Comparing a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A detailed Summary of Comparing a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Comparing a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The two pictures are Rosetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini and Lippi's Annunciation. Both of the artists were influenced by their age. Lippi lived in Italy between 1406 and 1469 and Rosetti from 1828 to 1882. Lippi's background of Italian Renaissance determined his style to a large extent. In Florence where Lippi lived the economic changes of the time led to an emerging new class: that of the banker princes. They lent money to almost all the kings in western Europe and so they collected great fortunes. From their riches they could give patronage to all kinds of artists. This gave artists a stable living but did not give them the freedom that Rosetti enjoyed a few centuries later. Rosetti lived in England at a time when power came to the hands of a new industrial middle class who became the new patrons of the arts. They were rich but not as rich as the church or the patrons of Lippi's time. Therefore, the artists could not enjoy the protection of this new class for years. Consequently, an artist had to sell pictures in open competition with his rivals on the walls of a salon or an Academy. This competition naturally led to a variety of styles. Some turned to history or

In fact, Rosetti was a poet besides being a painter and in a sonnet composed to accompany his first painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, he describes in six lines his later work Ecce Ancilla Domini, which was painted a year later. „So she held through her girlhood; as it were,An angel-watered lily, that near GodGrows and is quiet. Till one dawn at home She woke in her white bed and had no fear At all - yet wept till sunshine and felt awed: Because the fullness of her time was near.

First, let us turn to Fra Filippo Lippi's picture: Annunciation. The picture was painted about 1444. In it the modern viewer finds a strange approach to perspective: the setting itself is unnatural and respect for perspective is only shown in architectural setting. Even though, the architectural elements are realistic, the beams, the arches and the pillars seem to have a sole pictorial purpose. No such building exists where walls are missing and we cannot decide what is inside and what is outside. It seems that pictorial rules are subordinate to those of theology. God the Father is present at the top left corner of the picture with several angels on rock like clouds. An other uncommon feature of the painting is the angel looking in from an opening at the left side. In this figure it is possible that Lippi wanted to show us an earlier moment of the story when Gabriel was just coming to Mary. This way the freshness of the lily in the hand of the standing angel could be explained as well. It could show that Mary's virginity is not in it's full blossom as it will be at the time of the annunciation.

One of such artists was Dante Gabriel Rosetti he turned against the neo-classical traditions of the Academy and looked for different inspiration. He wrote in 1901 that "an arti

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Approximate Word count = 1188
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts