The Legend of the True Cross, by Agnolo Gaddi

Around the year 1385, the Florentine painter Agnolo Gaddi completed a cycle of paintings in the choir of the Franciscan basilica of the Holy Cross in his native city. These frescoes, which are very well preserved, are the earliest surviving Italian example of a cycle dedicated to the Legend of the True Cross, based on the stories collected in Bl. Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend. Gaddi’s work is not as refined as that of the most famous version of this cycle, the one by Piero della Francesca in the basilica of St Francis in Arezzo. In a manner typical of the elaborately decorative International Gothic style, he tends to put too many figures into too small a space, which makes it difficult to read the story, especially in such a tall space. (The vault of the choir is almost 40m above the floor.) His work has also been overshadowed by some of the church’s many other artistic treasures, a few of which will be mentioned below. The eight panels are arranged in chronological order, first down the right wall, then down the left.

At the top of the first panel, Adam’s son Seth receives from the Archangel Michael a branch from the Tree of Life which grows in the Garden of Paradise; in the lower part, he plants the branch in the mouth of his dead father, who lies in his grave, with Eve mourning to the right. From this branch grows the tree which will become the wood of the Cross; the depiction of a skull at the base of Christ’s Cross derives from this legend. (In Gaddi’s time, the principles of one-point linear perspective had yet to be worked out; this is why Seth appears to be so much larger in the background than in the foreground, which should of course be done the other way around.)

Second panel – The tree lives until the time of Solomon, when it is cut down and part of it used to make a bridge. When the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon, she “sees in the Spirit that the Savior of the world will be hung upon this wood”; she therefore refuses to step on it, but kneels in adoration. She then tells Solomon that someone will be hung on that wood, by whose death the kingdom of the Jews will be destroyed; the king therefore has it buried deep in the earth. (One version of the story adds that the queen had webbed feet, which were made normal by touching the wood.)

Third panel – The pool called Probatica which is mentioned in John 5, 2 is built on the place where the wood is buried; shortly before the time of Christ’s passion, the wood floats to the surface, and is used to make a cross, the one which will become His. In the background in the upper left are seen the sick people waiting for their chance to descend into the pool.

In the fourth panel, the narration switches direction, moving from right to left. The Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, discovers three crosses buried on the site of Mt Calvary; in order to determine which one is that of Christ, a dying woman is brought to the site, and completely healed at the touch of the third one. (The basilica of the Holy Cross was officially founded on May 3, 1294, the feast of the Finding of the Cross.)

Fifth panel, uppermost on the left side of the choir – St Helena brings the relics of the Cross into the newly constructed basilica of the Anastasis, which is usually called the Holy Sepulcher in the West. (The absence of linear perspective is especially notable in the improbably crooked buildings in the background.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Life of St Philip Benizi in Art

Today is the feast of St Philip Benizi, a 13th century Florentine who stands to the Servite Order in the same position that St Bernard of Clairvaux does to the Cistercians. He was not the order’s founder, but he was its most effective early propagator, and his lifetime of work and reputation for holiness did a great deal to consolidate its position in the Church. He entered as a lay brother in 1254; four years later, he was ordained a priest, and rapidly rose to prominence. In a general chapter held in 1267, he was elected superior general, despite the fact that three of the original seven founders were still alive, and held that office for the rest of his life. During the papal conclave of 1268-71 (at 33 months, the longest in history), he was seriously proposed as a candidate, and had to go into hiding to avoid being elected. (The pope elected by this conclave and his successor are both Blesseds, but not Saints, so it seems Philip really did choose the better part.) He was born on the feast of the Assumption in 1233, and died on its octave, August 22nd, 1285; his feast was therefore assigned to the 23rd when he was canonized in 1671.

St Philip Benizi Refusing the Papal Tiara, medallion by Antonio Raggi (1621-89) on the façade of the church of San Marcello al Corso in Rome. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Torvindus, CC BY-SA 3.0)

In the mid-15th century, a new portico, now known as the “chiostrino dei voti – the little cloister of the vows”, was added to the front of the Servite church in Florence, which is dedicated to the Annunciation. A project was begun to decorate it with frescoes depicting episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary and of St Philip, which, however, went forth very slowly. In 1509, the painter Andrea del Sarto was hired to complete it, and the majority of the paintings are his work. In 1513, a native son of Florence, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, was elected Pope with the name Leo X; the decoration of the portico was hastily finished with the hiring of new painters to prepare for his first official papal visit to the city. By the early decades of the 16th century, the Renaissance had effectively run its course, and the paintings are in the early Mannerist style, which is very much more interested in artifice than in realism, and is probably to the modern eye more interesting than attractive.

