Lippi, Lorenzo
LIPPI, LORENZO (1606-1664), painter and poet, was born in Florence. He studied painting under Matteo Rosselli, the influence of whose style, and more especially of that of Santi di Tito, is to be traced in Lippi's works, which are marked by taste, delicacy and a strong turn for portrait-like naturalism. His maxim was " to poetize as he spoke, and to paint as he saw." After exercising his art for some time in Florence, and having married at the age of forty the daughter of a rich sculptor named Susini, Lippi went as court painter to Innsbruck, where he has left many excellent portraits. There he wrote his humorous poem named Malmantile Racquistato, which was published under the anagrammatic pseudonym of " Perlone Zipoli." Lippi was somewhat self-sufficient, and, when visiting Parma, would not look at the famous Correggios there, saying that they could teach him nothing. He died of pleurisy in 1664, in Florence.
The most esteemed works of Lippi as a painter are a " Crucifixion " in the Uffizi gallery at Florence, and a " Triumph of David " which he executed for the saloon of Angiolo Galli, introducing into it portraits of the seventeen children of the owner. The Malmantile Racquistato is a burlesque romance, mostly compounded out of a variety of popular tales; its principal subject-matter is an expedition for the recovery of a fortress and territory whose queen had been expelled by a female usurper. It is full of graceful or racjr Florentine idioms, and is counted by Italians as a " testo di lingua. ' Lippi is more generally or more advantageously remembered by this poem than by anything which he has left in the art of painting. It was not published until 1688, several years after his death. Lanzi as to Lorenzo Lippi's pictorial work, and Tiraboschi and other literary historians as to his writings, are among the best authorities. (WT M. R.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
