The Virgin and Child with Angels, Saint Frediano and Saint Augustine, called the Barbadori Altarpiece
Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406-1469) · 1437
The Virgin stands holding the Child in the middle of a crowd of angels, in an architecture of marble columns and balustrades painted in careful perspective. In the foreground two saints kneel: Frediano, the Irish born bishop of Lucca, on the left, and Augustine, in a bishop's cope with his book, on the right. This is one of the first altarpieces in Florence to abandon the old division into separate gilded compartments and to set the whole holy company inside a single room.
The altarpiece was commissioned on the eighth of March fourteen thirty seven by the captains of Orsanmichele, executing the will of Gherardo Barbadori, for his family chapel in the church of Santo Spirito in Florence. The three predella scenes are in the Uffizi. It was praised in a letter of fourteen thirty eight from the painter Domenico Veneziano to Piero de' Medici. Removed from the church in eighteen ten, it was taken to the Louvre in February eighteen fourteen among the works seized under Napoleon, and it stayed. Look for the friar behind the balustrade at the far left, who is thought to be the painter himself.
Did You Know? The friar at the far left who looks out at you from behind the balustrade is generally taken to be Fra Filippo Lippi himself.
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