Fra Filippo Lippi

Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406-1469) was a well-known painter in Renaissance Florence. His chief patrons were the Medici.

His works include the Tarquinia Madonna (1437), the Barbadori Altarpiece (bef. 1437), and the frescoes in Prato cathedral (1452).

At the age of eight, his aunt placed him in the Carmelite monastery in Tuscany. The religious life did not particularly suit his temperament. Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, says:

"instead of studying, he spent all his time scrawling pictures on his own books and those of others, and so eventually the prior decided to give him every chance and opportunity of learning to paint."

While painting in Prato he became enamoured of a novice nun called Lucrezia. By her he had a son, Filippino, who also became a painter.