Filippino Lippi Moves Forward (slowly) on Strozzi Chapel

In his dissertation, Lippi's Strozzi Chapel, J. Russell Sale describes Filippino Lippi's fresco program in the Strozzi Chapel in Florence as "one of the most striking and important Florentine sepulchral projects of the end of the Quattrocento."  This program of frescoes was laid out in the late 1480s.

Filippo Strozzi was obsessed with his family fame and notoriety.  As we learned, he had re-established his family wealth and was on a campaign of building, including a palace and a chapel.  His family coat of arms was three crescent moons (arme delle tre luna).  This is thought to represent the celestial body ruling the night sky and Diana, goddess of the moon.

In 1486, 'Filippo Strozzi purchased the chapel immediately to the right of the altar at Santa Maria Novella in Florence.  There is another Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella that belonged to Filippo's ancestors.  The previous owners of his new chapel, the Bardi family, no longer had the resources for the chapel's upkeep and could not maintain it properly.  This provided the opportunity for Filippo Strozzi to purchase it.  He was 58 years old.

Filippo Strozzi wanted an elaborate decorative program for his chapel that was extensive in scope, highly visible to the public, and intimate to his aspirations for a future life through religion.  Filippo Strozzi's patron saint was Saint Phillip.  He was also given the new patron saint of Saint John the Evangelist (San Giovanni Evangelista).  This was to be the theme of his chapel.

Filippo Strozzi's did not seem to be in too much of a rush for the adornment of the chapel.  He had other projects to which he was attending, including that of a family palace.  On April 21, 1487, he signed a contract with Filippino Lippi for the fresco program.  It appears they had a prior relationship as evidenced in Filippino Lippi's 1485 Madonna and Child, now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The painting shows the arme della tre luna in the simulated architecture.

The commission for the Strozzi Chapel was not a sure thing for Filippino Lippi.  It is said that Ghirlandaio was in competition for the work.  The commission included the vault, two walls, a window wall, and a dado area.  In 1487, agreement was reached between Filippo Strozzi and Filippino Lippi which laid out a general program but no specifics.  It mentioned use of the finest blues (lapis lazuli), paint in "true fresco", a trip to Venice, and a completion date of March 1490.  Filippino Lippi did not meet that deadline and, as we learned earlier, he went to Rome to complete the Carafa commission.  Vasari states that the Magnificient (Lorenzo di Medici) "sent" Filippino to Rome to paint a chapel for the Cardinal.  Filippino returned to Florence in 1492, well past the completion date laid out in his contract.  Prior to his death in 1491, Filippo Strozzi did not see fit to invoke the delay clause in the contract allowing to hire another artist at Lippi's expense.

Filippo Strozzi's Last Will ensured the completion of the program at San Giovanni Evangelista in Santa Maria Novella.  Benedetto da Maiano worked on the marbles for the chapel and completed them in 1495.

Strozzi Tomb at Santa Maria Novella 

With the exception of Adoration of the Magi,

from 1495 to 1502, off and on, Filippino Lippi worked on the frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel.  We will look at them in three segments:  the vault, the narrative frescoes on the side walls, and the altar wall.

Filippino Lippi Leaves Rome to Complete Strozzi Chapel

In 1487, Filippino Lippi was commissioned by Filippo di Matteo Strozzi to decorate his chapel in Florence.  The project was completed in 1502, fifteen years later.  As we know, Filippino Lippi went to Rome in 1488 to work on the Carafa Chapel.  This, in part, explains the gap.

Filippino Lippi's patron, Filippo di Matteo Strozzi, was born 4 July 1428 to a prominent family in Florence.  In 1434, his father was banished from the city and, one year later, died from the plague.  The family fell on hard times and, at a early age, Filippo was determined to rebuild their wealth.  In 1441, he left Florence for Palermo.  In 1446, he was in Spain.  And, in 1447, he settled in Naples to work for his cousin in the finance business.  By 1455, he was one of the correspondents of the Medici bank.

