Fra Angelico (1386-1466) and Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469): Dominican Visionary Artists of the Interior Life
Presented on: Thursday, October 27, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Italian Renaissance
Presentation 4 of 13
Fra Angelico (1386-1466) and Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469): Dominican Visionary Artists of the Interior Life
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, October 27, 1983
Transcript:
This is October 27th, 1983. This is the fourth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on the Italian Renaissance. Tonight's lecture is Fra Angelico, lived 1387 to 1455 and Fra Filippo Lippi who lived 1406 to 1469: Dominican Visionary Artists of the Interior Life.
[Music] That music is from a symphony called Fra Angelico written by the great American composer Alan Hovhaness written about fifteen years ago. Now we'll play more of it at the break if you choose not to come down and buy my cassettes on the street corner. You can listen to Alan Hovhaness Fra Angelico. It is very difficult to present. Because he is a very great artist, and it does not pay to talk discursively about great art, but I will attempt.
I've grown a rather clumsy outline of one of Fra Angelico's angels who is the angel for the Annunciation. And his work is unbelievable, and you can view the original. And so, I couldn't find it in color anywhere in Los Angeles, but I have it in black and white and you can see this later. What is interesting is how significant, for us, becomes the experience of the Renaissance. And with Fra Angelico, an area that we had scarcely paid attention to for some time suddenly reoccurs as an area worthy of our attention.
Our contemporary Alan Hovhaness, who wrote that great mystical symphony Fra Angelico, was indeed expressing the prophetic reoccurrence for a second time of the appreciation of the quality of religious art that Fra Angelico represents. The highest stage, the highest stage of. In fact, for many centuries after his death, after the Renaissance was let go of in the political squabbling of the late 17th century, the 18th century ignored. They thought of his works as junk, as rubbish. And many of his works were literally torn out to make way for new staircases and so forth. And it wasn't until the early 19th century that he was rediscovered. and the rediscover was that great Herald of the Romantic revolution, August Wilhelm Von Schlegel whose illustrious ancestor as a friend of mine from Baltimore. But it was Schlegel who in touring San Marco in Florence came in to the door and looking up was seized by the pale elegance of Fra Angelico. Who's been described as his form seeming to be just a web of lines in a slight trace of color and a flash of insight.
The great American philosopher John Dewey in his magnificent work Art as Experience, written to devastate the phony aesthetics that were impinging upon American art at the time of the first world war, has something interesting to say about substance and form and I in turn wish to apply it to Fra Angelico. He writes, "objects of industrial arts have form that adapted to their special uses. These objects take on aesthetic form whether they are rugs, urns, or baskets when the material is so arranged and adapted that it serves immediately the enrichment of the immediate experience of the one whose attentive perception is directed to it." And skipping further he says, "it is significant that the word design has a double meaning. It signifies purpose and it signifies arrangement mode of composition. The design of a house is the plan upon which it is constructed to serve the purposes of those who live in it. The design of a painting or normal is the arrangement of its elements by means of which it becomes an expressive unity indirect perception."
And then skipping to the point I wish to make, "only when the constituent parts of a whole have the unique end of contributing to the consummation of a conscious experience do design and shape lose superimposed character and become form." So that the quality of consciousness depends upon whether an expressive medium can be engendered to produce the aesthetic moment of integration and unity in the work and in the beholder and in that space in between the two which is the stream of civilization. The nourishing ethical space wherein we create lives of meaningfulness. And it is Fra Angelico who contributed so much to the Renaissance by creating that direct perception of integration and wholeness. Within which all of the major streams of world civilization up to his point flowed easily, luxuriously, elegantly. And he least elegant, least luxuriant of all artists. Ascetic to the point of almost pure naivete through his sixty-eight years devoted himself assiduously to holding up that crucible of aesthetic purity so that the Renaissance could actually take form and achieve consciousness.
