Standing figure of a female saint

Filippo Lippi

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Filippo Lippi. The drawing is on a reddish coloured paper, and shows a woman from the side, wearing a long robe which covers her head. The folds of fabric are highlighted in white. The woman's face is tilted upwards, and both hands are raised in front of her, as though she is gesticulating. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "2. FILIPPO LIPPI (b. about 1406; d. 1469) STANDING FIGURE OF A FEMALE SAINT British Museum, Malcolm Collection, 1895·9·15·442. From the Richardson, West, Lawrence, and Robinson Collections. Silver point (with some black chalk) and slight touches of bistre on a rose prepared paper heightened with white. 30.5 x 15.7 cm. (12 x 6 3/16 in.). The finest of the very few studies which may be regarded with any confidence as original drawings by Filippo Lippi, though Morelli in a review of Braun's reproductions branded it without qualification as a forgery. Berenson suggests that it might have been used for the figure of St. Anne in the picture of the meeting of St. Joachim and St. Anne in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which he regards as executed by Pesellino after Filippo's design. On the reverse is a study of a draped figure of a female saint without head, which Berenson has attributed to Filippo's pupil and follower, Fra Diamante. If by Filippo Lippi it is the sort of study that might have served for one of the attendant angels on the r. in the Coronation of the Virgin at Florence. A. M. H. [J. C. Robinson, Catalogue of the Malcolm Collection, 1876, No. 6. G. Morelli, Kunstchronik, Neue Folge, III. 1891-2, May 26. Berenson Florentine Drawings, 1903, I, p. 53, and Catalogue No. 1387.]"