The Calling and Profession of St Philip, by Cosimo Rosselli, 1476 (one of only two parts of the fresco series to be completed at the time of its original proposal.) - On the right, St Philip has a vision of the Virgin Mary while he prays in his room; on the left, he receives the habit of the order. The depiction of the Saint in his underwear as he is about to receive the habit will perhaps strike the modern viewer as rather inappropriate. Florence was a city that made its fortune in the cloth market, and less than half a mile away, walking in an almost perfectly straight line from the door of this portico, stands the famous and very richly decorated city baptistery, which was paid for by the cloth merchants’ guild. The depiction of the Saint in this fashion therefore serves to emphasize the poverty which he embraced by entering the mendicant Servite order.

(The remaining paintings of the life of St Philip are all by Andrea del Sarto, done from 1509-14.)

St Philip Heals a Leper - In the scenes in the background, the leper, having been healed, is able to come close to the Saint, who then embraces and clothes him. The Roman Breviary states that it was because of this miracle specifically that the cardinals in Rome thought to make him Pope in the midst of the long-deadlocked conclave.

The Punishment of a Group of Blasphemers, who are struck by an arrow from heaven. The art historian Giorgio Vasari singled out the startled horse in the background as a particularly praiseworthy aspect of del Sarto’s work.

St Philip Heals a Possessed Woman by making the sign of the Cross over her. Note how the figure of the woman, the beneficiary of the miracle, is highlighted by the luminosity of her dress, while the rest of the figures, including the Saint himself, are less bright.

The Death of St Philip - a newly deceased child is brought to the place where his body is laid out, and raised to life upon touching the bier. As is typical with Mannerists, who generally preferred to imitate art rather than life, this painting was done as a deliberate imitation of Ghirlandaio’s Funeral of Santa Fina in the collegiate church of San Gimignano.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A 14th-Century Altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin

In 1370, the Florentine painter Jacopo di Cione (1325-99 ca.) and his frequent collaborator Niccolò di Pietro Gerini (1340 ca. - 1414) were commissioned to do an altarpiece for the church of San Pier Maggiore, the most prominent Benedictine women’s house in their native city. The main set of panels depicts the Coronation of the Virgin Mary, a popular subject for the churches of women religious, but this particular altarpiece was one of the largest commissioned in Florence in the 14th century, and included nine other panels on two stages above the main one, plus a predella. The original frame was lost long ago, and the sections of the predella dispersed to various museums; the large panels are at the National Gallery in London. (At least one proposed reconstruction seems to indicate that images of Saints decorated the frame, but I have not found any further information about this.)

The central panel of the main stage, and largest of the work as a whole, the Coronation of the Virgin. Jacopo and his collaborators represent the stylistic tradition now known as the International Gothic, which is very concerned with the richness of the decoration. This is evident here in the pattern painted into the white robes of Christ and the Virgin, in the blue background behind them, and the floral tracery on the Gothic structure above them; likewise in the robes of the two angels directly beneath them, and the fine detailing of their instruments. However, in many of the figures, one can see the influence of another Florentine, Giotto (1267 ca. - 1337), and his concern to create a sense of realistic space by varying colors within the robes, whether of people or angels, a concern which dominates Florentine art in the period of its greatest flourishing, the 15th century. This tendency is very notable in the other series of images, those of the life of Christ in the second stage, the Trinity and angels in the cuspids, and the life of St Peter in the predella.

To either side is shown a company of Saints kneeling in adoration, many of whom are identifiable by their attributes, while others are not. In this panel, the patron Saint of the church, St Peter, is most prominent in the front at the right, holding it in his hands, followed by St Bartholomew (holding a knife), St Stephen (with a rock on his head), St Francis, and St Mary Magdalene holding a pot of ointment, and wearing a very elaborately decorated robe. Above St Peter is St John the Evangelist, with a copy of the Apocalypse.

On the opposite side, we see in the front row Saints Paul, Matthew, Lawrence, Dominic and Catherine; above Paul, John the Baptist, and above Catherine, St Agnes; the cardinal within the group is St Jerome.

On the second tier, the Nativity of Christ. 

The Adoration of the Magi.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Feast of St John Gualbert

Today is the feast of St John Gualbert, founder of the monastic congregation known from their mother-house as the Vallumbrosians (the “Shady Valley” monks.) Like his contemporaries Ss Romuald and Peter Damian, he played an important role in the great reform movement taking place within the Church in the 11th century. The life of the Vallumbrosians was extremely austere in an age of terrible laxity among monks, and Pope Alexander II (who died very shortly before him in 1073) testified that it was largely though St John’s efforts that the vice of clerical simony, which had become so common it was hardly even noticed, was largely extirpated in central Italy.

The Vallumbrosa Altarpiece, by Perugino, 1500. The Saints at the bottom are, from left to right, Bernardo degli Umberti, a member of the Vallumbrosian Order who became a cardinal in 1097, and bishop of Parma in 1106, followed by John Gualbert, Benedict and the Archangel Michael.

