This panel, along with its companion Saints Benedict and Apollonia, were cited admiringly by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artist when he saw them in the Church of San Ponziano in Lucca, where they formed an ensemble, flanking a polychrome sculpture of St. Anthony Abbot. St. Benedict, the founder of Western Christian monasticism, accompanies St. Apollonia, a third-century martyr and the principle female saint associated with the Benedictine order. She holds the instruments of her torture. Paul the Apostle bears a sword, symbol of his death, and St. Frediano, patron saint of Lucca accompanies him.
An exceptional draftsman and fluid painter, Lippi easily absorbed the multiple artistic trends in painting that made Florence, and the whole of Tuscany, such a vital art center in the fifteenth century. The beautiful landscape background, particularly the fortified city and anecdotal details, reveal Lippi’s admiration of Northern European art and the inspiration of Hans Memling whose work was seen in Florence by 1480. Lippi’s decorative linear manner, filtered through Botticelli, is integrated with the representation of mass and his knowledge of Leonardo’s studies of physiognomy is resident in the individualized features of each saint. Indeed the melancholic grace of the figures is almost unprecedented in Italian painting at this date, and extraordinary in light of the artist’s age of twenty-five.
Details
- Artist Name: Filippino Lippi (Italian, 1457-1504)
- Title: Saints Paul and Frediano
- Date: c. 1483
- Medium: Tempera glazed with oil on panel
- Dimensions: 62 1/8 x 23 1/2 in. (157.8 x 59.7 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1973.21.2.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Church of San Ponziano, Lucca, removed sometime ca. 1800.
Richard Bingham (d. 1839), 2nd Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England, by descent to;
George Charles Bingham (d. 1888), 3rd Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England, by descent to;
George Bingham (d. 1914), 4th Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England, by descent to;
George Charles (d. 1949), 5th Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England, by descent to;
George Charles Patrick (d. 1964), 6th Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England, by descent to;
Richard John, 7th Earl of Lucan, Laleham, Middlesex, England (sale, London, Sotheby's, 2 December 1964, lot 19, ill., to);
Col. I. J. Kiddle, bidding on behalf of;
[Wildenstein and Co., Inc., New York, sold to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
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