Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels

The Artist: For a biography of Fra Filippo Lippi, see the Catalogue Entry for Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement (89.15.19) The Picture: This important early work by Filippo Lippi is from an altarpiece the lateral panels of which are in the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin, and show Saints Augustine and Ambrose, and Saints Gregory and Jerome—four doctors of the church. The altarpiece was reunited in The Met in 2005 (see fig. 1 above). Although the fact that they did, indeed, form an altarpiece had sometimes been contested (Marchini 1975), there really can be no doubt of the matter: the box-like enclosure surrounding the figures runs continuously through all three panels, as does the gold background, and although the pavement in front of the Virgin projects unexpectedly into the viewer’s space, devices of this sort are common in Lippi’s work. Since The Met’s Madonna and Child has been transferred, any reconstruction of the triptych must necessarily be based on the physical evidence of the two Turin panels, which have come down to us intact. They have not been thinned and are only minimally trimmed along their vertical and curved edges. The moldings are original, though partly regilt (that on The Met’s painting was copied from those in Turin). This is an unusual feature for an altarpiece at this date, as is the fact that there is no sign on the reverse sides of the Turin panels of a batten that would have secured the three panels together. It is not out of the question that they were inserted into some sort of tabernacle or recess with a marble framework. It is possible to reconstruct the impact the altarpiece made of a continuous space running through all three panels from Pesellino’s altarpiece of the Madonna and Child and four saints in the Louvre, Paris—a work heavily indebted to Lippi’s paintings of the 1430s. Pesellino’s figure of Saint Zenobius(?) looking over his shoulder at the viewer, his cope falling in heavy vertical folds and the hem rising in a sharp diagonal, clearly depends from Lippi’s Saint Augustine, as does the enclosure (given a more modern aspect by replacing the gold with trees and a sky), and the stepped pavement (jogging in rather than projecting out). Despite the continuous architectural enclosure used to unify the space in Lippi’s triptych, the panels do not make a completely homogenous impression. This is due partly to a stylistic divergence among the panels and partly to the compromised condition of The Met’s painting, which has been transferred. The gray-pink dress of the Virgin has become transparent with age, making some of the preparatory underdrawing visible as well as a pentimento in the book held by the Christ Child. There is, however, no reason to posit the presence of workshop collaboration, as does Rowlands (1983). Concerning the date of the altarpiece, it should be noted that the period 1435–40 was one of intense experimentation by Lippi and there is not a simple progression from one work to the other. Documents prove him to have been a slow, even dilatory worker, who was constantly revising and adding to his initial conception. He often had several commissions in hand and there are sometimes stylistic disparities, or variances, with a single work. This is, for example, the case with the Annunciation in San Lorenzo, Florence, in which there is a notable difference in the treatment of color in the right and left hand panels (the altarpiece seems to have been painted on two supports that were only joined together subsequently, thus explaining why the moldings of the center pier do not completely align and the colors do not completely match: see Ruda 1993, p. 389). The figures in the right hand panel are painted in what might be called a chiaroscural mode that emphasizes delicate transitions between lit and shaded areas, while in the left hand panel the drapery is brilliantly colored, with sharply delineated folds that emphasize sculptural solidity. This is essentially the same division we find between the New York and Turin panels, suggesting that the triptych was perhaps begun in the late 1430s but only brought to completion around 1440, or even somewhat later. It is worth pointing out that the flat haloes of the saints, with incised, radiating lines, imitate those of Fra Angelico and are characteristic of Filippo Lippi’s work of the 1440s—not of the 1430s. Here again, the contrast with the perspectival haloes of the Madonna and Child suggests a protracted execution. In The Met’s panel the Virgin is shown seated on the throne of wisdom (the “Sedes Sapientiae”) holding a rose identifying her as the bride of Christ and the Church (“the rose of Sharon”: Song of Solomon 2:1; the “rose plants in Jericho”: Ecclesiasticus 24:18). The verse inscribed on the scroll held by one of the angels is taken from Ecclesiasticus (24:19): VENITE AD ME OMNES Q[VI] CONCVPISCITIS ME & AGENERATION[IBVS] M[EIS IMPLEMINI] (“Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruit”), a text on Divine Wisdom commonly associated with the Virgin (see Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Greenwich, Conn., vol. 1, 1971, pp. 23–25). Jerome was, in fact, devoted to Mary and his writings were used by proponents of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Romano (1993) points out that the habit worn by Saint Jerome probably indicates that the triptych was commissioned for a convent or monastery, as Jerome would normally be shown dressed as a cardinal when in the company of the three other fathers of the church. One possibility is the Gesuati, who followed the Augustinian rule and held Saint Jerome in special veneration. Their primary establishment in Florence was San Girolamo delle Poverine (see Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, Frankfurt, vol. 2, 1941, pp. 350 ff.). Another possibility is that the altarpiece was painted for the Augustinians, for whom, as noted above, Lippi painted the Barbadori Altarpiece as well as the Tarquinia Madonna. Pope Eugenius IV was himself an Augustinian and promoted their reform: in 1439 he transferred the Badia Fiesolana to the Augustinian Canons of Santa Maria di Fregionaia, near Lucca (Cosimo de’ Medici was later to rebuild the church). The Augustinians were strong supporters of Marian devotions. However, there is no record of the work in a Florentine church and the altarpiece may have been destined for a foundation outside the city. Marchini mistakenly took the floral decoration on the cope of Saint Augustine for a Medici heraldic device (the palle) and Ruda noted that this work could be the one Lippi refers to in a letter of 1439 addressed to Piero de’ Medici. Keith Christiansen 2010