The essential of Filippo Lippi is a circle of imagination to be found in Prato

“From Donatello to Lippi” (Prato, Palazzo Pretorio, until January 13th), is also a rare occasion to compare some paintings and frescos by Filippo Lippi which are normally apart from each other. Thus you will find that the Florentine painter (1406-1469) conceives the scene as a circular one. Its space is a sophisticated mix of reality and imagination in which labyrinthine, anti-illusionistic, and irrational elements are drawn in order to embrace the viewer, as noticeable in the frescoes painted by the artist in the Prato Cathedral. Here the composition runs free from the architecture on which it is painted. If you look at the scene of the feast for the Baptist, for example, you’ll see, after the performance of the fancy dress party, that the scene continues along the short wall at the bottom. It is a sort of panopticon which contains both the protagonists and those who are glancing out of the image. On the other side, the rock and the wall of the background for the Beheading of John the Baptist continue on the edge of the wall, but the arm of the executioner is extended on the long wall (acting as a liaison), offering the severed head to Salomè.

The same strategy can be seen in the round of the Palatine Gallery, where a set of historical references from three different episodes (Madonna and Child, Nativity of Mary and Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate) is depicted. Each episode has a proper perspective centre, but every line seems to converge – poetically – in the eyes of the Madonna in the foreground, who is looking out of the picture so as to suggest the continuation of the scene in the physical space of the observer.

A further feature that is worth to mention is Lippi’s attitude to insert in his paintings a variety of gateways towards the unknown, as for instance in the Mother and Child of Galleria Palatina and in the Nativity of the Uffizi. In this case, he can be compared to Lucio Fonata and his cuts. Like this latter, also the Florentine painter appears to be completely familiar with the poetics of emptiness.

June 19, 2019