Fra Filippo Lippi

He held his breath, staring at the whorls of the child’s perfect ear, luminescent, as if painted by Fra Filippo Lippi.

The standard format in painting early on was the profile, which, however beautifully realized in works by Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Pisanello and others, appears static, like an image on a shop sign.

The former’s parentage was somewhat scandalous by the standards of the time: he was the illegitimate son of the Carmelite friar and painter Fra Filippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti, a nun.

Once again, Leonardo da Vinci is named as the inventor of chiaroscuro, yet he was preceded by Fra Filippo Lippi.

Another painter favoured by the Medici was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose life and art-work were alike the deviation of a pleasure-loving temperament from its natural sphere into the service of the Church.