DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0116
112
EAKLY ITALIAN PAINTEES.
has painted his famous frescoes, was a young- monk,
who, instead of employing himself in the holy offices,
passed whole days and hours gazing on those works,
and trying to .imitate them. He was one whom
poverty had driven, as a child, to take refuge there,
and who had afterwards taken the habit from neces-
sity rather than from inclination. His name was
Filippo Lippi (which may be translated Philip the
son of Philip), but he is known in the history of
art as Fra Filippo (Friar Philip). In him, as in
Masaccio, the bent of the genius was early decided ;
nature had made him a painter. He studied from
morning to night the models he had before him ;
but restless, ardent, and abandoned to the pursuit
of pleasure, he at length broke from the convent
and escaped to Ancona. The rest of his life is a
romance. On an excursion to sea he was taken by
the African pirates, sold as a slave in Barbary, and
remained in captivity eighteen months. With a
piece of charcoal he drew his master’s picture on a
wall, and so excited his admiration that he gave
him his freedom, and dismissed him with presents.
Fra Filippo then returned to Italy, and at Naples
and at Rome gained so much celebrity by the
beauty of his performances, that his crime as a run-
away monk was overlooked, and, under the patron-
age of the Medici family, he ventured to return to
Florence. There he painted a great number of
admirable pictures, and was called upon to deco-
EAKLY ITALIAN PAINTEES.
has painted his famous frescoes, was a young- monk,
who, instead of employing himself in the holy offices,
passed whole days and hours gazing on those works,
and trying to .imitate them. He was one whom
poverty had driven, as a child, to take refuge there,
and who had afterwards taken the habit from neces-
sity rather than from inclination. His name was
Filippo Lippi (which may be translated Philip the
son of Philip), but he is known in the history of
art as Fra Filippo (Friar Philip). In him, as in
Masaccio, the bent of the genius was early decided ;
nature had made him a painter. He studied from
morning to night the models he had before him ;
but restless, ardent, and abandoned to the pursuit
of pleasure, he at length broke from the convent
and escaped to Ancona. The rest of his life is a
romance. On an excursion to sea he was taken by
the African pirates, sold as a slave in Barbary, and
remained in captivity eighteen months. With a
piece of charcoal he drew his master’s picture on a
wall, and so excited his admiration that he gave
him his freedom, and dismissed him with presents.
Fra Filippo then returned to Italy, and at Naples
and at Rome gained so much celebrity by the
beauty of his performances, that his crime as a run-
away monk was overlooked, and, under the patron-
age of the Medici family, he ventured to return to
Florence. There he painted a great number of
admirable pictures, and was called upon to deco-