In 1458, a decree in Florence was enacted that banished for twenty-five years the sons and descendents of those that had been exiled in 1434.  This devastated Filippo di Matteo Strozzi as he was determined to make his was back to Florence and re-establish the family's name and wealth.  He remained in Naples and was joined by his younger brother, Lorenzo, in 1461.  The brothers achieved financial power and personal influence.  In an attempt to gain favor and to influence a retraction of the decree, the brothers began to lavish the king and his court with gifts and loans.  In 1466, amnesty was granted to a number of banished citizens, including Filippo and Lorenzo.
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Filippo di Matteo Strozzi returned to Florence within two weeks of the amnesty.  He married Fiametto Adimari who was from a prominent family there.  A son was born the following year, in 1467.  The Strozzi business and wealth was growing only to be augmented by Filippo's inheritance from his cousin.

In 1475, Filippo commissioned a life-sized bust from Benedetto da Maiano.

With his family status restored, Filippo di Matteo Strozzi became earnest in his religious beliefs and joined the confraternity of San Benedetto Bianco.  Thee group met regularly at Santa Maria Novella, the future home of the Strozzi Chapel.  At this time, Filippo used his wealth to restore many churches.  He also purchased properties to enhance the family name.

In my next post, we will begin our discussion and tour the Strozzi Chapel.

Fiorentino's Descent from the Cross

Tonight with get to discuss a very emotional painting, the Descent from the Cross.  Rosso Fiorentino completed this vibrant-colored, emotionally-charged, Manneristic altarpiece in 1521.

Set against a stark, grey background, the Descent from the Cross (or, Deposition) shows the anguished Joseph of Aramathia, Nicodemus, and Saint John the Evangelist taking down the lifeless, green-hued body of Christ from the cross.

Beneath, in a separate grouping, we find the Virgin and Mary Magdelene grieving over the horrific event that has taken place, the crucifixion.

The Descent from the Cross, originally painted for the Duomo, remains in it's original location in the Pinocoteca Comunale di Volterra.

Marcia Hall: Michelangelo's Last Judgement.

Twenty years after he completed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo returned to Rome in 1534 to paint the monumental altar scene of the Last Judgement.  In preparation for this commission, significant changes had to be made to the chapel.  Part of these changes included the destruction of his own lunettes, which were painted as part of the ceiling project.  Also destructed was the large altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary (1481) by Perugino, along with the Finding of Moses, the Birth of Christ, and a series of popes painted across the wall and clerestory windows.  The windows were bricked up.  What remained was a large, uninterrupted wall in which Michelangelo had to conceive his work.  This was quite different to the multi-partite ceiling of the Sistine chapel, which afforded Michelangelo architectural breaks in his thematic composition.

Michelangelo's layout of this scene of the Last Judgement departs from traditional renderings of the scene, which had registers with heaven above and hell below.  Here, Michelangelo places Christ, Mary at his side, in the center with angels and mortal swirling around him in a cosmic fashion.  The resurrection of the dead is in the lower left and hell is in the lower right.  We feel as if Christ, with his illuminated mandorla, is the sun around which everything orbits.

With his movement coming towards us, Christ raises his right arm and glares down toward the damned, showing his power.  "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first."  (Hall-Thess)

Just below Christ is the figure of Saint Bartholomew.  He holds the knife that caused his demise in one hand and his skin in the other hand.  His face does not match that of the face on the skin and it is believed that this is a self-portrait of Michelangelo.  Common theology felt that when one is judged they will not enter heaven in their imperfect, mortal body but, rather, will take on the perfection of Christ at the age he sacrificed himself for mankind (age 33).  As we learned earlier, Michelangelo had a fascination with the human body so his commission of this piece, and the nudes he painted, must have been intriguing to him.

All of the figures twist and turn in varying contrapposto poses.  In 1586, Armenini, who wrote after Visari, suggested that Michelangelo used wax figurines to get these different  poses.  After creating one in a contrapposto pose, Michelangelo would sketch it and then melt the wax to create another pose.  Here we see Saint Peter holding the keys to heaven.  His pose is quite different from that of Saint Bartholomew above.

Reward and punishment was a marketing tool for the Church.  The belief of redemption and immortality was a big attraction.  With personal resurrection promised, Michelangelo's Last Judgement was a visual confirmation of this belief.  Many engravings were created of the Last Judgement, making it accessible to more than those who had access to the chapel.  With Counter-Reformation mandates, loin clothes were later painted on Michelangelo's nudes

A Final Visit to Carafa.

