Madonna and Child with Saints

Almost impossibly rich in its interior detail - from the streaked marbling of the columns, the warm texture of the floor to the gilt floral patterns in the spandrels of the arches - the scene opens out through the left-hand window onto a landscape. This is noted to have been a borrowing from contemporary Flemish painting, but it also offers a connection to the faithful. That is, piety is achievable in the real world and that the people of the real world can strive for and attain the state of beatitude exhibited on this panel. Leaning backwards in the humble habit of a monk on the extreme left is said to be the likeness of Lippi himself. He looks out at us disengaged from the scene around him. This could be an invitation to us to pay attention to this scene of sanctity or, perhaps, it could relate to his own waywardness as he had left the Carmelite order without being released from his vows.

This picture is part of the altarpiece commissioned by (the childless) Gherardo di Bartolomeo Barbadori who, having died in 1429, bequeathed his fortune to the Church of Santo Spirito for an altarpiece to be painted in dedication to Saint Fridianus. Lippi accepted the commission around 1437. The interior scene is packed with the figures of angels, two saints, and the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. 

The two saints are oriented by Lippi in different ways: Augustine, while venerating on his knees, is half-turned towards the viewer; Fridianus, the sixth-century Irish pilgrim and hermit, is turned towards the Madonna and Child. This alerts us to Augustine's role in the early church as promulgator of the Christian faith. Fridianus is, by contrast, exclusively concentrated on devotion, reflecting his life of solitary asceticism. The Virgin is a powerful figure in a painting which is divided architecturally in the form of a triptych. In the central arch, Mary stands above all other figures, as if about to give her blessing to the kneeling saints. It was unusual at the time to portray Mary standing and, in what would have been a Virgin Enthroned picture, Lippi paints a commanding femininity striding away from the obscured throne in the niche in the background.