Marina Lopukhova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
The “Vision of St. Bernard”, now in the Florentine Badia, commissioned by Piero del Pugliese for the church of Santa Maria al Sepolcro (Le Campora) is one of the most important Filippino Lippi’s works of the 1480s and embodies the best qualities of his style of this period.
The appearance of Madonna to the St. Bernard of Clairveaux was a common subject for the Florentine art since the mid-Trecento. The iconography remains almost unchanged from the polyptych made by Matteo di Pacino (1360s, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence) to the 1520s, when Domenico Puligo terminated a succession of the large altarpieces depicting this subject (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). Filippino’s version seems to be added to this tradition; nevertheless, it contains some details which substantially shift focus of the theological interpretation of the vision and change emotional coloring of the scene to make it more intimate and lyrical.
Thanks to an abundance of outstanding narrative details, the citations made from the Lippi’s altarpiece by other painters are easy to discover. At least, twice its central group was reproduced on the predella panels created in the early 16th century by the artists close to Filippino: Maestro del Serumido (the main altarpiece of the Oratory San Sebastiano dei Bini in Via Romana, Florence) and Raffaellino del Garbo (“Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints”, Santo Spirito, the Segni Chapel, Florence). The isolated figure of St. Bernard on the Segni altarpiece goes back to the Filippino’s work too, so it is incorporated in the sacra conversazione. Furthermore, among the workshop drawings there is a sketch, which combines the sacra conversazione scheme with the scene of the vision, and other remarkable elements of the Badia altarpiece (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 175F).
The minor Florentine artists of the late Quattrocento often demonstrate a disposition to reproduce on altered scale the whole compositional solutions found in the master paintings of the city. Considerable quantity of the predella panels and painted paliotto, as well as cassone and spalliera paintings speak volumes for this phenomenon. One of them was “Vision of St. Bernard” by Filippino Lippi, which also remained relevant for the local tradition after a twenty-year period since it was finished.