However, St John is particularly known for an episode that took place in his early life, before he embraced the monastic state. He was born into a Florentine noble family in the later 10th century, when faction-fighting and street-battles among the nobility were a routine fact of life. In the course of this, his older brother Ugo was murdered, and John determined to avenge him privately. One day (the Breviary says it was Good Friday), when he was in the company of his friends and supporters, all of them fully armed, he came across the murderer, unarmed, in an alley from which there was no way to escape. As John advanced to kill him, the man fell on his knees and threw out his arms like those of Christ on the Cross; the sight of this moved him to repent, and he not only forbore his revenge, but embraced and forgave the murderer. John then went to pray at the church of St Miniato on a hill outside the city, where the crucifix on one of the altars nodded to him, signifying the Lord’s acceptance of this gesture of true Christian forgiveness. For this reason, the Gospel of his feast day is not taken from the Common of Abbots, but repeated (in part) from the Friday after Ash Wednesday.

“You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5, 43-48)

In the altarpiece show above, by Giovanni del Biondo (ca. 1370), St John is shown forgiving his brother’s killer in the upper left section. Below it is depicted an especially famous episode in the ecclesiastical history of Florence, one which is connected to a contemporary of St John known as “Petrus Igneus - Fiery Peter.” A simoniac prelate, Peter of Pavia, was made bishop of Florence, much to the indignation of the populace, who demanded a trial by fire to determine the legitimacy of his appointment. Their appellant, a monk of St John’s order also called Peter, celebrated Mass in the presence of a crowd of some 3000 people; then, removing his chasuble (of course), he walked between two raging pyres set very close to each other, remaining totally unscathed, even though the fire seemed to fill his alb, and he sank into the hot coals up to his ankles. This was taken as God’s judgment that his cause was just, and Peter of Pavia was removed from the See at the order of Pope Alexander, while Peter the monk was eventually made a cardinal and Papal legate. He is now a blessed, and his feast is kept in Florence and by the Vallumbrosian order on February 8th.

Florence’s Crazy Soccer Game on the Feast of St John the Baptist

The modern visitor to Florence can easily enjoy the city as it stands today without having to think of the more warlike aspects of its history. The Battle of Montaperti in 1260, when Florence was defeated and nearly destroyed by the other Tuscan cities, the endless faction-fighting between Guelphs and Ghibellines, and the siege of 1530 that made the Medicis the rulers of Tuscany all seem very remote as you stroll about the Uffizi under the placid gaze of Renaissance saints, and enjoy your bistecca alla fiorentina in a quiet trattoria. But Florence has preserved an interesting reminder of its bellicose past, the “calcio storico fiorentino – historical Florentine soccer”, a no-holds-barred soccer game with very few rules and a lot of violence, which forms part of the annual celebrations of the city’s patron saint, John the Baptist.

A painting of a Florentine soccer match being held in front of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in 1561.

The origins of the game are uncertain. Attempts have been made to connect it to a similar game called “harpastrum” played by the Romans, but, as the article about it on Italian Wikipedia rightly notes, there is no mention of it among the constant references to Florence and its culture in any of Dante’s writings, and the first attestation of it dates to the later 15th century. The local tradition brags especially that it was played during the aforementioned siege of 1530, as the city’s way of showing its lack of concern for the enemies at the gate. (Florence surrendered to the besieging armies about six months later.) After falling out of use for about two centuries, it was revived in 1930 for the 400th anniversary of the siege, and has been kept up ever since, with interruptions for the Second World War, and some... other things that happened more recently...

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Lorenzo Noccioli, CC BY-SA 3.0. This picture was taken in 2008, the year I attended the finale. (Same attribution for the photo below.)

In 2008, I attended the finale, which is held on St John’s feast day, with some friends who were studying in Florence. It begins with a troop of “sbandierai – flag-tossers”, who perform a really impressive display of the medieval art (or game) of waving around huge but very light flags, then throwing them up into the air and catching them again, a sort of pre-gunpowder version of fireworks. This is followed by a very long procession onto the sand-covered playing field in Piazza Santa Croce, with costumed personages representing every aspect of medieval and renaissance life, from government officials to military corps. The procession is slow and dignified, and gives no hint of the mayhem that ensues when the actual game begins.

It also traditionally included, inexplicably to the uninitiated, a huge white horned cow or bull calf of a highly prized breed called “chianina”, wearing a decorated blanket, and looking very out of place amid drummers, standard bearers and the strutting horses of the cavalry officers. (This was done when I saw the game in 2008, but the custom has since been discontinued.) After the procession has filled the enormous field, a signal is given, everyone rushes off the field in no particular order (very Italian), and the “game” begins without further ado.

