Original subtitles

Good afternoon. Artists in the Renaissance occasionally run in families. We've mentioned

a couple, certainly the Ghirlandaio family, in which various members of the family work together

in one workshop. Today we're going to look at the work of Filipino Lippi, who was born in

about 1457 or 1458 and lived until 154, and who was the son of Fra Filippo Lippi, whom we

discussed earlier, and the nun Lucrezia, with whom Fra Filippo eloped, later married, was

given permission to marry, and had children, including Filipino Lippi. Filipino trained

first with his father, and then he worked in Botticelli's workshop, which was a nice turn

of events because Botticelli had been an assistant to Filipino's father in his shop. About 1484,

the Brancacci family asked him to complete the famous fresco cycle that Filipino's father had

watched Masaccio paint 60 years before. Political and possibly financial circumstances had prevented

the lower registers of the lateral walls of the Brancacci chapel from being completed. We don't know

the full story of that, but we know that when Masaccio left and went to Rome, never to return, and

Masaccio had left before that. And then the leader of the Brancacci clan at that time was exiled, everything

came to a halt. And now, 60 years later, Filipino was commissioned to finish the work. It must have tapped

into his earliest memory of seeing the frescoes under his father's guidance. His remarkably close adherence

to Masaccio's model suggests, at least to me, a special devotion to Masaccio and to trying to accommodate

his own style to that of his great predecessor, which he did successfully, I think. And yet, his own

characteristic softness and melancholy, a quality which you will see in Filipino Lippi, are usually apparent,

even in these frescoes in the Brancacci chapel. The wall that you are looking at, which is the right wall of the

chapel, the entrance to the chapel being on the right-hand side of this image, the altar wall being on the left, and of

course, we're looking, as you see, at the lower register, because you can see the lower part of the register above it as well, a

scene which we did not discuss earlier. So we're looking at the lower part, which shows two scenes. The dispute on the

right-hand side, the area between the painted doorway in the center and this real column, or is it a painted column? Right here.

It's a real break in the wall with a painted column at this point. This scene on the right-hand side is the dispute with

Simon Magus. I will explain that in a moment. And on the left-hand side of this mural, although placed in the same

continuum of space, but broken by the doorway, separated by the doorway, we have the crucifixion of Saint Peter.

And on the projecting wall of the entrance arch, far to the right here, I pointed out to you that there is a column

here, but the wall steps forward. That dark area that you see is a shadow on the wall as that entrance arch, as it were, steps forward.

It is advanced from the side wall. And we saw the figures which were on that entrance wall earlier.

You can see Masolino's Adam and Eve up here, and opposite that we saw Masaccio's expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

So this will orient you again to the chapel and to the location of this particular, particular fresco.

The dispute with Simon Magus, an unusual subject, at least to most people, is told in the Golden Legend.

Jacobus Devaragine, we discussed the Golden Legend when we were looking at the Cycle of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca.

And we return to it from time to time as one of the main sources of the lives of the saints.

And here in the story of Saint Peter, we also encounter Simon Magus.

Simon Magus was a magician who pretended to supernatural powers and competed with Saint Peter for attention in Rome.

He couldn't perform miracles as a rule, but he performed tricks which were seen as miracles.

He was unable to do one of those important miracles that figures from time to time in the New Testament,

and that is raising someone from the dead.

And so he kept going to Peter and trying to bribe him to tell him his secret.

How do you raise the dead?

Which, of course, Peter didn't tell him.

Whether he could have, I don't know, but he didn't.

And by the way, the word simony in the English language comes from this story, from Simon Magus.

It means the buying or selling of spiritual things, and is derived from this strange character.

Here, before the Emperor Nero, who is seated on the right-hand side, enthroned, if you will, here, in a golden yellow cloak,

and with a wreath of leaves on his head, you see the characters brought together.

Peter is standing here.

Simon Magus here to the left in white with a reddish cloak over his shoulders and a headdress.

Peter here with a red cloak, a long, lower red cloak.

And here, of course, the Emperor seated. These are the three main characters.

