Standing Male Figure

Filippino Lippi

ca. 1480 · Soft metalpoint, highlighted with white gouache (some touches of black chalk probably added by later hand), on ochre prepared paper · Drawings and Prints

Considered one of the most gifted draftsmen of the Florentine Renaissance, Filippino was the illegitimate son of the Carmelite friar—and famous painter—Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1406–1469) and the pupil of Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510). This drapery study, acquired by the Museum in 1998 as by an anonymous Italian artist, is certainly by the young Filippino, complementing therefore the Museum's other two major drawings by the artist (nos. 36.101.1 and 68.204). Made with a metalpoint on colored prepared paper—a demanding technique that Filippino mastered with ease — the drawing is datable to circa 1475–80 and it shows an abbreviated handling of the draperies and a sculptural conception of the standing figure that are typical of the artist's earliest career. (Carmen C. Bambach, 1998, rev. 2014)

Artist

Filippino Lippi

Date

ca. 1480

Medium

Soft metalpoint, highlighted with white gouache (some touches of black chalk probably added by later hand), on ochre prepared paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, Harry G. Sperling Fund, and Gifts from Mrs. Gardner Cassatt, Mrs. Francis Ormond, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, William Benton, Donald Silve, William M. Ivins, Jr., and Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, and other gifts, bequests, and funds, by exchange, 1998