And it was in the eyes of his greatest patron Cosimo de Medici that Fra Angelico was the first of the great artists of the Renaissance. True there had been Giotto. True there had been Dante. And it is quite true that there were humanists working like Petrarca and Boccaccio. There was even a wonderful architect named Brunelleschi with his dream. But it took Fra Angelico under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici to bring that consciousness into being. Which when sustained for the next hundred years produced the high Renaissance.
So, we go to Fra Angelico in a spirit of pilgrimage and awe that occasionally the right man does appear and occasionally gets his work done. He was born in 1387. So that Fra Angelico and he wasn't called Angelico, brother angel, until much later in his life. He had a very humble beginning. He was often called Guido when he was young. He was born, he had an older brother, just outside of the Florentine metropolitan area.
And thus, between his birth and the death of Giotto is 50 years. It's a long time. If you were born in 1935 50 years is 1885, it's a long time. But Fra Angelico brings into manifestation with his life a quality hinted at in Giotto. Trumpeted very large by the man's genius. But it was the equal genius and greater humility of Fra Angelico that allowed it to be born for real for all.
He spent the first 20 years of his life in a menial, peasant farming environment. He and his brother largely helping around with family in the village, in the small area. And it wasn't until 1407 let the two brothers decided to commit themselves to the religious life. To become frates (sp?), brothers. And for this purpose, they went to San Domenico in Fiesole just to the northern hilly heights above Florence. Fiesole, little Etruscan village town which had been famous in ancient times before the Romans. Fiesole was an Etruscan settlement when the Arno flowed freely through meadows. That area of Italy charming in its antiquity, not only for the classical world but beyond almost to the archaic realms. The mysterious Etruscans who danced thousand years before Virgil was even born. In Padua, Mantua, in that area.
So, the young Guido and his brother committed themselves to the monastic life. It wasn't difficult for them at all. The only real portrait that we have of Fra Angelico late in his life by his friend who shows him in a red monk's habit of the Dominican Order instead of the black and white. He was encased in red and looking slightly askance. His face full, serious, not solemn but preoccupied.
And the young Guido when he was coming into the order in 1407, took for himself as his spiritual mentor the writings of a woman. Very famous Dominican Prioress named Saint Catherine of Sienna. One of the greatest mystics of the 14th century. Who had been born just 40 years before a Fra Angelico. When she had died when she was but 33 years of age. But her collected letters, some 400 letters and prayers were already available. She was in 1939 declared the patron saint of Italy. So, Catherine of Sienna was really quite an interesting woman, very formative for him.
And the epitome of Catherine of Sienna's mysticism was that one retired physically to the cloister, to the cell, but one transformed oneself so that one retired inwardly to the inner cell. And it was the residents in the inner cell that produced the peace and the equanimity. The peace and the equanimity not so much of an earthly order arranged, but of an earthly order opened to the interpenetration of a divine order. So that the two became interpenetrated so that the experience was rather I think in the terms that we would use, perhaps with a little finality in our time, but the term trance. So that Fra Angelico from the age of 20 began having long serious experiences with inner trance. And in the inner trance it became apparent to everyone around him that his great talent in sketching, his great command in line was able to become what we would turn today almost like an automatic writing. That is to say instead of automatic writing it was automatic drawing. So that Fra Angelico is one of the few great artists of the world never changed a line. Once made it stayed. Never went back and revised painted rather like Sesshu, the great Zen artist whatever came out at that moment that was it. As he said it would be far from me to change God's mind about the direction of his hand.
And so, with the capacity from a youngster encouraged by the writings of Catherine Siena, Fra Angelico and his brother joined the Dominican Order 1407. And it was the worst possible time to join it because in the Italian beautiful floral summer a 1407 there began to be contention as to who was Pope. And two men were put forward. Gregory the 12th was fighting very much to maintain himself as Pope and another was put forward Benedict the 13th. And then as if the situation were not complicated enough the free republic of Pisa nominated Alexander the fifth and it was backed by the Florentine wealthy bankers. So that we had three possible popes. And one of the focuses of this theocratic bickering was in the Dominican Order. And the monastery and Fiesole became the bitter fulcrum of papal contention.
