Filippino Lippi and Rome

In the century following his death, Florentine painter Filippino Lippi (c. 1457–1504) was celebrated as “a painter of the most beautiful intelligence and the most lovely invention.” After training with his father—the luminary artist Fra Filippo Lippi—Filippino Lippi apprenticed and collaborated with Sandro Botticelli, in whose workshop he developed his own style. Filippino found great success as an independent painter in late quattrocento Florence and won the favor of patrician families as well as the patronage of Lorenzo “The Magnificent” de’ Medici, the city’s de facto ruler. Upon Lorenzo’s recommendation, Neapolitan cardinal Oliviero Carafa engaged Filippino to decorate his sizable chapel in Rome’s Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The resulting frescoes, painted between 1488 and 1493, are among the most celebrated of the Renaissance. Filippino found new inspiration in the fragments of ancient paintings, sculpture, and architecture across the Eternal City; the painter’s designs for the Carafa Chapel demonstrate a shift in both his style and iconography. After returning to Florence, Filippino continued to incorporate his Roman innovations in his paintings for the remainder of his life.

Filippino Lippi and Rome reconsiders the lasting impact of the painter’s time in the Eternal City, juxtaposing Filippino’s Roman artworks with their Florentine precursors and successors. The exhibition places 25 paintings, drawings, and antiquities in direct conversation with important loans 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 the first time, these related artworks are brought together, in some cases reuniting paintings with their studies. Each object has been carefully selected to elucidate the evolution of Filippino’s artistic practice before, during, and after his Roman period. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s seminal tondo by Filippino, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret, is at the center of the exhibition. Commissioned by Carafa while Filippino was frescoing the cardinal’s chapel, this important painting is the only known independent work produced by the artist in Rome. Filippino Lippi and Rome traces the arc of Filippino’s career across time and media, constituting a unique opportunity for scholars and the public alike to discover the artistic processes and iconographic ingenuities of one of the most gifted and accomplished Renaissance painters.