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Holy Family with the Baptist and Saint Margaret

Filippino Lippi • Painting, 1490-th , 153×153 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Religious scene
Style of art: Renaissance
Technique: Oil, Tempera
Materials: Wood
Date of creation: 1490-th
Size: 153×153 cm
Artwork in collection: Smart and Beautiful Natalya Kandaurova
Artwork in selections: 7 selections

Description of the artwork «Holy Family with the Baptist and Saint Margaret»

Tondo "The Holy Family with the Baptist and Saint Margaret" Filippino Lippi was commissioned by the Neapolitan Cardinal and Bishop of Ostia Olivieri Caraffa in the 1890s. And the Florentine artist performed it, apparently in Rome, where he came to work on the Caraff Chapel of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and where he studied Roman antiquities with great interest - the so-called "antiques".

Filippino Lippi did not accidentally choose the form of a tondo for his religious story (tondo - a round picture, an icon or a bas-relief), because he had someone to learn: the first in Florentine painting began to write tondo his father Filippo Lippi ("Madonna Bartolini") and Sandro Botticelli's mentor and friend ("Madonna Magnificat").

The architectural support decorated with a helmet and a cymbal, an antique percussion musical instrument, deserves special attention. Vasari writes that Lippi enthusiastically studied Roman armor, was interested in "Weapons, sabers, swords, togas and mantles", in general, was in love with the Greco-Roman plastic. One of the results of this is a skillfully crafted capital, crowning the pedestal, with shields and the Atlantean figures tensely curled under its imaginary weight.

The marble balustrade and the objects standing on it (a book, a wooden basket and a box for needlework) show how well Lippi learned the lessons of North European painting, which he could have learned in Florence.

In the almost symmetrical figure group of babies and women, the most attractive moment is the motive of touches. It is written with stunning tactile insight. Contemplating “Holy Family with the Baptist and Saint Margaret”, the viewer feels like the skin fraternal support of the infant hands of the Baptist, the touch of cheeks, the gentle touch of Jesus to the neck of John, even the way Mary’s palms feel the weight of the baby's calf and the gliding of transparent gas.

However, the most cited fragment of the painting is not Mary or Margaret, and not Christ with John, but leaning his chin on the staff elder joseph. His posture is not invented by Lippi - it is a kind of plastic cliché that goes back to antiquity "formula of thinking". But Joseph's beautiful hands, short, protruding hairs of gray eyebrows, strands of hair, curls of beards, and especially wrinkles — all are entirely due to Filippino Lippi and his inherent scrupulous attention to detail.

Vladimir Nabokov has a suitable expression. "Wrinkle pattern". Comparison of lines and lines drawn on a human face by nature and age, with a pattern as well as possible corresponds to the style of Filippino Lippi in this tondo. What a tremendous variety of their types we read on Joseph's face! Loose parallel wrinkles of different depths on the forehead. Subtle lilac wrinkles of the upper eyelids. Pronounced and distinct wrinkles of the lower eyelids, running across the cheekbones. Vertical wrinkles in the brow region, diagonal - at the base of the nose. What is this if not a pattern? Of course, the natural pattern differs from the hand-made pattern with less regularity and less correctness. But there is undoubted poetry in it.

Author: Anna Yesterday
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