I put the word “game” in quotes because the game aspect of calcio storico is frequently not so evident; in fact, it could more accurately be described as a huge street brawl, in which a ball is occasionally brought into play. When I saw it, within 20 seconds of the starting gun, two sets of players from the opposing teams had begun boxing each other. Wrestling is a big part of calcio storico, the idea being that an opponent grappled to a standstill is one less guy scoring for the enemy, although the grappler is of course also immobilized by having to hold him down.

A video of this year’s calcio storico finale, played earlier today, complete with the procession described above. N.B. YouTube flags this for violent content, and requires one to sign in and confirm one’s age.

About half of the players start with their shirts off, which seemed a very counter-intuitive choice, given that the “no-holds-barred” aspect of calcio storico would seem to demand some kind of protective clothing. In point of fact, it is perfectly permissible to rip your opponents’ clothes off, and within five minutes the playing field was littered with the remains of ripped shirts. It is also, apparently, legal to “pants” people, so all the players wear very thick and tight belts, to obviate such a compromising eventuality. One of the oddest aspects of the game is the little truces that take place among the players as the fighting, running and summer sun wear them down. Two players from opposite sides grab each other’s belts and stand still; since they are both too tired to run or fight any more, they keep an eye on each other by holding the belts, and let the less tired players deal with the ball.

An engraving which shows the set-up of the game in Piazza Santa Croce in 1688, which is pretty similar, mutatis mutandis, to the modern one. (Note the little tents on either end of the playing field.) 

Ah yes, the ball. It is easy to forget that there is a ball as you watch the 40+ players punch, kick, tackle and grapple with each other, but there is actually a point to it all. The waist-high barrier that defines the rectangular playing field has in the middle of each short side a very narrow medieval-looking tent; when my friends and I came into the stadium, we assumed this was the goal, and remarked how difficult it must be to score with such a narrow goal. In reality, the entire short side of the playing field is the goal, which means that if a player from the other side gets close to it, he is fairly likely to score. The two little tents are for the flagbearers of the two sides to hide out while the battle rages; each time a goal is scored they change sides, running though the chaos to take possession of the other tent. The Confraternity of Mercy, a famous free ambulance corps whose headquarters are right next to the Duomo, is also present in force. To some degree they tend the wounded, but most of the wounded just keep playing (and bleeding); the Confraternity mostly just pour water on the players as they wrestle in the sand, a very useful service that prevents the calcio storico equivalent of road rash.

“Oh, right... the ball...”

After 50 minutes of this craziness, the game abruptly came to an end with a signal from a gun, and an announcement that the Santa Maria Novella quarter’s team had beaten the homefield team of Santa Croce by 9 to 4½. My friends and I had seats on Santa Croce’s side of the stadium; wise heads apparently decided long ago that it was best to keep the supporters of the various teams apart from each other, lest the activities on the field spill over into the stands. (The tournament has been suspended or even annulled more than a few times due to acts of violence and vandalism.) While Santa Maria Novella’s team was visibly younger and tougher, it would be hard to imagine more enthusiastic fans than Santa Croce’s, who gave everybody on their side a free blue t-shirt, and kept up a nearly continuous chant of “Picchi’azzurro! Picchi’azzurro! – hit them, blue! hit them, blue!”

I wanted to share in their disappointment [note], but a player from their side had already been carried away on a stretcher, and several others were walking around with icepacks and dazed expressions on their faces. In the meantime, the procession reassembled on the field, and in a slow and wholly dignified way marched off the field in the order in which it came. And we learned from the announcer what the winning side’s prize was – they got the cow. I was unable to find out whether or how soon it would become a large number of steaks, which are justifiably one of the most famous things about Florentine cuisine, and can also be used for healing black eyes.

[note] Santa Croce are the Yankees of the game, with 21 victories since the last major rule change in 1978. This year, however, Santa Maria Novella scored a crushing 18-4 victory over the perennial losers San Giovanni, who have won only six times since 1930, mostly recently 29 years ago, in 1996.

St Antoninus of Florence

The Dominican Order celebrates quite a few of its own Saints within a very short period in late April and early May. On the traditional calendar, St Agnes of Montepulciano is kept on April 20th, Peter Martyr on the 29th, Catherine of Siena on the 30th, Pope Pius V on May 5th, and St Antoninus of Florence on the 10th. In the post-Conciliar Rite, Peter Martyr has been moved to June 4th, the day of the translation of his relics; Catherine is on his old day, and Pius on hers, leaving the 5th vacant for St Vincent Ferrer. Antoninus, who was canonized in 1523, remains on his traditional day; he was added to the Roman general calendar in 1683, but removed from the post-Conciliar reform in 1969.

