The Lippis: Like Father, Unlike Son, and Vin Santo

All you have to do is look at the expression on the face of this young man to know that something is different about Filippino Lippi’s painting when compared to most other works from the same period. We have all seen the paintings of Botticelli, also done in tempera, in which the beautiful women are largely expressionless. Admittedly there is some drama in Botticelli’s representations of Zephyrus in The Birth of Venus and in Primavera, but they have none of the subtlety of Filippino’s handling of this youth’s face, where the eyes show a worried fear about what he is seeing as St. John the Evangelist raises someone from the dead. Those eyes say, “What am I witnessing here?” And the mouth begins to open in amazement.

I have to admit that I have always mourned the fact that Filippino Lippi’s work was overshadowed by the oil paintings of Leonardo and Raphael and those of the also wonderful Venetian painters like Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. They were all great masters, but Filippino was too. He just happened to paint in tempera, as was the custom of his father, Filippo Lippi, and his master teacher, Botticelli. To get an idea of how much difference in appearance there is between tempera and oil paint, I’ll refer you to a post “Venice: Have a Bellini on Me” at vernellestudio.com/blog.

Admittedly, Filippino died rather young in 1504 or 1507 (the experts disagree about the exact date), and he was painting in the age of the great frescoes, as he was born around 1457. In that sense he was a painter of his time, with his own career starting while in his teens in the studio of Botticelli, just before oil painting arrived in Italy with Antonello Da Messena and Giovanni Bellini in 1475. However, I am still going to make a case for Filippino’s greatness as part of the transition from the High Renaissance of the 15th century to that of the 16th century, which became the era of the Bella Maniera or so called Mannerism, known for its expressiveness.

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Filippino Lippi would have been used to seeing himself in paint, as his father Fra Filippo Lippi often used his baby son as a model for the Christ child (see the Of Art and Wine December 25th post on Fra Filippo, the Bad Boy Monk). What is interesting in these pieces is to see a certain honesty in the way the face ages from a rather plump-faced adolescent to the ever more slender and well-defined features of a man. Filippino had a very successful career during his lifetime. For instance, in the first half of the 1480s he was the person the Carmelites commissioned to finish the famous Brancacci Chapel, which had existed unfinished after the death of Masaccio in 1428. Masaccio’s work there is credited as being the opening bell of the Renaissance. The other artist painting in that chapel, Masolino, represented a style more akin to what was seen in medieval manuscripts. Filippino’s task was to finish the chapel and in a style that drew all the painting into harmony. When one sees the frescoes, though almost 60 years passed between its inception and its completion, the styles all work well together and look of a piece. Only upon more focused observation can one see the distinctions in the work of the three painters. However, in terms of Filippino’s use of emotive expression, one has to look at the Carafa Chapel in Rome and the Strozzi Chapel in Florence to see a unique quality in his painting.

In this group scene, one sees a variety of reactions to the event that is central to the story of St. Philip dispatching a pesky dragon. Dragon’s breath is obviously pretty powerful as it has caused a young man to faint away and fall into the arms of the man pictured above, who looks down on the youth with compassionate eyes. The woman to his left covers her nose to subdue the stench while she, too, looks sadly at the fainted youth. To the right of the central figure stand two men, both with eyes closed, heads turned away, and one with a decided grimace. The rich detail of the fabric in their turbans and the decoration on their clothing is precisely rendered, but the expressions on their faces tell the story. Lippi does not mind giving them the appropriate wrinkles and frown lines to go with their reactions, but once again it is the eyes that relate the feelings.

To the left of the action in the fresco of St. Philip and the Dragon is this priest who seems to be in agony over the destructive force of the dragon and perhaps his own inability to do anything about the horrible creature. The graying head resting in a thin-fingered hand, the detail of the white beard and the touch of white in the eyebrow, the groaning mouth, the curl in the nostril, and the furrowed brow all represent an old man’s despair. In this portion of the fresco we also see the expressive hands of another person, with one hand held up in a gesture of surprise while the other points at the dragon.

In 1489, Filippino Lippi was called to Rome to paint the chapel of the Carafa family, a family closely allied to the Medici of Florence. In this piece one sees a representation of the Persian prophet Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, a Gnostic religion, in which the material world was seen as evil darkness from which the light and good were being withdrawn over generations “from the world of matter to return to the world of light from which it came” (en.wikipedia.org). The main thing that Lippi accomplishes here is to show a face in doubt as the prophet considers the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The expression seems to say, “I wonder.”

The thing I try to point out here is while Leonardo created the mystery of the Mona Lisa (though he also did well with showing the cries of warriors in battle) and Raphael painted impeccably beautiful and placid virgins, Filippino Lippi, working in those less rich tempera paints, was able to express emotions both dramatic and subtle, and that tendency to express emotion was a distinct attribute of his painting. In terms of Italian painting, he seems to me to be a bridge between the first part of the Renaissance to the latter part where realistic expression became part of the Bella Maniera. It also makes me wonder what he would have produced had he lived longer and moved into using oil paints like Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

Sources for this article come from Fresques Italiennes de la Renaissance by Steffi Roettgen, editor, and Denis-Arnaud Canal, translator into French. Citadelle Mazenod publishing, 2001.

Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor, and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com.

Vin Santo, holy wine, but is it?

Amber, that is the color of Vin Santo, a rich, glowing, golden-red amber. Supposedly a wine originally used in holy communion, Vin Santo is a straw wine (a wine made from grapes that are partially dried on straw before going through the wine making process) that has become a favorite dessert wine over the years. It even comes in a fortified version known as Vin Santo Liquoroso, which makes it function the same way as Port. Though it is widely used throughout Italy, Vin Santo, like Filippino Lippi, is a product of Tuscany.

The cantucci is a cookie, also like Filippino Lippi from Prato, and is known as the Biscotti de Prato. The cantucci is a cookie that is not overly sweet, so it pairs well with the sweet Vin Santo. The cookie also goes well with tea or coffee. For really expert advice on how to eat cantucci, one must heed the information from Eataly in “The Key to Cantucci” eataly.com. By the way, if you have not been to an Eataly – go! My experience of it was in Bologna a few years ago. It is a wonderful purveyor of all things Italian. I see that there is one now in one of my other favorite places to travel, Toronto, Canada, on Bloor Street West and Bay.

Now back to Vin Santo. The process of vinification can take quite a while. The grapes used normally are white grapes like Trebbiano or Malvasia, but sometimes a Sangiovese is used to create a rosé version of Vin Santo. The grapes are sun-dried for 6-8 weeks, after which they go through a slow fermentation process of 40-60 days. This is followed by aging in French oak barrels, and aging continues in the bottle. (see santowines.gr).

The recipe for the wonderful looking dessert above comes from a specialist in Greek cooking, Diane Kochilas (click link above). She pairs the dessert with Vinsanto, a favorite in Greece, as it makes the taste of the dessert “explode with flavor.” Should you want something less explosive, you might try a plate of strong cheeses, or just a creamy Gorgonzola. The wine should be served at slightly less than room temperature or somewhere around 60 degrees and served in a wide-mouth glass. However, for the total experience, you must have the cheese and the Vin Santo while looking at a folio of paintings by Filippino Lippi.

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©marjorie vernelle 2021

Coming Soon: Return of the Gothic and Wine’s Phylloxera Epidemic.