Fra Filippo Lippi: The Madonna in the Forest.

Madonna in the Forest by Fra Filippo Lippi, 1460, original now in the Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

When I studied art history in a program at the Petit Palais in Avignon, one of my classmates was an adorable lady of 94 years, Simone, who knew the religious iconography of Medieval and Renaissance painting better than most experts. It was her considered opinion that between Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, Angelico was by far the more spiritual in his painted imagery. Lippi was much too "earthy" in Simone's estimation. Okay, spoiler alert: the lovely Virgin Mary and the chubby, little, angelic infant in the painting above are most probably Lucrezia Buti, the nun with whom Lippi fell in love, and their son, Filippino (yes, you read that right). So in that sense, I am sure that Lippi was more earthy than Fra Angelico, a monk who supposedly cried whenever he painted a crucifixion. However, given the highs and lows of Fra Filippo's life and the fact that as an orphan he had been raised by the Carmelite Order, I think that Fra Filippo had a well-developed sense of the spiritual as it manifested on earth, and a critical look at this painting might just show that.

The painting is the Madonna in the Forest, sometimes called the Adoration in the Forest, done in 1460 as the altar piece in the Medici Chapel inside the Medici Palazzo in Florence. The room, which now has electric lights, was once lit only by candlelight. How fitting, as the mural paintings represent the three Magi making their way by starlight, carrying tremendous wealth, wearing exotic garments, transporting even more exotic animals, and trailing a huge following of courtiers, all to arrive at this nativity scene, set not in a stable, but in a darkened forest. The darkness of the forest fits in nicely with the murals, which are really just gigantic nocturnes, whose gold, silver, and colors only would show dimly in the candlelight. However, that darkness and the density of the trees in Lippi's forest create a mystery that can be given spiritual meaning as well.

The Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli, 1459-60. Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italy.

Probably the first thing that catches the eye in Lippi's painting of the Madonna is her pale blue robe. The Virgin Mary was often painted wearing blue, but a deep blue, a more matronly shade of blue. Here the young Mary actually looks young and very delicate, dressed as she is in that celestial blue robe, the light color of which lifts her out from the darkness of the forest. The infant lies on a bed of flowers and grass as comfortably as he might in a manger or a bed, the fair color of his body making it stand out against the dark foliage. Moving up to the left of this scene, one sees John the Baptist, as a slightly older infant. He wears a light red robe over a rather hairy looking shirt, a harbinger of the life he will lead as a young religious radical in the wilderness. Above the Baptist is St. Bernard, yes Bernard de Clairvaux, who was known to champion the idea of the virgin birth. (Oddly he is here amidst a fabulous display of painted images, something that he railed against in his 12th century writings and debate with Abbot Suger, who proposed that people needed images to comprehend the messages of the Bible.) Finally on high is the image of God, the Father, looking down, as the dove which represents the Holy Spirit sends golden rays down to the Christ Child - the perfect trinity. Fra Angelico would have been so pleased.

Yet Lippi's figures almost float against the odd background of this forest, a forest that seems to fade into the dark without any decided vanishing point. The lack of defined one-point perspective and the light figures set mostly in front of this dark tangle of trees create a rather illusory effect, like perhaps a vision. Backgrounds in nativity scenes had often been done with just flat solid color, mostly gold or golden drapery. Gold was considered an appropriate background to symbolize the divine, other worldly space that these holy figures existed in. Fra Angelico's Madonna and Child from 1450-55 was exactly like that, as you can see below. However, compare that to the Lippi's Madonna and Child from just a bit later, which seems to have a window onto an earthly landscape. So we are brought face-to-face with these two different expressions of divine subjects. Angelico's is done in a rather abstracted form with a baby that seems more a symbolic representation than a real child. Lippi's is more down to earth, as in the Madonna in the Forest, where the child and Madonna are portraits.

Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico, 1450-1455

Madonna and Child by Fra Filippo Lippi, 1450-1465 in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Fra Angelico's paintings for what they are, late Medieval, early Renaissance painting with a strong overlay of miniature painting. His use of rich materials and his adherence to a certain style of representing images in somewhat ethereal ways set him apart for many as a painter of the spiritual. Lippi on the other hand brings the story into the physical world, just as in the gospels, the spirit of the Christ was born into the body of a human, with all that it means to be human.

Beyond just that when we look at Lippi's life, what do we see? He was an orphan child raised by monks, who became a monk but was unsuited to the temperament of the order. He was a fabulous painter and very practical about his work. When Fra Angelico turned down the job of painting the interior of San Stefano in Prato because the walls were not perfectly suited for such paintings, Fra Filippo took the job. He painted the Life of John the Baptist and the Life of St. Stephen regardless of the less than perfect walls, and the paintings are still there. There he met Lucrezia, a nun only because it was a way to avoid the horrendous marriage planned for her. They fell in love and had two children, Filippino (who became a well-known artist) and a daughter, Alessandra. Shock and scandal, yes, but Filippo was a great artist and protected by Cosimo de Medici, so Filippo and Lucrezia were allowed to leave the order so they might marry. It is not sure they ever did, as Filippo was a lustful soul, though he always still signed his name as Frater Philippus. This might have been his way of indicating that he had the spirit, but the flesh was weak.

Self Portrait of Filippo Lippi from the apse of a church in Spoleto, Italy, 1467-1469.

