THE FLORENTINE PAINTER, FILIPPO[1] LIPPI.
[born 1460. — died 1505.]
There lived at the same time[2] in Florence a painter of very fine genius and admirable powers of invention. Filippo namely, son of Fra Filippo del Carmine, who, following the steps of his deceased father in the art of painting, was brought up and instructed, being still a youth at his father’s death, by Sandro Botticello, although the father on perceiving his death approaching, had given him in charge to Fra Diamante, his most intimate friend, nay, almost brother, Filippo was endowed with much originality; he displayed the mPst copious invention in his paintings, and the ornaments he added were so new, so fanciful, and so richly varied, that he must be considered the first who taught the moderns the new method of giving variety to the habiliments, and who first embellished his figures by adorning them with vestments after the antique.[3] Filippo was also the first who employed the grotesque masks, executed in the manner of the ancients, and which he used as decorations in friezes or frame-works, in terretta, and coloured, displaying more correct drawing and a more finished grace than any of the masters who preceded him had done. It was indeed a wonderful thing to see the extraordinary fancies exhibited in painting by this artist; but what is more, Filippo never executed any work whatever wherein he did not avail himself of Roman antiquities, which he studied with unwearied diligence. Helmets, for example, banners, trophies, vases, buskins, ornaments of the Temples, head-dresses of various kinds, draperies of different sorts, mantles, armour, the toga, swords, scimitars, and other matters of similar kind, so varied and beautiful, that those who follow are under great and perpetual obligation to Filippo for the rich embellishment which he has thus added to this department of art.[4]
- ↑ More frequently called Filippino, as he sometimes subscribes himself, to distinguish his works from those of Fra Filippo, his father.
- ↑ The time of Mantegna that is.
- ↑ The Florentine commentators remark, that Vasari would have expressed himself more accurately, had he said, “among tl^ first;” Squarcione and Mantegna having preceded Filippino in the adoption of vestments after the antique.
- ↑ Benvenuto Cellini relates, in his Autobiography, that he had seen
