Two Studies for a Pietà

Filippino Lippi

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Filippino Lippi. It is a sketch for a pietà scene with the Virgin Mary in the centre cradling the body of the dead Christ. Mary holds Christ to her with her right hand behind his neck and her left over his thigh. Christ's body is held to a sitting position and faces towards the right. A kneeling angel on the left supports his back, while one on the right appears to be tying a piece of fabric around his feet. A saint wearing a monks habit stands to the right with his head bowed towards the body of Christ, and another saint with curly hair leans into the composition from the left edge. Two more angels are in the top corners of the composition and the one on the left is holding two circular objects, which we presume to be halos that she is about to set on the figures below. The text in the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society groups No.s 2 and 3 together. The text reads: "No. 2, 3 FILIPPINO LIPPI (b. about 1459; d. 1504) TWO STUDIES FOR A PIETÀ Collection of Mr. Charles Loeser. Pen and bistre. 25 x 18 cm. (9 13/16 x 7 1/16 in.) Filippino's drawings outnumber those of any other Quattrocento Florentine in the Uffizi collection. Elsewhere they are extremely rare. Baldinucci, who formed this great collection of drawings for the Cardinal Leopoldo dei Medici in the latter half of the seventeenth century, doubtless shared the taste of his time; and, indeed, FIlippino was always held in great favour in Florence when fashion inclined to overlook Botticello, his master. The alternative pen sketches for a 'Pietà' cover both sides of one sheet. It would be hazardous to connect them with any of Filipino's paintings known or lost. We should not in this connexion [sic] attach much importance to the choice of the accessory figures in the drawing, which include a St. Anthony and a St. John, while the identity of the other two in adoration is uncertain. I doubt their having any documentary significance, FIlippino is here improvising the varients of a composition in which the secondary figures were not prescribed. This is shown by the curious second head peering over Mary's shoulder in the drawing with the architectural background. This second head is not a 'pentimento', as might be thought, for the artist would never have shown the mourning Mary looking away from her burden towards the spectator. It is more likely that FIlippino was at the time thinking of a St. Anne with Mary seated on her knees, a subject that was not infrequently treated before Leonardo. These drawings belong to Filippino's maturity. The architectural background recalls, in the slight tall collumns and the stair carried on an arch, certain features of Santa Maria Novella, where Filippino was occupied at intervals to the end of his life with the decoration of the Strozzi chapel. C. L."