Lorenzo Lippi

The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is painting and poetry. Places of work recorded in the authority are Florence and Innsbruck. Positions recorded include court painter. Works named in the authority record are St. Francis of Assisi praying and Lot and his daughters. Work by Lorenzo Lippi is recorded in the collections of Nationalmuseum, Musée de la civilisation, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Bavarian State Painting Collections and National Gallery of Ireland.

• Name — Lorenzo Lippi • Occupation — Painter, writer • Born — 3 May 1606 • Birthplace — Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany • Died — 15 April 1665 • Place of death — Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany • Movement — Baroque

Born in Florence, he studied painting under Matteo Rosselli. Both Baldassare Franceschini and Francesco Furini were also apprenticed with Rosselli, the influence of whose style, and more especially of that of Santi di Tito, is to be traced in Lippi's works, which are marked by taste, delicacy and a strong turn for portrait-like naturalism. His maxim was to poetize as he spoke, and to paint as he saw. His biography was recounted by Filippo Baldinucci. After painting for some time in Florence, and having married at the age of forty the daughter of the rich sculptor named Giovanni Francesco Susini, Lippi went as court painter to Innsbruck, where he has left many excellent portraits. In Innsbruck, he wrote his humorous poem named Il Malmantile racquistato, which was published under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Perlone Zipoli. The Malmantile racquistato is a mock-heroic romance, mostly compounded out of a variety of popular tales; its principal subject matter is an expedition for the recovery of a fortress and territory whose queen had been expelled by a female usurper. It is full of graceful or racy Florentine idioms, and is counted by Italians as a testo di lingua. Lippi is remembered more for this poem than by his paintings. It was published posthumously in 1676. Lippi was somewhat self-sufficient and arrogant, and, when visiting Parma, would not look at the famous paintings by Correggio there, saying that they could teach him nothing. He died of pleurisy in 1664, in Florence. The most esteemed works of Lippi as a painter are a Crucifixion in the Uffizi gallery at Florence, and a Triumph of David which he executed for the salon of Angiolo Galli, introducing into it portraits of the seventeen children of the owner. Among his pupils is Bartolomeo Bimbi. He should not be confused with the Quattrocento-Renaissance, father-son pair of Florentine painters Filippo and Filippino Lippi, or with Italian poet Lorenzo Lippi da Colle (1440–1485).

• Illustration — Saint Agatha • Illustration — Santa Caterina di Prato • Illustration — Allegory of Music • Illustration — Maria Leopoldine of Austria. (1649) • Illustration — Claudia de' Medici • Illustration — Vittoria della Rovere • Illustration — Tobias and Archangel Raphael • Illustration — Ceiling fresco of Cappella Ardinghelli in San Gaetano, Florence • Illustration — Madonna and Child with young St John the Baptist

Lorenzo Lippi is recorded as painter, poet and writer.