Filippino Lippi and Rome

In the mid-16th century, artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari lauded Florentine painter Filippino Lippi (c. 1457–1504) for his exceptional ingenuity, describing him as “a painter of the most beautiful intelligence and the most lovely invention.” The son and pupil of luminary artist Fra Filippo Lippi, Filippino was Sandro Botticelli’s apprentice and collaborator before establishing himself as an independent master. Filippino quickly ascended the ranks of the city’s leading painters, securing the patronage of influential patrician families and eventually becoming a favorite of Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici, the city’s de facto ruler. On Lorenzo’s recommendation, Neapolitan cardinal Oliviero Carafa commissioned Filippino to decorate his chapel in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome. The resulting frescoes—some of the most celebrated of the Renaissance—reflect the inspiration Filippino drew from the fragments of ancient paintings, sculpture, and architecture across the Eternal City that sparked a shift in his style and iconography. 

Filippino Lippi and Rome is the first exhibition to focus on this transformative period (1488–93), reconsidering its lasting impact and juxtaposing Filippino’s Roman paintings with their Florentine precursors and successors. The show is centered around the CMA’s seminal tondo by Filippino, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret. Commissioned by Carafa himself while Filippino was frescoing the cardinal’s chapel, this important painting is the only known independent work produced by the artist while in Rome. The exhibition and, especially, the Cleveland tondo reveal Filippino’s fascination with the remnants of classical antiquity, which he transformed into a deeply personal and innovative visual language.

Visitors to the exhibition can see select highlights of the CMA’s Renaissance collection in conversation with important artworks from national and international lenders, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; His Majesty King Charles III; the National Gallery, London; the Galleria degli Uffizi; and the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, among others. For many of the paintings, drawings, and antiquities on view, this show marks their debut in the United States, and in some instances the first time they have been exhibited outside their home institution. Each object has been carefully selected to elucidate the evolution of Filippino’s artistic practice before, during, and after his time in Rome. 

The first section of the exhibition examines the artist’s Florentine origins, from Filippino’s training in Fra Filippo Lippi’s and Botticelli’s workshops to the establishment of his independent style. The second section features Filippino’s Roman period, with the Cleveland tondo at its center. This Carafa commission is reunited for the first time with the related preparatory drawing and presented alongside studies for the Carafa chapel, Filippino’s sketches of ancient Roman designs, and drawings of his pictorial inventions inspired by antiquities. His paintings and drawings are also juxtaposed with ancient sculptures to illustrate the impact of antiquity on his artistic development. The final section reconsiders the enduring influence of Rome on Filippino’s later Florentine works, as evidenced by his continued adaptation of antique designs and compositional elements. These paintings and drawings also reveal the reciprocal flow of inspiration between Filippino and other artists, including Raffaellino del Garbo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Filippino Lippi and Rome is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated scholarly catalogue that shines new light on one of the most iconic and beloved masterpieces from the CMA’s renowned collection. The gallery also features a digital iteration of Filippino’s tondo, incorporating new technical imagery captured especially for this exhibition that allows visitors to peer beneath the painted layers and see, for the first time, the underdrawing, underpainting, and changes Filippino made while designing the Holy Family. Thanks to a major gift from the Painting and Drawing Society, the exhibition also marks the debut of a magnificent new frame for the tondo, replacing the former frame, which was not original and was unsuitable in scale and design. This new frame was hand-carved and gilded in Florence and is based on a late quattrocento prototype made for Botticelli. Tracing the arc of Filippino’s career across time and media, Filippino Lippi and Rome constitutes a unique opportunity to discover the artistic processes and iconographic ingenuities of one of the most gifted and accomplished Renaissance painters.