Geiger: Filippino Lippi's Carafa Chapel

To visit Renaissance art in Rome is to visit the frescoes of Filippino Lippi in the Carafa Chapel in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.  Lippi left Florence for Rome in 1488 to meet Cardinal Oliviero Carafa regarding his chapel.  The meeting was encouraged by Lorenzo de Medici as he lauded Filippino's mastery of frescoes.

Cardinal Carafa was a powerful man, both as a cardinal and as a diplomat.  In 1472, he was admiral of a papal fleet and led a successful battle for Pope Sixtus IV against the Turks.  This afforded him great notariety.

Cardinal Carafa had a personal devotion to Saint Thimas Aquinas, an austere priest from the Dominican order.   He may have been a distant relative of his, further enhancing this devotion. The cardinal also surrounded himself with Humanist theologians who occupied themselves with translating ancient Greek and Roman writings.  They pursued their deep belief in man's moral and intellectual education, a belief also held by Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Before we tour the frescoes in the chapel, let's revisit the technique of buon fresco, or wet fresco.  Fresco painting dates back as early as 1500BCE in the Near East.  It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans and is seen subsequently throughout history.  To create a buon fresco, an underlayer, or arriccio, is applied.  It is on this layer that most artists sketched their compositions with a red pigment called sinopia.  A later techniques used paper tranfers with soot.  Then, pigment mixed with room-temperature water was applied to a thin layer of fresh, wet plaster.  A binder was not required because the pigment soaked right in.  After a number of hours, the plaster dries and reacts with the air.  This reaction fixes the pigment particles within the plaster.  Some artists, like Michelangelo and Rafael, scraped into the plaster to create more depth.  Once dried, no more pugment could be applied.  This forced frescoes to be created in sections under time constraints.

Soon, we will view the wonderful frescoes of the Carafa  chapel.