So here he is late in a life of unusual circumstances, and yes, quite an earthy fellow indeed. His life was not all golden light, a la Angelico, as it also held his lusts and passions. Yet when we look at the Madonna in the Forest and see such beauty floating in front of a dismal, deep, potentially frightening dark woods, we see the work of someone in the last part of a life that had led him at times deep into the dark woods. However, he also emerged and could paint that very beautiful human baby as the embodiment of a divine being. So perhaps Fra Filippo's life experience allowed him to look upon the life of Christ as the way an individual soul could return to God. I hope dear Simone, wherever she is, will understand my point that to know the light, one has to know the darkness, and Fra Filippo is a good example of that struggle.

So what do you think of Fra Filippo's painting? How does that dark forest affect you? Log in to tell us about it.

Paintings are all in public domain. #filippolippi #fraangelico #madonnaintheforest #medicichapel

For more on the Procession on the Magi painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Medici Chapel, Florence, Italy check the December 15, 2019 post on OfArtandWine.com |The Medici Palace's Procession of the Magi and Sparkling Shiraz."

For more on Marjorie Vernelle, see the author page at amazon.com/author/marjorievernelle

She also has an engaging art history blog that talks of painting and wine on ofartandwine.com

© Marjorie Vernelle 2019

Sargent, a Rhapsody in Blue-violet

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent 1885-1886

We have all seen it. It's that light that comes only near twilight in the evening, a varying mixture of gray and blue-violet that makes colors stand out in an unreal but very beautiful way. At that hour, color says goodbye for the evening, be back to brighten your day tomorrow. John Singer Sargent saw this in particular, it is said, when he noticed Chinese lanterns hanging in a garden of trees and lilies as he boated down the Thames. From there came the idea of capturing that special light by setting up a scene in a garden, using Dolly and Polly Barnard, daughters of friend and illustrator Frederick Barnard, to light Chinese lanterns at twilight. He'd have everything set up each day and when the few moments of that wonderful gray, blue-violet light would come, he would dash and dab at that canvas. He did this for months in 1885, then finished the canvas in his studio in 1886. I admit that when I go to the Tate Britain, to feast upon the wonderful works of J.M.W. Turner, my secret pleasure is standing before Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. It is my sentimental favorite, but shush, for I would not like the spirit of Turner to think he had a rival, since I call upon his genius to help me with my own watercolors.

This painting, which seems so reasonable in its beauty and form, was actually controversial in its day. Sargent came to England in 1884 after having a rough go of it in Paris. He had been quite in demand, until he painted the portrait of a socialite, also American born, Madame Pierre Gautreau. Married to a banker, she was a sort of "professional beauty," like the women who populate the pages of W Magazine today. She was known for patting her ears with a rose-violet powder for dramatic effect. Sargent, who was also American, but who had lived in Europe most of his life, had originally painted Mme. Gautreau with one dress strap having fallen off her shoulder. And that, improbably, caused a scandal in 1880s Paris. It was too much for them. Her skin was too pale; the pose was too wanton; the fallen strap offensive; it was just wrong!

Madame X by John Singer Sargent 1885

What I think was wrong, (and I say this having lived in France, a country I'll always love) was that these Americans had, in their style, out-frenched the French, a crime for which punishment was necessary. Things got so bad for Sargent that he headed for London, across the water, La Manche (don't for a minute believe the English own that channel), where he sought to rehabilitate his reputation. Sargent's desire was to combine technical virtuosity with elements of plein air painting used by the Impressionists. His offering for his entrée into the English art scene took two years to complete and once again caused an uproar.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was met with derision in a news headline: "Voted the painting you'd least like to live with." (And I thought the French could be cruel.) It was, however, purchased by the Royal Academy (somebody had some sense) and made its way through various museums to now be a part of the collection in the Tate Britain.

The thing that most interests me as a painter is that wonderful grayish, blue-violet light, highlighted by the orange glow of the lanterns and the pink of the roses. Sargent was aware of and I'd say influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, who were dedicated to

romantic but pretty paintings, with colors that

popped because of their use of grays, silvers, and blue-violets. Sargent had not been into the grand historical scenes that concerned some of French painting, nor the myths of ancient Britain. However, he did like to produce pretty paintings, and in my book, he was a superb colorist.

One day a few years ago, I went to the Musée d'Orsay's show on Oscar Wilde and the Pre-Raphaelites. I kept noticing the colors and asking myself what made them so vivid. I finally settled on the presence of the grays and silvers, even the violets, as the way the other colors were highlighted. The second show I saw that day was the Fra Angelico exhibition at the Jacquemart-Andre Museum, housed in a beautiful old hotel particulier. Now Fra Angelico was a true pre-Raphaelite, as Raphael wasn't even born when Fra Angelico died, and what do you see here? The colors stand out in some part due to the use of grays and blue-violets in the garden and in the Virgin's robes. And like in Sargent, there is the warm pinkish color in the the angel's robes, orange in his wings, and white on the walls.

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, 1437.

I guess we have to say there is truly nothing new under the sun. Fortunately, artists keep combining and re-combining elements for the great pleasure of the viewers. Unfortunately, they sometimes suffer grave disapproval and the disappointment that goes with it. Normally, however, the arc of time bends toward appreciation.

What connections have you made between the works of artists separated sometimes by centuries? Log in and tell us.

Photos of Sargent's work are in public domain in the U.S.A. Madame X is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is at the Tate Britain. Fra Angelico's Annunciation is public domain through common.wikimedia.org

#johnsingersargent #fraangelico #preraphaelites

For more on Marjorie Vernelle, see the author page at amazon.com/author/marjorievernelle

She also has an engaging art history blog that talks of painting and wine on ofartandwine.com

© Marjorie Vernelle 2019