Energetic, incisive, spontaneous, and expressive, the drawings of Filippino Lippi (1457/58-1504) are among the most original and creative of the Italian Renaissance.

This book accompanies a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first important show devoted to the drawings of Filippino Lippi. Essays by experts in the field explore Filippino's development as a draftsman, his techniques, his designs for the decorative arts, his drawings after the antique, and his work as a painter; entries on the individual drawings consider issues of authenticity, dating, and relationship to paintings, as well as the contributions of his circle. A documented chronology of the artist's life is offered as well.

Offering particular insight into Filippino Lippi’s artistic problem-solving, an innovative look at the Renaissance master. The first focused study of Filippino Lippi in a generation, and the first in English in over eighty years, this book presents a new understanding of the Renaissance master-artist. Celebrated as “ingenious” by Vasari in 1550, Filippino was highly praised and influential, then fell out of favor and was forgotten for centuries. He was rediscovered by the poet Swinburne, who in 1868 celebrated the painter’s “inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy.” In a similar spirit, this volume explores Filippino’s creativity in solving artistic problems. If a Roman cardinal requested a classically inspired work or a Florentine humanist wanted to dazzle observers with his antiquarian interests, Filippino had the sensitivity to understand these diverse needs and express them with highly original solutions.

Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), although one of the most original and gifted artists of the Florentine renaissance, has attracted less scholarly attention than his father Fra Filippo Lippi or his master Botticelli, and very little has been published on him in English. This book, authored by leading Renaissance art historians, covers diverse aspects of Filippino Lippi’s art: his role in Botticelli’s workshop; his Lucchese patrons; his responses to Netherlandish painting; portraits; space and temporality; the restoration of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella; his immediate artistic legacy; and, finally, his nineteenth-century critical reception. The fourteen chapters in this volume were originally presented at the international conference Filippino Lippi: Beauty, Invention and Intelligence, held at the Dutch University Institute (NIKI) in Florence in 2017. See inside the book.

Fra Filippo Lippi, a Carmelite monk who was one of the leading painters in Renaissance Florence, was patronized by the powerful Medici family. His large-scale altarpieces and fresco cycles had a decisive impact on the painting styles of the 16th century and he produced some of the earliest autonomous portrait paintings of the Renaissance. His son, Filippino Lippi, became in turn one of the leading Florentine painters of the late 15th century, winning important civic and private commissions, including the decoration of the Strozzi Chapel in S Maria Novella, Florence. This fully illustrated Grove Art Essentials title delves into the life and work of these two great artists, including an analysis of their working methods, techniques, and workshops. With the addition of an extensive bibliography, discover the art of these two masters of the Italian Renaissance with Grove Art Essentials.