LIPPO D'ANDREA DI LIPPO
Italian painter, formerly known as Pseudo-Ambrogio di Baldese. He enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in 1411, the same year that he received a commission, along with Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Ambrogio di Baldese, and Alvaro di Pietro, for the fresco decoration of the façade of the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato. An undocumented tradition assigning the frescoes in the Nerli Chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, to a painter named Lippo in 1402 has reasonably been connected with Lippo d’Andrea, and it must be assumed that, like Lorenzo Monaco, he was active at least as early as the last decade of the fourteenth century. The only other notice referring to Lippo d’Andrea in connection with a work of art is of 1435-36, when he was selected along with Bicci di Lorenzo, Giovanni dal Ponte, and Rossello di Jacopo Franchi to paint frescoes of the apostles in the tribune chapels of Florence cathedral on the occasion of Pope Eugene IV’s consecration of the newly completed dome. By 1442 Lippo d’Andrea had ceased painting and in his tax declaration of 1447 he claimed to be unable to earn a living by his craft. He was dead by 1451.
Lippo d’Andrea was an exact contemporary of Lorenzo Monaco, and nearly as prolific as the Camaldolese master. However, he represents one of the more conservative trends in Florentine painting of the first third of the fifteenth century. Though a decidedly minor master by comparison with his better known contemporaries Lorenzo Monaco or Fra Angelico, he may have been at least as successful commercially, to judge from the great numbers of his works surviving today and the relatively prestigious nature of some of his commissions. Panels for private devotional use dominate his output, only one manuscript illumination by him has to date been identified.