The St Dominic Altarpiece, by Girolamo Romanino, 1545-8. The Saints standing in the lower part of the painting are the Apostle Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Martyr, Dominic, Antoninus, Vincent Ferrer and the Apostle Peter; the two kneeling are Ss Faustinus and Jovita, the patron Saints of Brescia, where the painting was originally commissioned for the Dominican church, now destroyed. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

He was born in Florence in 1389, and christened “Antonio”, but because of his small stature, was always known by the diminutive form “Antonino”, even in the liturgical books. A famous story is told of how he was admitted into the Order. The prior of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican house in Florence, was the Blessed John Dominici, one of the leading churchmen of his age, and particularly active in reviving the original spirit of austerity within the order’s Italian houses, which had very much fallen into laxity. Thinking to dissuade the fifteen-year old Antoninus, whom he deemed too frail for the rigors of religious life, he ordered him to wait, and come back when he had memorized the Decretals of Gratian, the canon law text book of the Middle Ages. A year later, the boy returned, having duly memorized the massive tome, and after answering several questions about it, was received with no further hesitation.

St Antoninus and Bl. John Dominici, by an anonymous Florentine artist, ca. 1600-30, from the Dominican convent at Fiesole. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

In accordance with Bl. John’s plans, Antoninus was destined for the future founding of a reformed house at Fiesole; when the project was eventually realized, it would also count the Blessed Fra Angelico, who was a great friend of his, among its first members. He also knew at least three other Dominican Blesseds, Lawrence of Ripafratta, Constantius of Fabriano, and Peter Capucci.

The young friar was not only a brilliant scholar, as demonstrated by this episode, but also a natural leader, and within a short time of his priestly ordination, began to occupy one position of governance after another. He served as prior of several houses, including three of the largest, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, and San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, bringing the reforming spirit to each of them. In 1436, he helped to found the second Dominican house in his native city, San Marco, together with Fra Angelico, many of whose works are still housed there to this day.

In addition to his work as a preacher and religious reformer, Antoninus was a great scholar of canon law, in an age which valued canonical process within the Church very highly indeed. As such, he was frequently consulted by the Popes; he is believed to have served on the Roman Rota, and by order of Pope Eugenius IV, attended the various sessions of the Ecumenical Council of Florence. In 1446, when the archbishop of his native city died, he was appointed to the office, very much against his will; like so many other saintly bishops (Gregory the Great, for example) he first attempted to hide, in his case, by fleeing to the island of Sardinia. Having been discovered, he pleaded to the Pope that he was too physically weak for the job, but Eugenius would not be put off, and finally forced him to accept episcopal consecration by threatening to excommunicate him for disobedience if he did not.

Proving the truth of the common maxim that power is best given to those who don’t want it, Antoninus was an exemplary bishop in every way, a father to the poor, and so well regarded for his prudence and wise judgment that he was popularly known as “Antoninus of Counsels.” The year after his appointment, he was summoned to Rome to administer the last Sacraments to the Pope, who died in his arms. Eugenius’ successor, Nicholas V, forbade any appeal to be made to Rome against his decisions; Pius II appointed him to a commission for the reform of the Roman courts, and the Florentine Republic made him one of its ambassadors on various occasions. (Pictured right - a statue of St Antoninus on the façade of Florence cathedral; image from Wikipedia by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

Despite the endless cares which fall upon a man in his position, he was also assiduous in his prayer life, frequently celebrating Mass and preaching, reciting the full Divine Office (in an age when dispensations were easily granted to busy prelates), and often attending it in choir at the cathedral. He also found time to write an important treatise on moral theology, a widely-circulated manual for confessors, a chronicle of world history, and the biography of John Dominici. It was a common thing for prelates of wealthy sees (and Florence was very wealthy indeed) to keep a large stable for the travels of their retinues, but Antoninus had only one mule, which he sold several times to raise money for the poor; just as often, benefactors would buy it back and return it to him.

In the later part of his time as archbishop, Florence suffered from a series of disasters – a year-long outbreak of plague, followed by famine, and then, in 1453-55, a series of earthquakes. Through all of this, Antoninus was boundless in his charitable expenditures and his personal efforts to care for the victims, leading many others to do the same by his example. Cosimo de’ Medici, who had contributed a good deal of the money to found San Marco, said of him “Our city has experienced all sorts of misfortunes: fire, earthquake, drought, plague, seditions, plots. I believe it would today be nothing but a mass of ruins without the prayers of our holy archbishop.”

The Alms of St Antoninus, by Lorenzo Lotto, 1542; from the Dominican church in Venice, Ss John and Paul. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Antoninus died on May 2 of 1455, and his funeral was attended by Pope Pius II in person. He was canonized by Pope Adrian VI (1522-23) as a model reformer in an age very much in need of reform, a fact which Adrian was the first Pope to really grasp. (He might well have achieved on a larger scale within the Church some of what Antoninus achieved within his order and city, had he not died less than two years into his reign, the last non-Italian Pope before John Paul II). In 1559, his body was discovered to be incorrupt, and translated to the chapel where it still rests in the church of San Marco in Florence.