Indeed, the others are simply actors, as it were, without, nay, without portfolio in this scene,

some of them apparently portraits of contemporaries of Filipino lippi.

In this scene, Peter confronts Simon Magus.

Obviously, they're still competing, and the competition is being held in front of the Emperor,

who has been won over by Simon Magus.

Peter apparently has exposed him as a fraud, and the reason we say that is because on the ground,

between Peter and the Emperor lying there, is a small sculpture.

It's a small pagan idol that has fallen to the ground.

From whence, I'm not quite clear, but the fact that it has fallen there suggests that Peter has exposed Simon Magus.

There's a good deal of finger-pointing going on in this picture.

We have Simon here, who points an accusing figure at Peter.

Peter points down at the fallen idol.

The idol's hand, if you can see it, the idol's hand, as it lies there on its back,

is pointing up to Nero, sending our attention right up to the Emperor.

And Nero himself is pointing back again at St. Peter here.

Unfortunately, Nero's getting in the final word with that gesture because he's condemning St. Peter to death,

and taking Simon Magus' word for whatever event has specifically transpired.

The melancholy expressions, by the way, of the courtiers who are around Nero suggest that they don't share his judgment, his rather rash judgment.

They all look like they think things should have been decided in another way and in St. Peter's favor.

There is one other thing to mention.

If you look at the head of Simon Magus, it's strikingly similar to the portraits we've seen of Dante.

We've seen two, if I remember correctly.

And it is similar in profile, in headdress, and in the general appearance, the general presentation of it.

But clearly he gives it a different twist.

He makes it look, evil is perhaps too strong, but dark and a not trustworthy, honest figure.

Simon Magus was supposed to be able to, Chameleon-like, take on the appearance of others, of anyone he wished.

And this is perhaps to suggest that, that he's ennobling himself by taking on the appearance of Dante.

And yet, at the same time, the artist lets us know that it is not Dante, that he doesn't quite look like him.

Well, leaving that right-hand side, which is very carefully contained by the architecture behind it,

we cross this doorway, as it were, opening the aisle toward the doorway into the landscape,

and a marvelous arch, which goes up and brings us right down into the second scene, into the next scene of that wall.

And this is where Peter is crucified.

Now, you may know this story, or this disbelief, that Saint Peter, at his own request, was crucified upside down,

so that he would not seem to be emulating Christ in his crucifixion.

And so he is always shown in this very striking upside-down pose that you have here,

which places the figure, by the way, directly in the picture plane.

It's quite the base of the cross, or the head of it, which is now its base, is very near the edge of the painted space,

and it pushes him forward toward us.

It's really quite striking, both as a design and as a physical confrontation with the crucified saint.

Filipino, by the way, included portrait heads in this, on this side, as well as on the other.

And here, in front of the open doorway, and just below the arch, one of these figures looks right at us.

And it has been identified by some, and I think correctly, as Botticelli.

If you recall the Botticelli painting, the earlier of the two Adorations of the Magi,

you may recall that he painted himself in a self-portrait of himself, at the far right, looking out.

And the similars here are very, very, very, very close.

And, incidentally, Filipino seems to have included himself on this wall.

If you go to the far right, this head looking out, otherwise the body is blocked by the figure in front,

but this head looking out is probably Filipino Lippi, his own self-portrait.

The rest of this side, that is to say where the crucifixion is, is involved largely with the apparatus of erecting this cross,

this inverted cross, with ropes and pulley effect back here.

Again, everything controlled by the architecture, which changes here because we're in a kind of courtyard

with a crenellated wall behind it, which allows us to see the landscape, which opens out,

which opens through the doorway into a very attractive landscape.

Some have suggested, though I confess I can't actually see it, that this landscape view refers to the end,

the final appearance of Simon Magus, who got himself some artificial wings, rather, in the manner of Daedalus,

or Icarus, rather, and flew for a while until Peter took an end to, made an end to it by raising a hand,

and he fell to earth and was killed.

I can't find him in that landscape, but it has been suggested that he has fallen in that landscape.

Let me show you the area to the right edge.

