
Lippi, an orphaned child, was admitted into a Carmelite order of monks at age 16. Safe to say that Lippi was bad at being a monk. He defied the vow of celibacy, indulging his considerable appetite for sex, upsetting the moral strictures of his order and, most worrisome, distracting him from producing his wondrous religious art. So much so that Cosimo de’Medici (very strongly his patron) found it necessary to lock him in a studio so that he would finish his work.
Although he was permitted to leave the monastery in order to work, he was forbidden to leave the order. But money spent on prostitutes and other amorous expenses left Lippi broke and constantly seeking commissions.
In 1453, another Florentine monk, Fra Angelico, turned down the commission to paint frescoes in the Duomo at Prato. The work was offered to and accepted by Lippi, and he relocated from Florence to nearby Prato to undertake the assignment.
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Frescoes in the Duomo, Prato. Fra Lippo Lippi. 1452-1465
It was in Prato that Lippi encountered Lucrezia Buti. At the time she was a beautiful 17 year old novitiate in the Convent of Santa Margherita, placed there by her family due to financial woes and her lacking a dowry. Lippi, who had been ensconced as the Convent’s chaplain, convinced the mother superior to allow Lucrezia to model as the Virgin Mary for another commission he was painting (and for his duomo frescoes as Salome). He then abducted her and refused to return her to the convent. She became pregnant and a scandal ensued. But since the pope knew of Lippi’s great talent in producing beautiful art to enhance the Church’s status, he granted dissolution of their religious vows (a kind of papal “Va bene!” as long as he continued painting.). They had two children together. Their son, Filippino Lippi, would become a great painter in his own right.
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detail of fresco of Salome
The current structure of the Duomo dates from the Romanesque period of the 12th century. Prato’s duomo is remarkable for its facing of white albarese stone and green marble (typical materials of Prato until the 15th century) and its signature external balcony created by Donatello and Michelozzi between 1428 and 1438.
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Cathedrale di Santo Stefano
The balcony is on the exterior of the Capella della Sacra Cintola, Chapel of the Holy Sash, the green belt of the Virgin, said to have been handed to St. Thomas at the moment of her assumption into heaven. Every September 8, the feast day of the Virgin, crowds gather at the Duomo’s piazza where the bishop displays the tightly preserved sash from the balcony.
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The façade has a single central portal with a lintelled doorway surmounted by a Gothic arch. In the lunette over the door is a glazed terracotta sculpture by Andrea della Robbia depicting the Madonna with Saints Stephen and Lawrence.
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Madonna col Bambino e i Santi Stefano e Lorenzo (1489) by Andrea della Robbia
Although only about one-half hour by train from Florence, Prato is a city few Americans visit and it is a shame. But I think they don’t for the same reason I didn’t when I was there for an art intensive in 2010: there is simply not enough time to see the staggering volume of masterpieces of Florence to afford a day trip to Prato.
So I guess this means I will just have to return to Italy and do so....and also eat some of the fabled Pratese almond cantuccini...
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= new reply since forum marked as read
This art is stunning and the story behind the artist fascinating. I love art but know little of its history, I was a science major and took music appreciation instead of art appreciation. I need to take a class.
I love your posts and look forward to them!
Thanks again.
Studio art major - so I spent most of my college years either "painting" crazy "process pieces" (we had a pretty wild and iconoclastic art department and some real rebels among the painterly class) or playing radio at the campus FM station - where students ran the whole operation from janitorial to prime time jock to general manager-type. I LOVE these journeys into the "behind the canvas" back-stories, if you will. It just so magnificently enriches the image. Gives it life! Pumps the bloodstream of that piece, sparks its heartbeat, and inflates its lungs. F-A-S-C-I-N-A-T-I-N-G!!!! Reminds me of this fellow who founded "Artforum" magazine, Phil Leider and his art history class that was The BEST. So glad I was an art major because then I HAD TO be able to take the class, and it was so popular you'd wind up on a waiting list more often than you'd actually get in. My favorite! Especially when you got a chance to consider the "other" back-story - what was going on historically, culturally, economically, including conquests, invasions, migrations, and whatever else might have impacted that time.