It is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.  We are in Rome and visiting Santa Maria sopra Minerva.  We kneel at the balustrade of the Carafa Chapel to honor the saint to whom this magnificent, meditative prayer niche is dedicated.  As our gaze is drawn up above the altar and Eucharist, beneath a monumental arch, we see the conclusion of Filippino Lippi's thematic renderings:  The Annunciation and The Assumption.

These two frescoes relate to the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologica  whose prologues tells us, "Forasmuch as our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to save His people from their sins, ...showed unto us in His own Person the way of truth, whereby we may attain to the bliss of eternal life by rising again..."   In her book, Filippino Lippi's Carafa Chapel:  Renaissance Art in Rome, Gail L. Geiger reminds us that "while many scholars view the Renaissance age in Rome as a period of crisis and tension between the values of the classical past and the Christian present, it should be remembered that many late fifteenth-century people believed deeply in the regenerative force of Christian humanism for the church and it's reform."

The biblical story of the Annunciation tells the mystery of the Incarnation with it's theme of Redemption.

The Archangel Gabriel arrives before the Virgin.  His robe twists around him as if we've caught the moment of his arrival.  He carries lillies.  Light beams pierce the dark background as the Holy Spirit hovers above. The Virgin has been interrupted from reading.  She turns towards Cardinal Carafa who is kneeling in the foreground.  He gazes at the Archangel Gabriel while Saint Thomas Aquinas comforts him with his left hand. The Virgin is seen in her role as "man's mediator for divine grace" and as the "instrument of the Incarnation (Santa Maria, ora pro nobis).  (Geiger)

Filippino Lippi's father, the famous painter Fra Filippo Lippi, painted The Annunciation in 1466 for Jacopo Bellucci.  Like his father, Filippino places the Virgin in the middle between the Archangel Gabriel and the patron.  Cardinal Carafa, however, is not segregated from the Virgin by a ballustrade.  There is more intimacy between the the religious figures and the patron.  This is somewhat unusual for Quattrocento paintings however this may show the influence the powerful Cardinal Carafa had in depicting himself as important.  The everyday objects depicted above the Virgin show her human activities and may allude to the late Quattrocento artists interests in Netherlandish still life.

As we look above The Annunciation we see Filippino Lippi's The Assumption.

Flanked by saints, Filippino Lippi depicts the Virgin in a central and frontal manner as she is pushed up by angels and surrounded by a mandorla of cherubims.  It is thought that Filippino was inspired by Sandro Botticelli's Punishment of Korah (1480) which we studied earlier in the semester.

The energetic, flowing figures in the foreground and the landscaped background set the scene in both paintings.  Filippino Lippi's The Assumption has a series of angels playing musical instruments.  The angels surround the Virgin with bursts of energy.  Their instruments are typical of those used in military bands at the time.  This alludes to Cardinal Carafa's successful naval campaigns that brought him such immense notoriety.

 In Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologica, he states that in  the Rite of the Eucharist "the wine of the chalice signifies Christ's risen body, namely Christ Himself, and the Blessed Virgin, and the other saints...who are already in glory with their bodies."  This makes the Virgin's assumption an integral part of the theological theme of the chapel.

We see the Virgin is centered in the curve of the monumental, triumphal arch.  She is beneath the Cumaean Sibyl who sits over the keystone of the arch.  The apostles are below watching the glorious event.  The Virgin appears to be praying as three angels push her up to heaven.  She is glancing down toward Cardinal Carafa depicted in The Annunciation below.  There is billowing motion to the drapery and fluid motion of the figures.  The putti-filled cloud is very theatrical, a concept known to Filippino.  Visari, our seventeenth-century art critic, remarked, "Filippino had no equal in the talent and imagination he displayed in decorations for public festivals and masks."  (Geiger)

There are cherubs who peer from beneath the Virgin's cloak.  A series of stars form the Virgin's halo.  We have two groups of apostles awed by the events above.  The scene recedes towards a rolling landscape.

In the Carafa Chapel at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Filippino Lippi beautifully lays out the thematic devotion to the Virgin of the Annunciation and to Saint Thomas Aquinas.  There is a visual and conceptual unity that provided a meditative environment for the Dominicans in Quattrocento Rome who prayed there.

