Renaissance Lives | 'Filippino Lippi: an Abundance of Invention'
Jonathan Nelson in conversation with Caspar Pearson (Warburg Institute)
The first monograph in a generation, and the first study in English in over eighty years, this book presents a new understanding of the Renaissance master-artist Filippino Lippi. Celebrated as ‘ingenious’ by Vasari in 1550, Filippino was highly praised and influential, then fell out of favour and was forgotten for centuries. He was rediscovered by the poet Swinburne, who in 1868 celebrated the painter’s ‘inventive enjoyment and indefatigable fancy’. In a similar spirit, this volume explores Filippino’s creativity in solving artistic problems. If a Roman cardinal requested a classically inspired work, or a Florentine humanist wanted to dazzle observers with his antiquarian interests, Filippino had the sensitivity to understand these diverse needs and express them with highly original solutions.
Renaissance Lives is a series of biographies published by Reaktion Books as well as a series of conversations discussing the ways in which individuals transmitted or changed the lives of traditions, ideas and images.