"Madonna and Child with Two Angels"

It has been said that Lippi's picture here had a profound effect on the Madonna and Child paintings of his pupil Botticelli and certainly the soft and placid femininity of this Mary can be detected in much of Botticelli (in his Venus for example). A possible further note of influence is in the background landscape and shore which Lippi likely borrowed from the Flemish tradition. In Lippi's particular rendition of the landscape with its dark irregularity, we could even project forward by half a century toward Leonardo's Mona Lisa. The present picture of Lippi's itself has an enigmatic quality of its own and a delicately balanced allegory. 

On the face of it, we see the haloed Virgin with an elaborate and translucent headdress that speaks of the spirit. She is receiving her child Jesus who reaches for his mother. This is the Holy Family. Beneath this surface are elements of another story, however. It has been speculated that the model for this Mary was Lucrezia Buti, Lippi's lover, and that the jovial angel of the foreground is actually a portrait of their son Filippino. Indeed, the Virgin's gaze and bodily disposition is angled towards the angel whose gleeful expression humanizes him. The Virgin's body is also heavy and darkly and solidly coloured which leaves no doubt that we are looking at an earthly woman. At the same time her headdress and halo are so delicate that they seem to melt. This tells us of the Madonna's otherworldly spirituality and status, and Lucrezia's terrestrial and real maternal love. The painting amounts to both a veneration of the Madonna and Child and of the Lippi family which explains our proximity to the figures. Filippo extols and idealises his family by association with the devotional image but also makes them natural and human.