We've been looking at it, at that corner, and now you see here's the, here's Filipino self-portrait again, right here,

and here this face of the side of the arch, the entrance arch, a narrow space,

and below Masolino's painting of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden,

and here you have the very, very lovely, quiet scene of the liberation of Saint Peter from prison.

You'll find this in most cycles about Saint Peter, of course, he was imprisoned,

and the liberation when an angel appears to him and releases him is a very important one.

You'll find it in Raphael's, Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican, for instance.

But here it's a very clear daylight scene. I say that because Raphael painted it later at night.

But in any event, the angel, who is a very gentle, I would say the gentlest imaginable angel,

dressed in white with blue trim, has led Saint Peter from prison, is gesturing him to be quiet.

And the most beautiful touch, of course, in this small fresco is the young guard who has fallen asleep at his post.

And it is so extraordinarily lyrical. It is such a beautiful little genre touch that you fall in love with it pictorially and emotionally right away.

His long staff is what he leans on, the sword is in its sheath, and this pleasant angularity of the body really suggests the sleep into which he's fallen.

It is a painting of a figure of very great beauty, I think.

Although, as we said, Filipino carefully accommodated himself to, he accommodated his style, to Masacho's style in the chapel,

that small section is fully characteristic of Filipino's delicate manner.

In Washington's National Gallery of Art, there is this portrait of a youth, painted about 1485,

which shows how much Filipino learned from Masacho's example.

We don't know who this young man is, although he certainly has enormous personality, as it will, enormous dignity.

And he is, his dignity and his personality are expressed in simple forms, simple colors,

a nearly frontal figure, framed by an open window. I think we can interpret it that way.

All we see are the two side sills, the side of the window.

The figure is against the blue sky, but no clouds, no birds, nothing more than a sky color behind him.

And our whole confrontation, or our whole concentration rather, is with the character of this young man,

which seems to be the very essence of Renaissance humanism.

It exemplifies a kind of moral uprightness, an uprightness of character.

And that uprightness is expressed through the verticals of the architecture,

and also through the pleats of his doublet, which command the eye very, very much.

And those verticals all together help in the wonderful feeling that we have of an upright dignity.

In addition to that quality, this figure has a very youthful delicacy and freshness,

and it is something that we've seen in Filipino already, and will often see in his work.

It could serve, this portrait of an unknown young man could serve as the model for a poster announcing the Renaissance ideal of man.

And in fact, it has been the cover photo for at least one book on the Renaissance.

It was from his father that Filipino derived his poetic conception of the adoration of the child.

You'll recall, Filippo Lippi, we saw two examples of that subject,

with the Madonna kneeling on the ground, adoring the Christ child on the ground.

This is a painting done about 1477, 1480 perhaps, which is now in the Uffizi in Florence.

In it, the Madonna, again, kneels in humility, gazing down at the Christ child.

His, Filipino's Madonna, has a greater scale and grandeur than his father's prototypes had,

without sacrificing the solemn poetry of his father's work.

But if you'll look at this figure, for instance, it's tall, the figure of the Madonna,

tall and elongated, and it gives us a tremendous sense of size, actually,

without being overly heavy. It is a figure which is both striking and dominating to a degree.

The great folds of the drapery, of the blue drapery, are wonderfully structural,

but it's soft at the same time.

And the landscape, which is compositionally functional, is also evocative.

I say compositionally functional because of the placement of the tree, apropos the other figures.

The diagonal, which is set up by the hill here, which echoes the diagonal of the Christ child,

which is interesting, by the way, because the child is placed, unlike Philip Olippi did it,

he's propped him up a bit, and not had him flat on the ground, as we have usually seen in this subject.

And that presents him on a diagonal, allowing the Christ child to look up toward the eyes of his mother here,

and the diagonal of her costume lead down to the figure.

She is in an enclosed garden here, again representing her virginity,

with a wall behind and flowers in the grass here in the foreground, and then a larger landscape beyond.

The vision of Saint Bernard, or Bernard, as you prefer, was painted about 1485 for the Church of the Badia in Florence.

Filipino Lippi's altar pieces are bold and imaginative in composition and expression.

