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A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery (1888)
A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery - 1888 Author:Edward Tyas Cook Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ROOM III THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL : FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND BOTTICELLI I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave ! . . . Yes, I'm the painter, since you styl... more »e me so. ... For me, I think I speak as I was taught ; I always see the garden and God there A-making man's wife : and, my lesson learned, The value and significance of flesh, I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards. . . . Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn, Left foot and right foot, go a double step, Make his flesh liker and his soul more like, Both in their order ? Browning : Fra Lippo Lippi. Botticelli, the pupil of Monk Lippo, is "the only painter of Italy who understood the thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on the whole, the most universal of painters ; and, take him all in all, the greatest Florentine workman" (RusKiN : Fors Clavigera, 1872, Iutii. 2). MADONNA AND CHILD. Ascribed to Botticelli. (See under 1034, p. 56). Probably only a " school picture." Most of the old masters kept schools, or shops, in which several pupils served as apprentices and worked at pictures under the master's directions. The sale of such pictures under the master's name was (and is)a very common occurrence, and even in those days forged signatures were not unusual 668. THE ANNUNCIATION. Fra Filippo Lippi (about 1406-1469). This and the companion picture by the same artist (667, p. 61) were painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's crest— three feathers tied together in a ring), and are identified with a story told by Vasari, which Mr. Browning has worked up in his poem on the artist. Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways, kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker done, but Lippi...« less