For all its symbols of holiness, this painting revels in mischief—and in sheer beauty.
Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with two Angels, c. 1460–65, tempera on panel, 95 x 63.5 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:04] We’re in the Uffizi, looking at Fra Filippo Lippi’s “Madonna and Child With Angels.” It’s so fun to see this painting after coming from the first room in the Uffizi, which has three giant paintings covered in gold from the 1300s of the Madonna and Child.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:22] Those are so solemn and so steeped in medieval tradition, and this is so playful.
Dr. Harris: [0:28] And so 15th century. Here we have a Madonna and Child that’s really humanist in its approach.
Dr. Zucker: [0:36] It’s interesting, because the other paintings really are very somber, but there is a somber note here too, in Mary’s foreknowledge of the fate of her son. Nevertheless, the rest of the painting feels very playful, and even her youth and beauty really carry the day.
Dr. Harris: [0:50] Gone are those Byzantine elongations of the face and the hands. She looks like a real woman who you might see on the streets of Florence, a very beautiful woman, but a real woman nonetheless. Not only that, but the angels look like children that you might see playing on the streets of Florence.
[1:10] It always has seemed to me as though Lippi, when he wanted a model for the angels, went out and found a couple of kids playing in the street and brought them into his studio and made them pose. Look at that “angel” in the foreground, who supports the Christ Child and turns around and looks up at us with a really playful smile.
Dr. Zucker: [1:31] It’s almost mischievous. Lippi is actually being incredibly mischievous himself. When we look at the other angel, it’s only the lower half of his face peeking out below Christ’s arms. It’s sort of ridiculous. I mean, you would never have an artist during the medieval period do something like that.
Dr. Harris: [1:46] Look what’s happened to Mary’s halo. Here we are, we’re moving toward the High Renaissance, where we’ll have the complete disappearance of the halo with Leonardo da Vinci, but here with Fra Filippo Lippi, the halo is becoming just a simple circle that we can just barely make out above Mary’s face and also around Christ.
[2:06] And so those obvious symbols of divinity, of holiness I think, felt very much out of place for Fra Filippo Lippi. He wanted to create an image of the Madonna and Child with angels that looked very earthly and very natural and very real.
Dr. Zucker: [2:22] The frame of this window almost becomes the frame of the painting itself. It seems to me that there’s this self-conscious eliding of the frame of the painting and the frame of the window. There’s the conceit that the landscape is seen through a window, but I think that he’s suggesting that the frame of the canvas is a frame that we look into as if we look into the window as well.
Dr. Harris: [2:41] That landscape behind her, rendered with atmospheric perspective, also looks very real. If we think back to the Cimabue or the Duccio with that flat gold background, the gold of a heavenly space, here, Mary [is] very much represented as a figure who we can relate to here on earth.
[3:01] My favorite passage in the painting is actually the translucent fabric that she wears in her hair, and the amazing lines and curves as that winds down around her neck and comes down in front of her, or even the curls that we see in Christ’s hair, there’s this love of beautiful curling shapes.
[3:22] We know that Fra Filippo Lippi was the teacher of Botticelli. When I look at that, I can see that.
Dr. Zucker: [3:28] That emphasis on the decorative.
Dr. Harris: [3:30] And on beautiful sensuous lines. There’s a kind of sensuality here that I think is hard to deny. Clearly, yes, the Madonna and Child with the angels, but a real love of the beauty of the things that we can see with our eyes.
[3:46] [music]
Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels, c. 1460–65, tempera on panel, 95 x 63.5 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
In this painting by Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels—a variation on the Madonna and Child Enthroned (see Giotto or Cimabue) that artists have been painting for hundreds of years—halos virtually disappear.
Mary’s hands are clasped in prayer, and both she and the Christ child appear lost in thought, but otherwise the figures have become so human that we almost feel as though we are looking at a portrait. The angels look especially playful, and the one in the foreground seems like he might giggle as he looks out at us.
Left: Virgin Mary and Christ child (detail), Giotto, Virgin and Child enthroned, surrounded by angels and saints (Ognissanti Maestà), 1306–10, tempera on panel, 325 x 204 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); right: Virgin Mary and Christ child (detail), Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels, c. 1460–65, tempera on panel, 95 x 63.5 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
The delicate swirls of transparent fabric that move around Mary’s face and shoulders are a new decorative element that Lippi brings to Early Renaissance painting—something that will be important to his student, Sandro Botticelli. However, the modeling of Mary’s form—from the bulk and solidity of her body to the careful folds of drapery around her lap—reveal Masaccio‘s influence.
The changing status of the artist
Fra Filippo Lippi was an important painter after the death of Masaccio in 1428 (remember Masaccio dies at the young age of 27). Here’s a great story told by Giorgio Vasari about Lippi, who was also a monk:
It is said that Fra Filippo was so lustful that he would give anything to enjoy a woman he wanted if he thought he could have his way, and if he couldn’t buy what he wanted, then he would cool his passion by painting her portrait and reasoning with himself. His lust was so violent that when it took hold of him he could never concentrate on his work. Because of this, when he was doing something for Cosimo de’ Medici, Cosimo had him locked in so he wouldn’t wander off. After he had been confined for a few days, Fra Filippo’s amorous, or rather animal, instincts drove him one night to seize a pair of scissors, make a rope from his own bedsheets, and escape through a window to pursue his own pleasures for days on end!
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, volume 1 (1550)
So Lippi runs away from his patron, “to pursue his own pleasures,” but he HAD to run away, since Cosimo (his patron) had him locked up! Now, could you lock up Picasso and say “you must finish this painting by next week?” Of course not, art is not made that way—according to our contemporary understanding of art, artists need to be inspired; they can’t be ordered to create, the way you would order a pizza or a birthday cake.
What Vasari’s story is really about is a change in the status of the artist—and a related change in the way people are thinking about art. Art is beginning to be thought of not just as something made by a skilled worker, but something that comes from a “inspired” place—from someone who is especially gifted. According to the rest of the story, Cosimo de’ Medici (Lippi’s patron) learned that artists need to be treated with respect—a sign of the changing status of the artist in the Renaissance—from skilled laborer to respected professional and intellectual.