Fra Filippo Lippi’s Coronation of the Virgin

Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1469 of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, at the age of 63. He was born in Florence in 1406; two years later, his mother died while giving birth to his brother Giovanni. The boys were at first entrusted to an aunt, but she, being too poor to raise them properly, placed them in the city’s Carmelite priory in 1414. Filippo eventually joined the order and became a priest when he was still very young, perhaps less than 20. (“Fra” is the abbreviation of the Italian word “fratello – brother”, commonly used as a title for religious priests, as “don” is for seculars.) But he was clearly not well suited for the religious life, and after about seven years, left the monastery, although he was not released from his vows. (Irregularities of this kind were tolerated far too much before the Tridentine reform.)

The Madonna and Child with Two Angels, ca. 1460-65, by Fra Filippo Lippi. It is generally held that Lucrezia Buti, the mother of his children (as mentioned below), served as the model for the Virgin Mary. 

The sort of tour guides who spend more time telling anecdotes about artists than explaining their art have a lot to work with in the person of Fra Filippo. Most famously (or infamously), when he was fifty, and working in the city of Prato, about 12 miles to the north-west of Florence, he began a relationship with a Dominican novice nearly 30 years his junior, Lucrezia Buti, who bore him two children. The elder, a boy named for his father, is traditionally distinguished from him by the diminutive “Filippino”, and became a highly successful painter in his own right, after apprenticing first in his father’s workshop, and then with one of his father’s former students, Sandro Botticelli.

A self-portrait of Fra Filippo’s son Filippino, part of a painting which he added to the Brancacci Chapel in the 1480s, fifty years after Massaccio’s works there were first admired by his father.  

When the elder Filippo was still at the priory, the painter Masaccio was hired to fresco one of its side chapels, owned by a family named Brancacci. The Florentine art historian Giorgio Vasari recounts that Lippi, who had shown no aptitude at all for any kind of study, was so taken by Masaccio’s work that he took up drawing and painting himself. He quickly became good enough at this that he was able to embark on a career as an artist, in which he was very successful. However, his personal and professional conduct were so irregular that he was routinely broke, and therefore unable to consistently maintain a workshop, as an artist of his talent normally would, and as many less talented than he managed to do in those days of Florence’s great artistic flourishing.

The Tribute Money (the episode recounted in Matthew 17, 23-26), 1425, by Masaccio, one of the original paintings in the Brancacci chapel which inspired Filippo Lippi.

In 1439, he landed a very lucrative commission from a canon of the church of San Lorenzo named Francesco Maringhi. This priest was also the procurator of a Benedictine nunnery at a church dedicated to St Ambrose, for which the commission was made. The principal subject is the Coronation of the Virgin, a popular theme for women’s religious houses, and the painting is sometimes known as the Maringhi Coronation. Fra Filippo was also given enough money in advance to hire assistants to make and gild an elaborate frame, although this is now lost, along with all but one of the predella panels. (The frame seen here is modern.)

By this period, the Florentines had largely transformed the classic form of the late medieval polyptych, with Saints depicted each within their own discrete section of the frame, by removing the dividers to create a single continuous scene. Fra Filippo’s Coronation follows a trend set by earlier works such as The Coronation of the Virgin and The Adoration of the Magi by Lorenzo Monaco, and another, very famous depiction of the latter by Gentile da Fabriano.

Polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin, ca. 1410, by the Sienese painter Andrea di Bartolo (1360/70 - 1428), a work which would have been considered very old fashioned by the artist’s Florentine contemporaries.

The Coronation of the Virgin, 1414, by the Florentine painter known as Lorenzo Monaco (Lawrence the monk), since he was a member of the Camaldolese Order; ca. 1370 - ca. 1425. Notice the opening of the space between the panels, contrasted with Andrea di Bartolo’s retention of the divisions between the sections.

The Adoration of the Magi, 1423, by Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile was an exponent of the International Gothic, a style which revels in rich decoration, and of which the altarpiece shown above is considered one of the finest examples. Filippo, on the other hand, was a typical Florentine, and concentrated his efforts on the solidity and perspective of his figures. This is done especially by greatly varying the shades of the colors within their robes. To give just one example, note how many different blues there are in the robes of God the Father and the Virgin Mary in the upper center.

Different shades of blue are also used to make a rather oddly striped heaven in the background of the lateral sections. This is often described as a reference to the seven heavenly spheres, but there are eleven bands on the left side, and twelve on the right. I suspect that they may rather be a reference to the original striped habit of the Carmelite Order to which Fra Filippo belonged.

