Filippo Lippi
1406-1469
Italian
We start our lineage with the artist Filippo Lippi in the early renaissance around the 1400's (1406). There's some speculation as to when he was born, but he was born an orphan and was most likely trained in the convent for altar work and decorative painting.
Filippo proved to be too temperamental for monastic life, but since he showed great talent in drawing and painting he was allowed more room to play than most. His life had a lot of controversy, such as the woman who he took as his wife being a nun he abducted from a convent, and the the church later allowed him to marry her.
The Seven Saints
He was a humanist in a world that was still showing stiff signs of the medieval aesthetics prevalent. The Medici family saw his genius and commissioned works such as The Seven Saints and The Annunciation, something of note in his work that sets him apart from previous masters is more attention to perspective and color, flourishes of decorative elements that was not common before.
He later went on to paint the Stories of Saint John the Baptist and St. Stephen, one of his more famous works. Lippi is considered one of the key figures in the evolution of Renaissance art as we know it through the later masters, and a philosophical turn in the changes of how people viewed humanity through the lens of biblical paintings.
The Annunciation
Stories of Saint John the Baptist and St. Stephen