The vision of Saint Bernard was originally painted for a monastic church.

It's been moved to another church.

It was painted for a monastic church on a rocky promontory just beyond the walls of Florence.

And that rocky promontory is figures, as it were, in this painting.

The painting, which is very large, combined, suave, elongated forms, these elongations,

which we saw in that Madonna adoring the Christ child, tend to continue in his work,

not invariably, but very often, elongated forms with an expressive landscape.

And it has a very unusual combination of charm and of wonderment.

I think that the figure of Saint Bernard is just amazing.

The white, well, what? Gray-white? It's not pure white. It's got a lot of color going on in it.

But the great curvilinear quality of it is very moving.

And the tall, statuesque Madonna with the long, falling blue and red robes, equally striking and equally disproportionate, if you will.

He gets a certain poetry and melancholy out of the elongation of his figures.

This is a very original composition in a somewhat fanciful landscape setting that is nonetheless, I'm sure, inspired by the location of that monastery for which the altarpiece was painted.

But nonetheless, when you get this great rocky backdrop right behind the saint and the Madonna, clearly there's a great deal of fanciful work going on in the designing of that.

Bernard of Clairvaux was the famous Cistercian theologian and reformer of the 12th century.

And he professed a particular devotion for the Virgin Mary.

Legend reports that when he was so utterly exhausted that he could scarcely continue his writing,

the Virgin appeared to lend him strength in gratitude for his writings on her behalf.

And Filipino vividly imagines this as taking place in front of a rocky outcropping near the monastery,

a place where the saint has a private place to write and, as it happens, to receive a visit from the Virgin Mary.

The monks in the middle ground, right here behind the rock, have apparently witnessed the apparitional approach of the Virgin and the angels,

but must have looked away at the wrong moment and not realized that they have, as it were, landed behind the rocks here.

But they are looking up, gesturing up.

Look, we saw something, these two.

They saw something up there, something strange coming through the sky.

And what was it, and where have they gone?

Back here, two monks in rather strong conversation, whether about the same subject or another, I don't know.

But very marvelous sort of greeting and interchange between those two figures.

By the way, it's been observed that between the two principal figures, the Madonna and the saint, there is an open book.

Now, there, of course, is a paper or a book here on his writing desk.

But here, behind, against the rock, is an open book.

And the pages can be read, and they display the account of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary,

which is from the Gospel of Saint Luke.

And the composition of this painting echoes that of an Annunciation.

The significance that has been suggested of these two facts is that Christ is being reborn in Bernard's heart,

so that we have a spiritual incarnation rather than the actual physical incarnation that the Virgin experienced.

The angels accompanying the Virgin, one wouldn't want to forget them.

They're splendid.

They're among the most enchanting creations in his or anyone's art, for that matter.

They are both behind and in front of, below, the Virgin.

They have a sense of wonderment themselves.

They don't look like, shall we say, highly experienced angels, like they've done this before.

And they have their own devotion that they bring with them and their own charming naivete.

The wealthy donor who commissioned the painting is here too, but I, at least, rarely see him.

Right away, he's down in the lower right-hand corner.

I know that if you're in front of the painting, which is so much larger than the image we're seeing,

he's likely to be more or less at your eye level, so you will notice him more quickly,

and yet he's placed rather modestly in prayer in the lower right-hand corner.

Not part of the scene, but looking into it just as we are.

The Adoration of the Magi and the Uffizi painted about 1496 as an even larger altarpiece,

more than eight feet square, and it is the animated and,

it is an animated and fascinating telling of the Adoration, which we've seen so many times now by other artists.

This was also commissioned for a monastery just outside the walls of Florence,

a monastery that doesn't exist anymore.

It was called Sandonato Ascopeto, and in it was a painting unfinished by Leonardo da Vinci of the same subject.

We'll discuss it in the next lecture, but I anticipate it here,

because it was there when the Filipino was asked to paint this.

They were tired of waiting for Leonardo to finish his work, and so they commissioned this.

That's the implication, but he saw the work by Leonardo as everyone did,

and it influenced him terrifically, for instance, in many of the landscape details,

but also in the way that the Magi creep forward here.