Rona Goffen:Venus of Urbino

In 1863, Manet shocked and awed the world with Le Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe and Olympia.

Le Dejener Sur l'Herbe c1863

Olympia c1863

A naked woman reclines in a pose of continuous movement on a bed.  She is attended by servants.  She does not hide her breast but, rather, her right arm props her up to better display her nude physique.  She is looking right at us.  The gaze is not judgmental or submissive.  He gaze is engaging and inviting.   

What you may not realize, is that I am not speaking of Manet's Olympia.  I am describing a painting of  "shock and awe" painted over three hundred years earlier by the master Venetian painter, Titian.  It's his Venus of Urbino.

Venus of Urbino c1538

Titian was born around 1488 in the foothills of the Italian Alps.  He moved to Venice and joined the studio of Giovanni Bellini, the most famous painter of his generation.  He worked with the older Giorgione on a commission at the German merchants residence in Venice.  He later received a commission from the Paduan Friars for the high altar of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.

Assunta c1518

Titian dominated painting in Venice.  He influenced many other Venetian painters such as Tintoretto, Veronese, and Bassano and elsewhere with Velazquez and Rubens.  Titian's fame brought him life-long commissions from Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the early Hapsburg kings who followed the reconquista and reigned during the Counter-Reformation.  These courtly commissions were likened to Alexander the Great's court commissions to Appelles.  Titian was called Apelles redivivus, Apelles reborn.

Titian's Venetian patrons preferred sacred works like Assunta.  His wide-range of patrons outside Venice, however, were interested in secular pieces which Titian described as poesie, or poems.  These works almost always included beautiful woman and had a theme of love.  With the Venus of Urbino, there is no reference to a classical or allegorical story.  We have a reclining, awake, nude woman with two servants.  She is not shy and is "beholding the beholder" (Goffen) with her sublime gaze.  The colorito (exploiting color and light to unite a composition) combines complementary colors (red and green) with white and the sensuous flesh tones of the nudes underlies Titan's concept of the beautiful woman.  The composition is asymmetrical.  The small-rendered background is cut off by the bolder, larger foreground forms.  The bed is in disarray, suggesting that our beautiful Venus is in a post-lovemaking haze.  There is a tension between art and nature in the depiction of flowers on both the cushions of the bed and real flower falling from her right hand.

Was Titian mysogynistic?  Did he have a choice since this was a centuries-old accepted view of woman?  Was his rendering of our beautifully sublime Venus influenced by the writer Aretino who describes his fictional prostitutes as "exploiters and manipulators of men"?  Is this pornography (porne meaning "whore" in Greek)?

In 1510, Titian completed Giorgione's Sleeping Venus.  We see so many similarities that we must believe Titan's concept of a beautiful woman was begun 30 years earlier to his creation of the Venus of Urbino.

Sleeping Venus c1510

Venus of Urbino c1538

The Lunette at Carafa

Beneath the Hellespontine Sibyl in the Carafa Chapel in Rome, on the west side, Fillipino Lippi has painted a miracle of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the patron saint whose feast day is celebrated in the chapel.  "When god works miracles, He does supernatural wonders above the common order, raising the minds of some living in the flesh beyond the use of sense even up to the visions of His own essence," wrote Saint Thomas.  So, was the miracle depicted by Fillipino Lippi that of the Miracle of Chastity or the Miracle of the Speaking Cross?  Much argument has been written on the subject.  Let's explore this and then view this beautiful, frescoed lunette.

Humanists categorized Saint Thomas Aquinas by his virtue and his learning.  In 1243, Thomas decided to live a life of chastity and became a Dominican friar.  His prominent family fiercely opposed this.  His domineering mother arranged for Thomas to be kidnapped and brought back to the family palace at Roccasecca.  For over 15 months the family tried to get Thomas to break his vows.  His brother brought in a prostitute, whom Thomas threw out.  (No, that's not the miracle.)  The miracle tells us that two angels appeared with a Girdle of Perpetual Chastity.  They placed it on Thomas.  The best known painting of this is by Bernardo Daddi.  We see the story clearly in his work.

In 1273, Thomas was engrossed in theological writings that were devoted to the Eucharist.  While praying in the monastery beneath a crucifix, the miracle tells us that the crucifix spoke to Thomas saying, " You have written well of me, Thomas.  What will you accept in gratitude?"  Thomas answered, "Nothing but Yourself, Lord."