I chose this altarpiece as a good example of Fra Filippo’s work partly because yesterday was the feast of the Most Holy Rosary. Of course, no such feast existed in his time, and indeed, the rosary itself was still an emergent custom, but by a happy coincidence, this painting contains not just the last Glorious Mystery, its principal subject, but also the first Joyful one, the Annunciation, in the two small round panels mounted into the frame. This was obviously a very popular subject everywhere, and was worked into countless altarpieces in different ways. For many Tuscans, including the Florentines, the Annunciation also held a special significance, since it was not just a major feast and a break in the austerity of Lent, but also the civil New Year’s Day. (This custom remained in use in Florence, and what later became the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, until 1749.)

I also have another reason to write about this painting today. Several years ago, while looking at it in the Uffizi Museum in Florence where it is now kept, I noticed something interesting about the other Saints included in it: there is one prominent figure for each of the months from June to December. St John the Baptist (June 24), who is a major patron of Florence, is at the extreme right; St Mary Magdalene (July 22) is the women in red in the lower middle, directly beneath the Virgin’s feet. (Although it is not very clearly visible, she is holding a jar of ointment under a veil.) St Lawrence (August 10), whose grill is almost invisible, is to the right of her, and of course, the Assumption is also celebrated in August.

The man mostly blocking the view of Lawrence is St Eustachius, who is celebrated on September 20th together with his wife Theopista (the woman staring out at the viewer) and their sons Agapitus and Theopistus: one of the altars of the church for which the painting was commissioned was dedicated to them. The bishop in green next to Mary Magdalene is St Martin (November 11), while St Ambrose (December 7), the titular saint of the church, is depicted at the lower left in Advent violet.

Assuming this arrangement to be deliberate, October is thus far unaccounted for. One might expect St Francis, whose feast is on the 4th, to make an appearance, especially in Tuscany, where his order was very popular and influential, and a significant contributor to the region’s artistic culture. But he is not present.

After my visit to the Uffizi, I happened to pass a used bookstore, where I found a mid-19th century copy of the breviary supplement for the archdiocese of Florence, which solved the mystery. In it, I discovered that today is the feast of a virgin martyr called Reparata, whose legendary acts say that she was beheaded during the persecution of Decius (250-51 AD) at Caesarea Maritima, a port city on the coast of what is now the northern part of Israel. Parts of her relics were translated to various places in Italy, including Florence, and she was the titular Saint of the city’s previous cathedral. (Extensive remains of this older structure were discovered under the floor of the new church during excavations conducted from 1965-74.)

The woman to the left of Theopista, wearing green and looking down, is usually described by art history books, if she is mentioned at all, as one of the several “Saints without identifiable attribute” in this painting. It seems likely to me that she must St Reparata, who would complete the series of the months. The woman to the left of her, also without attribute, might therefore be St Pelagia, who shares Reparata’s feast day, and was venerated in many parts of Italy, including Milan, where she was formerly a co-titular of the cathedral.

There are possibly further mysteries to this painting yet to be explored; for example, there does not seem to be any convincing explanation for the presence of Job to the left of St Martin. Suffice it to note for now that the figure on the right kneeling behind John the Baptist, with the banderole that reads “Is(te) perfecit opus – this man completed the work”, was formerly assumed to be Lippi himself, but is now generally thought to be the commissioner. The figure more likely to be the artist’s self-portrait is the man in the white habit looking out at the viewer on the lower left. And perhaps it is not too much to speculate that the other Carmelite next to him, who seems rapt in his vision of God and the Virgin in heaven, indicates Filippo’s awareness of his failure in his first and greater calling, as he himself stares out at the world instead.

The St Matthew Triptych by Orcagna

In 1367, the Florentine money-changers’ guild commissioned the painter Andrea di Cione, generally known by the nickname Orcagna, to make a triptych of their patron Saint, the Apostle and Evangelist Matthew. Orcagna, who was then running one of the busiest artistic workshops in the city, fell ill in the course of the work, and left it to be finished by his brother Jacopo when he died the following year. The emblem of the guild is seen at the top of the two side panels above the pinnacles.

Public domain images from Wikipedia; click to see in high resolution.

Its peculiar shape is owed to the fact that it was originally hung on one of the octagonal pillars of the famous church and guildhall known as the Orsanmichele. The central panel, which is mostly Orcagna’s own work, shows St Matthew with a pen and the Gospel book in his hands, the latter identified as his by the opening words “The Book of the Generation of Jesus Christ…” In accordance with the convention of the times, the beautiful decorative carpet on which he is standing is vertical, so that it can be seen; this was probably done by Jacopo. In the pinnacles above him, angels hold the crown and palms of martyrdom.