http://www.baroquepotion.com/2008/03/partial-recall-phil-leider/
Everything this guy says - I second that, too! Damn, I loved that art history class. Even though I sometimes dozed off in the dark theater hall during slide presentations. Usually had spent way too much time up too late at the radio station the night before. It was this huge hall, and it was always standing room only. And there weren't THAT many visual arts majors on campus at the time. But that place was always packed. He brought two-dimensional art ALIVE! Blew it up like a blow-up doll that you could have mental orgasms with! (sorry...)
And so does CTYankee, here - once again! Huzzah! DAYUM we need stuff like this, CTYankee. What a much-needed break. Particularly on a day as grim as this one! Thank you sincerely!!! I feel like celebrating - even if only for a moment!
I guess humankind can't be all bad - if it comes up with stuff like this, 'eh? Our art can be our salvation, AND our redemption - both the creating and the describing of it. Maybe there's STILL reason enough not to lose hope.
Crap, CTYankee - and then you follow it all up with that biscuit of great beauty! Mustn't forget that last photo, either! That, too, is a work of art and I'll bet it tastes like one!
saw Selma today so am happy to have this with which to absorb myself.
(Weird to think of what's happened in Paris, isn't it?)
and wrenching.
Happy to hear your pleasure at your granddaughter's interest. I'm happy to hear of my grandsons' 'playing' 'piano,' and enjoying songmaking of favorite Irish singer of his parents! (1 year old, and 6 months old!)
Here's an image of Toledo, by El Greco, with Goya 'view,' as I recall him and it in 1957.
hadn't been so... I happily did it again! I could do it again every 2-3 years for 500 years if I lived that long and never get sick of it!
Last edited Fri Jan 9, 2015, 11:42 PM - Edit history (1)
I love the story, and how you put it all together. Thank you for a nice treat!
....was the love child of Lippi and Lucrezia. He's so full of life, and Baby Jesus is so...podgy. Lucrezia as the Madonna is absolutely gorgeous. Why anyone would immure her in a convent is beyond me, dowry or no. Yet she and he would never have met if both their parents had not done so. History is full of ironies.
Thank you for yet another wonderful episode in Art History, with emphasis on both Art and History.
Yesterday 3 friends and I drove down to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2 hours each way) to view the magnificent Reubens tapestries on the theme of the Triumph of the Eucharist. Those things are enormous. The informational plaques were good, but they skipped over some of the iconography. Medusa being run over by a chariot was defined as representing Heresy, but though I saw two representations of the Snake biting its tail (one as a hoop in a joyful scene and one as Ourobouros encircling the globe) I still don't know what it meant to Roman Catholics in Reuben's era.
Then my librarian friend and I peeled off to look at the illuminated manuscripts and I practically had to be asked to leave due to excessive drooling (joke, joke). I so want those in my library. I mean really -- we are talking about a lifelong fantasy.
Have a happy new year, CTYankee!
regarding frescoes ... Not anywhere nearly as splendid but, you might find interesting ...
During the 1970s, internationally renowned fresco artist Ben Long created magnificent enduring works in two small antique churches in Ashe County. Each is significant to the Christian community. His first frescoes were done in Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church on the southwestern edge of West Jefferson. There you can see his images Mary Great with Child, John the Baptist, and The Mystery of Faith. This was followed a few years later with a life-size depiction of The Last Supper at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Glendale Springs.
The Last Supper
more at link =
http://ashefrescoes.org/
He wasn't the best looking guy, either. You might be interested in seeing this, a detail of another of his paintings where he paints himself into he picture 
You have put Florence and Prato on my travel to-do list, and I adored the love story!