Now, let's decide which of these miracles Fillipino Lippi, under the guidance of his patron, Cardinal Carafa, chose to portray.  We see Saint Thomas on the left kneeling beneath a cross with a very elaborate Christ.  There are two lilly-bearing angels at his side.  The lilies represent virginity and, therefore, chastity.  There are epigraphic elements to Fillipinos chapel frescoes however there is none in the lunette fresco.  Why would he omit the words spoken by God in the miracle?  There is a book on the floor beneath the crucifix.  Could this be the writings of Thomas about which God honored him with praise?

Let's take the popular view and say that this is the Miracle of Chastity and not the Miracle of the Speaking Cross.  With this approach, we can identify the other figures in the scene as family members in the Aquinas palace.  The two woman are the sister, Marotta,  and mother, Donna Theodora, of Saint Thomas Aquinas.  Donna Theodora is depicted with limited emphasis due to her negative role in the miracle.

The vibrant, swirling young man is Ruinaldo, the chief conspirator in the abduction.  Here we see evidence of Fillipinos access to Masaccios Tribute Money in Brancacci Chapel.

The youth entering from the loggia is the brother of Thomas, Landolfo, who helped in the abduction.

 Although his father, the Count Landolf, was deceased at the time of the miracle, we have to believe that the old man with the white beard is meant to represent him.  Or, could it just be a blatant reference to evil?  In the center of the painting is a child and dog.  This may reflect back to the infant Hercules struggling with a snake, symbolizing virtue overcoming vice.

The child and the dog seem to link the left side of the painting (Thomas and the angels) with the right side of the painting (the frenzied, conspiring Aquinas family).

Fillipino Lippis basic, meditative narrative transports us into a dramatic, colorful experience of  visual contrasts as the tension lures us from the right and we focus on Thomas.

The Sibyls at Carafa

"Filippino made the grandest work in Rome for the Neopolitan Cardinal, Oliviero Carafa, at the warm request of Lorenzo de' Medici, his friend."  -Visari 1568

Cardinal Carafa selected a chapel that already existed in Santa Maria sopra Minerva and enlarged it.  The chapel had significant importance in the celebration of the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas.  When he commissioned Filippino Lippi (1488), the artist was already under commission to Filippo Strozzi in Florence (we will visit that chapel next week).  Strozzi did not oppose putting his project on hold as Carafa held significant prestige and power among the Dominican churches as it's Cardinal Protector.  At this time, we see Masolino, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, and others all working on paintings in chapels.

The Carafa Chapel is dedicated to the Virgin and Saint Thomas.  The first figures painted were on the main vault and are four sibyls, seers of the ancient world.  The vault was painted sotto in su (from below) perspective.  Sibyls play a prominent role in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which Cardinal Carafa and his Humanist friends knew well.  The sibyls' prediction of Christ's birth link them to the Annunciation (the Virgin) and to man's knowledge of God (a theme of Saint Thomas Aquinas).  The sibyls were symbols of wisdom and knowledge.  They are seen in the Carafa Chapel holding cartouches with Saint Thomas Aquinas statements.

In the center of the vault is the coat of arms for the Carafa family.

Lippi's four sibyls include the Cumacan Sibyl, the Tiburtine Sibyl, the Delphic Sibyl, and the Hellespontine Sibyl (unattributed artist).  Filippino Lippi's new sibyl style has been attributed to the Pollaiuolo brother's innovations of their reclining ten Arts and Sciences bronze figures on the sides of the tomb of Sixtus IV. Filippino Lippi used ancient Roman models (figures from classical sources) and rotates them from left to right with the torso at various angles to the hips.  The arms are in a variety of poses, the legs are bent, and they are very gestural.  There is a strong sense of unity throughout.

Panel from Tomb of Sixtus IV

Close-up of the Four Sibyls at Carafa:

The Delphic Sibyl (Apollo's oracle) who prophesied the Trojan War.

The Cumean Sibyl who points up towards the divine origin of Christ's incarnation.

The Tiburtine Sibyl refers to Rome.

The Hellespontine Sibyl's prophecy foretells Christ's birth of a virgin.