The side panels show four stories from the Saint’s life, running clockwise from the lower left. In the first one, Christ calls him away from the tollhouse, as described by Matthew himself in chapter 9 of his own Gospel. The Lord is accompanied by the four Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James and John, whose calling has already been described before this point, but the rest, who are named in chapter 10, are not yet with him.

The remaining panels show stories from the life of St Matthew as recounted in the Golden Legend. In the second one, when he had gone to Ethiopia to preach the Gospel, he came to a place where two magicians had gained control of the populace, and were worshipped as gods. At Matthew’s preaching, the people were converted to the faith; the magicians therefore planned to punish them by turning two dragons loose on them. Signing himself with the cross, the Apostle went out to confront them, at which the dragons lay down asleep at his feet.

In the third panel, he raises the son of a king named Hegippus from the dead, which the magicians were unable to do. This leads to the conversion of the king; furthermore, at St Matthew’s exhortation, his daughter embraces the state of consecrated virginity, a proposal in which she is followed by many other young women.

Hegippus is then succeeded by his brother Hirtacus, who turns against Christianity, and has St Matthew killed at the altar when he had just finished celebrating Mass, as seen in the fourth panel. Iphigenia, who is seen at the lower right, is still named to this day in the Roman Martyrology.

The story goes on that the people wished to avenge the Apostle’s murder by burning down the royal palace, but were restrained from doing so by the clergy, who rather celebrated his martyrdom. Since Iphigenia and the other virgins would not abandon their consecration, Hirtacus set her house on fire, but the Apostle turned the fire back on his house, which was destroyed. Hirtacus, afflicted with incurable leprosy, then kills himself, and is succeeded by Hegippus’ son, who effects the complete conversion of Ethiopia to Christianity, filling it with churches.

Just over half a century later, in 1419, the same guild commissioned the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to make this bronze statue of the Apostle for one of the building’s external niches. It is now kept inside for preservation...

(Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0)

while a copy is displayed in the niche itself.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Two Artistic Treasures in Florence

I recently visited the older of the two Dominican churches in Florence, Santa Maria Novella, and got to see a couple of its many artistic treasures in a very unusual way. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the walls of many churches, but especially those of the mendicants, were decorated with frescoes which were commissioned to decorate chancery altars, or as votive offerings. Since they were not designed as a unit, but painted one by one as the commissions happened to be made, the result was often a patchwork of different styles from different periods, and sometimes, the same Saint or sacred event might be shown more than once within a relatively small space. We have previously shown an example of this phenomenon in the baptistery of the cathedral of Parma.

This kind of disorganization came to be greatly disliked in the Counter-Reformation period, in no small part also because the styles of the paintings were considered extremely old-fashioned. (As I pointed out repeatedly to the students with whom I visited this church and several others, the barbarians who vandalized so many of our churches in 1960s and ’70s were not the first of the their kind.) In 1565, therefore, the painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari was brought in to clear the old frescoes off the walls of the church’s nave, and replace them with new side-altars, each graced with a large altarpiece. He also dismantled the choir, which was removed behind the main altar, and of course the rood screen, over which hung one of the most famous works of the early Renaissance, the great Crucifix of Giotto (1290-95).

However, Vasari could not bring himself to destroy one of the church’s other most famous works, the Trinity of Masaccio, commissioned for a chancery altar in the left side-aisle in the later 1420s, and a watershed moment in the use of mathematical perspective in painting. Finding no way to move it or otherwise preserve it, he built one of the new altars in front of it. In 1860, when Vasari’s altars were partly redesigned in the neo-Gothic style, this altar was taken down, and Masaccio’s Trinity was thus rediscovered. The painting is currently undergoing restoration, and during our recent visit, my group and I were able to go up on the scaffolding and stand right in front of it.

Many chancery altars were made primarily for the celebration of Masses for the Dead for the family of the people who commissioned them. As I noted above, such altars were especially common in the churches of the mendicants, because they provided a steady source of income to communities which had no land-endowment to provide revenue to live on. The identity of the people who commissioned this altar is unknown, but the skeleton seen here indicates its primary purpose. Over it is written a memento mori, a rhyming couplet in late medieval Tuscan: “Io fu’ g(i)à quel che voi sete, e quel ch’i’ son, voi anco sarete. – I was what you are, and what I am, you also will be.”

Mirabile dictu, in 2018, another painting was discovered on the wall behind another of Vasari’s altars, this one a fresco by an unknown artist, which shows St Thomas Aquinas teaching a group of students. It was painted right around the time of Thomas’ canonization in 1323, and is believed by many to be the oldest image of him as a Saint in existence. (According to a friend of mine who is extremely knowledgeable about the early history of the Dominicans, this distinction may belong to a picture in their church in Bologna instead.)

The altar with the Vasari painting pushed back into its place.