LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO, a celebrated Italian painter and one of the most distinguished of the Quattrocentisti,' was horn at Florence in 1412. He was the sou of Tornmaso Lippi, who died when Filippo was only two years of age. His mother died soon after he was horn, and he was brought up by his father's sister Mona Lappaccia, until he was eight years old, when she placed him in the Carmelite con vent Del Carmine, to commence his novitiate. Here he showed such a strong disinclination for study and so great a propensity for scrib bling figures and other objects in his books, that the prior came to the wise conclusion of having him educated for a painter, then an occu pation not in the least inconsistent with the assumption of a monastic life. Filippo was accordingly permitted daily to visit Masaccio, who was then employed in painting the chapel of the convent, and he took extreme delight in contemplating the works of Masaccio there. Filippo himself gave early evidence of his extraordinary ability, by a fresco of the papal confirmation of the rules of the order of the Carmelites, painted near a work by Masaccio, in the cloister of the convent, but both are now destroyed ; he executed also several other works in various parts of the convent and in the church Del Carmine, each work superior to its preceding, and so like those of Masaccio that his spirit was said to have paved into Filippo. All these works however, or at least what remained of them, were destroyed in the conflagration of the church in 1771.
In 1430, or when only seventeen years of age, Filippo gave up the monastic life, left the convent Del Carmine, and went to Ancona. Here, while on an excursion of pleasure at sea with some other young men, he was captured by a pirate and carried in chains to Africa, and there sold as a slave. Eighteen months after the commencement of his captivity he amused himself one day with drawing, from memory, his master's portrait in chalk upon a white wall. The' perform ance appeared to his master a sort of prodigy ; he immediately released Filippo from his captivity, and after he had employed him to execute various pictures for him, sent him back safe to Italy. Filippo was landed in Naples, where he was, probably shortly after his arrival, employed by Alfonso duke of Calabria, afterwards Alfonso I. of Naples, to paint a picture for the chapel of the Ca..tell' Nuevo, then in his possession, which would fix the date at about 1435, or five years from the time that Filippo left his convent. He remained only a few months in Naples, and then returned to Florence; and one of the first works which he executed at this time was a small picture of the 'Adoration of the Madonna,' for the wife of Como de' Medici, which is now in the Imperial Gallery at Florence.
Ira Filippo executed many excellent works at Florence, Fiesole, Arezzo, and at Prato. While engaged in 1459 in the convent of Santa Margherita, in the last-named place, he seduced and carried off a young Florentine lady, Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti, who was being educated at the convent; and he had a son by her called Filippino Lippi, who became likewise a celebrated painter. The Death of San
Bernardo,' painted for the cathedral of Prato, is one of Lippi's finest works ; it is in oil and on panel, and is still in the cathedral. The passages also from the lives of John the Baptist and St. Stephen, painted in fresco, in the choir of the same church, from 1456 to 1464, the figures of which are colossal, are among the beat works of the 15th century : Vasari terms the martyrdom of St. Stephen his masterpiece. Filippo has introduced his own portrait into this piece, and he has painted that of Lucrezia Buti as Herodias in one of the series from the life of the Baptist. These frescoes have been restore by a painter of Prato of the name of Marini.
Fr." Filippo died at Spoleto in 1469, aged fifty-seven; this is no doubt the correct are of Filippo, though Vasari, who is followed by Baldinucci, makes him to have been sixty-seven. But that the year of his death was 1469, was ascertained by Baldinucci in the Necrology of the Carmelites. But Baldinucci and all other writers have over looked the value of the evidence connected with Munch), and have assumed 1400 to be about the time of Filippo's birth, whereas Masaccio himself was born only in 1402.
Fra Filippo is said to have been poisoned by the relations of,Luerezia Buti; Lanzi speaks of the fact as certain, but Vasari merely alludes to it as a vague report, which is the more probable version, especially as his death also did not take place until eleven years after the abduction of Lucrezia, for Filippino was ten years old when his father died. Fra Filippo was buried at Spoleto, in the cathedral, which he was engaged in painting at the time of his death. His son was instructed in paint. ing by Filippo's pupil and assistant Fra Diamante. He afterwards erected a marble monument, with a Latin inscription by Politian, to his father in the cathedral of Spoleto, by the order and at the expense of Lorenzo de' Medici.
Fra Filippo excelled in invention, in drawing, in colouring, and in chiaroscuro, and for his time was certainly a painter of extraordinary merit; be must, even without reference to time, be counted among the greatest of the Italian painters from Masaccio to Raffaelle, both inclusive. Some of his easel pictures in oil are finished with extreme care and great taste ; there are a few in the gallery of the Florentine Academy, of which the 'Coronation of the Virgin,' formerly in the church of Sant' Ambrogio, is an admirable work. There are some chalk studies of hands by Filippo in the British Museum. Several of his works have been engraved by Lasinio.