Magi and other figures creep forward toward the Madonna.

You'll see that in the Leonardo later on.

This large Adoration skillfully stages a lot of figures in a very elaborate composition,

painted in brilliant distinctive colors.

You can see that for yourself, but look at the triangulation that he achieves,

for instance, with gold and gold and gold from the corners to the St. Joseph in the center,

and reds to balance it as well, or even you can see this as a counter triangle of reds,

going from the figure standing at the left to the kneeling king to the figure on the rock.

The diagonals of both of the stable and of the rocks in the landscape set up the diagonal slope

of the heads of the principal figures running from upper right to lower left.

It tends, therefore, even though this is a symmetrical composition,

to introduce an element of asymmetry into it, a sliding diagonal that indicates movement.

Not surprisingly, Filipinos' much larger painting was influenced by Leonardo,

and I'll try to point that out more specifically when we see the Leonardo da Vinci in the next lecture.

One thing I should mention before I let that go, and that is the influence on it of the large Portonari altarpiece,

the Adoration of the Magi, which I showed you in the lecture on Ghirlandaio,

and which was so influential upon Ghirlandaio in the Realistic Shepherds.

The Portonari altarpiece was famous from the time it arrived from the north, from Flanders,

in the city of Florence, and it was influential on Filipino in the work we've been looking at.

Let me show you finally a painting which is most remarkable and typical of the late work of the artist.

His late work often takes a turn, not merely for the fanciful, but for the bizarre.

And that's surely the case in the frescoes of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella.

The subject of this particular scene is the exorcism of the demon in the Temple of Mars.

This, as I say, is one fresco in a chapel for the Strozzi family in Santa Maria Novella.

By the way, are you beginning to think that you should go to Florence and visit Santa Maria Novella?

I am. We've seen so much that is in that extraordinary church.

In this painting, one of the frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel finished near the end of his life.

Filipino introduced a sharply altered expressionistic style, almost manic in its psychology,

to depict an apocryphal legend of Saint Philip.

The remarkable exorcism scene depicts a story of Saint Philip in Asia Minor.

He was in the Temple of Mars at Hierapolis,

and at the base of the God's altar, of Mars' altar, dwelt a dragon-like demon.

Philip drew forth that demon, exorcised the demon, which you see down here at the bottom.

It's a very scary demon, I must say, which is in the throes, in its death throes here.

But while being exorcised by Philip, the demon released poisonous fumes.

Those fumes caused the death of one of the pagan worshippers, who happened to be the king's son,

and he fell dead, and he is being supported here by his friends.

This infuriated the Roman priests of the temple, who subsequently crucified Philip.

So the story has a violent denouement, as well as a very dramatic action.

The exceptionally ornate architecture of the altar of Mars itself,

an incredible amount of sculpture going attached to it and multicoloured and so forth,

as is the God, the statue of Mars, who seems to be real rather than a statue,

seems almost to us Baroque, by which I mean 17th century, in its imaginative and overwrought quality.

And the details of the architectural frame, here on the left and right,

they go all the way around the painting, in fact.

That's painted, that's part of the painting, but it frames it.

And the details are taken directly from the Golden House of Nero in Rome,

some of which had just been excavated.

And it was seen by Filipino on a trip to Rome.

And it was his trip to Rome that delayed his work on this fresco,

and he didn't finish it until the end of the century,

and in fact, until the death of the patron who never lived to see the chapel finished.

The great refinement of the painting technique in this fresco

collides with the hyperbole of the costumed figures

and their sculptural counterparts on the altar.

There's a neurotic quality to the painting, in fact,

that should probably be linked to the psychology of Savonarola in Florence,

just as Botticelli's late work is.

Figures and space are manipulated in this disturbing, almost anti-Renaissance composition.

Perspective is being used for expressive rather than rational purposes.

In this evolution, in the development of perspective for expressive rather than purely rational purposes,

Filipino had company.

Among others, the company of the contemporary work of Leonardo da Vinci,

who will be the subject of our next two lectures.

Thank you for your attention.

Thank you for your attention.