Filippino Lippi, Madonna in adorazione del Bambino, 1478, Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi

Scuderie del Quirinale - Rome
from October 5th 2011 to January 15th 2012

Born in Prato in about 1457, the result of his father Fra' Filippo Lippi's illicit tryst with a nun, Lucrezia Buti, Filippo (known as Filippino to distinguish him from his father, one of the most celebrated and valued painters of his day) became an artist of the first rank in his turn, a painter on whom Vasari lavished such words of praise as "tanto ingegno" (a man of infinite genius) endowed with "vaghissima e copiosa invenzione" (wonderful and bountiful powers of invention).
From his very earliest works, which the great art historian Bernard Berenson attributed to an imaginary "Friend of Sandro", his darting figures stand out for their wistful grace and for the almost disturbing whimsicality that distinguishes them from the style of Botticelli, with whom he collaborated on an equal footing rather than as a mere apprentice.
Filippino eventually went on to become a fearsome rival to his former master in the last decade of the 15th century, appreciated by the Medici and their supporters and by Savonarola and the Republicans alike.

This explains why Filippino was called on to complete the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the church of the Carmine, a work by Masolino and Masaccio, painters who were venerated, admired and studied by every artist of the period (and for centuries to come); why he was entrusted with major commissions neglected by Leonardo, such as the Pala degli Otto in Palazzo Vecchio (1486) or the Adorazione dei Magi for San Donato a Scopeto (1496), both now in the Uffizi; and why, in 1498, he was given the most prestigious commission the Republic could award, for a Signoria Altarpiece for the republican Sala del Maggior Consiglio although his numerous other commitments and his death in 1504 were to prevent him from ever making a start on it.

Filippino was more eclectic and versatile an artist than any other, attracting commissions in Florence and its surrounding region but also in Lucca, Genoa, Bologna and Pavia. He was also particularly innovative in the field of decoration and the applied arts, as we can see from his frescoes in the Carafa Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome or in the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, both cycles in which his confidently unfettered and whimsical imagination imbues his work with astonishing modernity. Critics have recently begun to consider that the truly uncommon quality and excellence of his artistic output outclasses even many of the works attributed to Botticelli.

The exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del '400, is designed to introduce the public to the approximately 34 years of Lippi's career, a career that was so much more proficuous than most in terms of both the quantity and the quality of his output, ranging as it did from panels, to frescoes, to sophisticated drawings on colored paper which are full-fledged masterpieces in their own right. In keeping with what has become a tradition in our exhibitions of major art, these celebrated and extremely precious paintings will be on loan to the Scuderie del Quirinale from some of the leading museums of the world, as well as from a handful of superb private collections. Finally, thanks to the crucial cooperation of the "Polo Museale Fiorentino" and the "Fondo Edifici del Culto", as well as to the generous contribution of such private associations as the "Friends of Florence", the exhibition will provide the public with a unique opportunity to view and admire the Tuscan master's works in Rome, the city in which he studied classical antiquity and where he left us his fresco cycle in the Carafa Chapel, allowing visitors to rediscover his life and career, and offering scholars a unique opportunity for stylistic comparison with a selection of works by Botticelli, his master, his friend, and ultimately his rival.