LIPPI, Lorenzo
Italian painter and poet. He was trained by Matteo Rosselli, with whom he worked for many years in close partnership. His collaboration was sometimes anonymous but is documented from 1622, when they decorated the ceiling of the Sala della Stufa (Florence, Palazzo Pitti), to 1631-32, when they worked together on lunettes portraying St Francis Adoring the Child and St Catherine in Prison (Florence, San Gaetano).
In 1630 Lippi was enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno but appears not to have had his own workshop until after 1634, although he worked independently before then. The earliest paintings attributable to him are, both in facial types and in the soft, rich folds of the drapery, close in style to the work of Rosselli. Examples include canvases of the Apostles James, John and Matthew, and Christ Blessing (all 1628; Vaglia, San Pietro), and the Virgin Handing the Child to St Francis (1629; Florence, San Salvatore di Camaldoli).
In the 1630s Lippi painted decorative and theatrical compositions, mainly on literary and biblical themes, which remained indebted to Rosselli, for example Samson and Delilah (1632; Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) and the Virgin in Glory with Saints (1634; Ronta, nr Barberino di Mugello, San Michele). Shortly afterwards he produced works (e.g. the Sacrifice of Isaac and Hagar and the Angel; both San Miniato, Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra), which, in their use of sfumato as a means of heightening the feeling of pathos, are reminiscent of the work of Francesco Furini.
