Description: 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.Brief description: Jonathan K. Nelson is teaching professor of art history at Syracuse University, Florence. He is the leading specialist on Filippino Lippi, and his many books include studies of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Renaissance art patronage.
Review Quotes: "Abundant invention and a special intelligence define Filippino Lippi's works as presented by Nelson, who matches those qualities in his analysis of the artist's career. Filippino emerges here in all of his creative versatility. Nelson demonstrates the painter's stylistic sensitivity, showing how he met the demands of different situations with striking and innovative solutions. Highly praised in his time, Filippino provoked new ways of looking. Nelson, in turn, provides a fascinating new way of seeing Lippi and his works."--Patricia Rubin, emerita professor of art history, New York University