Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. Francesca Baldassari for confirming the attribution (from a transparency); she dates this hitherto unrecorded picture to before 1640 when Lippi's style was still close to that of his master Matteo Rosselli.
Lippi initially studied with Rosselli, who recognised his precocious talent for what Baldinucci called his 'sola imitazione del vero' (F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua, V, Florence, 1847, p. 262), at about the time that his master was himself showing signs of an increased observation of nature as, for example, in The Triumph of David of 1620, now in the Palazzo Pitti. As Charles McCorquodale points out in the catalogue of the exhibition, Painting in Florence 1600-1700, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 Jan.-18 Feb. 1979 and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 27 Feb.-28 March 1979, p. 76, Rosselli's influence is already apparent in Lippi's works of this date. By about 1630, the year in which he registered in the Accademia del Disegno, and certainly by 1639, the year of Lippi's first known signed and dated work, The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew in San Frediano, he began to establish himself as the master of unvarnished realism, paralleled only in the contemporary work of Giovanni Martinelli. Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, in his brief account of Lippi, says that his work was highly regarded by Cardinal Carlo de' Medici and was sufficiently esteemed at court to be allocated the design of tapestries (with Jacopo Vignali) for the Grand Ducal audience room in the Palazzo Pitti, which were woven in 1643 (see loc.cit.).
The present picture bears striking similarities to Angelica tending the wounded Medoro in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, dated by McCorquodale, ibid., to the early 1640s: these extend to the treatment of the draperies, hands, facial types and in specific details such as the ruched collars of the female figures. Additionally, the way in which the figures fill the picture plane in the present picture is directly comparable to the monumental scale of the figures of Angelica and Medoro placed against a landscape. In the present picture, however, the treatment of the background appears to be more cursory, suggesting a slightly earlier date, before the influence of Salvator Rosa became clearly evident in Lippi's depiction of landscape, which became increasingly sophisticated (for a discussion of Lippi's treatment of landscape in relation to the dating of his works, see C. McCorquodale, op. cit., p. 78).
It was intended that the present picture, the property of an old Cornish family, should hang at their house Heligan, and it was stored in a seaside warehouse during alterations. Now, twenty years later, it has been discovered by the owner, forgotten and neglected.
Lippi initially studied with Rosselli, who recognised his precocious talent for what Baldinucci called his 'sola imitazione del vero' (F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua, V, Florence, 1847, p. 262), at about the time that his master was himself showing signs of an increased observation of nature as, for example, in The Triumph of David of 1620, now in the Palazzo Pitti. As Charles McCorquodale points out in the catalogue of the exhibition, Painting in Florence 1600-1700, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 Jan.-18 Feb. 1979 and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 27 Feb.-28 March 1979, p. 76, Rosselli's influence is already apparent in Lippi's works of this date. By about 1630, the year in which he registered in the Accademia del Disegno, and certainly by 1639, the year of Lippi's first known signed and dated work, The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew in San Frediano, he began to establish himself as the master of unvarnished realism, paralleled only in the contemporary work of Giovanni Martinelli. Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, in his brief account of Lippi, says that his work was highly regarded by Cardinal Carlo de' Medici and was sufficiently esteemed at court to be allocated the design of tapestries (with Jacopo Vignali) for the Grand Ducal audience room in the Palazzo Pitti, which were woven in 1643 (see loc.cit.).
The present picture bears striking similarities to Angelica tending the wounded Medoro in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, dated by McCorquodale, ibid., to the early 1640s: these extend to the treatment of the draperies, hands, facial types and in specific details such as the ruched collars of the female figures. Additionally, the way in which the figures fill the picture plane in the present picture is directly comparable to the monumental scale of the figures of Angelica and Medoro placed against a landscape. In the present picture, however, the treatment of the background appears to be more cursory, suggesting a slightly earlier date, before the influence of Salvator Rosa became clearly evident in Lippi's depiction of landscape, which became increasingly sophisticated (for a discussion of Lippi's treatment of landscape in relation to the dating of his works, see C. McCorquodale, op. cit., p. 78).
It was intended that the present picture, the property of an old Cornish family, should hang at their house Heligan, and it was stored in a seaside warehouse during alterations. Now, twenty years later, it has been discovered by the owner, forgotten and neglected.