Filippo Lippi: Drawings & Paintings (Annotated)

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Filippo Lippi: Drawings & Paintings (Annotated) Details

Filippo Lippi was from Florence. When he was still a boy, both his parents died and he was sent to live with his aunt; however, because she was too poor to support him, she took him to the nearby Carmelite Monastery. He was eight years old when he went to the monastery.After 1420, he was admitted to the community of Carmelite friars of the Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Florence, and accepted religious vows on the Order next year when he was sixteen years old. He has ordained as a priest around 1425 and remained in this monastery until 1432.Lippi was inspired to become an artist watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church. In 1432 he left the monastery, although he was not released from his vows. In one of his letters of 1439, he describes himself as the poorest monk in Florence.Then Lippi briefly visited Ancona and Naples, but the Barbary pirates captured him and he remained for a while as their slave. His ability to paint portraits made him let them down free.After the return of Lippi to Florence in 1432, his paintings became popular, earning him the support of the Medici family. Cosimo de 'Medici forced him to work for him, even after the artist ran away from his jail by descending from the window of the tower on a rope made of his sheets.In 1441, Lippi painted the decoration of an altar for the nuns of St. Ambrogio, pictured the Coronation of the Virgin Mary with angels and saints, including many Bernardine monks. One of the images depicted in this work is considered his self-portrait.In 1452 he was appointed a chaplain to the nuns in the Monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Florence.In June 1456, Filippo Lippi was enrolled as a Proto town resident near Florence to paint frescoes in the cathedral of the city.In 1458, while he was engaged in this work, he began painting decorations for the monastery chapel of St. Margherita in the same city.In 1457 Lippi was appointed Reverend commendatario of the Monastery of St. Quirico in Legania, from which he occasionally received significant and well-paid orders. Despite this money, he never managed to get rid of his debts and get rid of poverty all his life.In the last decade of his life, Lippi spent his life in Spoleto, where he was commissioned to work on scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary for the cathedral's apse. This series was completed by one of his assistants, his colleague Carmelite, Fra Diamante, but after Lippi's death.Filippo Lippi died in Spoleto on 8 October 1469.