It seems never to have affected Fra Angelico but how could it not have. Twenty years old having just joined the order and then for the next six or seven years to have this papal war. And fought exactly on the grounds where he was. He and his brother were sent to a neighboring monastery, Cortona, for instruction but they were very soon back in Fiesole. Unbelievably two of the contenders to the papal throne died and the third was finally ousted and things began to get back to normal. But this is how Fra Angelico began his career as a brother.
When the new order was established, reestablished it was thought by the new pope to perhaps smooth things over by building a new monastery for the Dominicans and Fiesole. There were several interesting architects available. Michelozzo was not yet viable as an architect. He's another ten years away. So, they began to look around for talent within the Dominican Order to decorate this new monastery and Fiesole. And it was as if God himself had arranged the circumstances because there was the young genius Guido, whose capacities during this warfare had just risen. Until the statements always made about Fra Angelico is that you can study his works forever and you will never find an evolution of his art. He was as great in the first works as he was in the last frescoes in the Vatican in Rome. He was almost like that mythological creature of wisdom Athena, born whole mature and fully armed from the head of the divine from the beginning. And so, he worked for years on the frescoes of San Domenico and Fiesole. And they beautiful splendor of his works. The thin beautiful, elegant line movement. The massing of gold into positions so that one almost had the experience of an icon. And yet in this mask gold, the delicate placement almost like wildflowers of turquoise, blues and vermilions and yellows, which he loved to work with so much. So that in the midst of the static icon appeared this green sward of natural wildflowers. And collected in the bouquets of these colored arrangements were the faces of human beings. Almost as if they were drawn out here in life and set in to transform that iconographic space into something akin to a man looking into the icon as if it were a mirror. And seeing his own face there in the Saints, the angels, but his own face transformed into light.
Cosimo de Medici once repenting of having locked up the other gentlemen we'll talk about tonight, from Filippo Lippi, apologized. He said I had forgot for a moment that artists are not beasts of burden but are actually creatures of light and should not be caged.
Fra Angelico was increasingly seen by the verve and planning of Cosimo de Medici, down in the valley in Florence. And when he began to plan something of his own for Florence Il Duomo was built. The cathedral was there what could he do. Giotto and Brunelleschi had done their work but there was a dilapidated monastery in Florence not far from the Arno. So, he began bringing his personal architect Michelozzo in. And they decided that they could write the necessary letters to Rome and get permission to throw out these Sylvestrine monks who were just letting this building go to rot. They could in fact recreate the architectural space and an elegant grand scale inside. In fact, in their plan, they saw 39 cells. And the one in the farthest northwest would be Cosimo de Medici's private cell in the new building to be called San Marco.
And so Michelozzo planned beautiful arcades and brought in the delicate arches that Brunelleschi had favored so much. And Cosimo thinking to himself what else can I put in there, looked up to the hillsides there in the rooftops of Fiesole barely visible among the vegetation he realized that he needed to have Brother Angel to do the frescoes for San Marco. And so, he sent for him. And in his usual style of carrot and a stick that you couldn't see and dynamic salesmanship and tremendous affluence of dynamic personality, he convinced the Dominicans that in fact the order could have San Marcos. He would make it for them on a grand scale. But the Prior of the Dominicans Fiesole Antoninus, the Prior was a very stable sensible man. He knew the quality of brothers that he had under him. He knew the value of Fra Angelico. He appealed to Cosimo not to be gaudy. Not to lay on the elegance. Make the building simple. Make it somewhat sparse. The Fra Angelico's paintings, his frescoes would do the rest.
And so, Cosimo sensing that he was bringing together a center. Because they most surely understood the painting of Fra Angelico to be the combination not only of the Byzantine iconographic past but also the great gothic aspirational transformative specialty. But also, somehow unfolded in its mysteries the classical Greek form. And so, antiquity and the Middle Ages and the Byzantine and the new humanistic Renaissance all came together in his work. And Cosimo searching for something else to put in San Marco decided to put in the first Public Library in Europe, the great library of San Marco. And so, we would have frescoes by Brother Angel, this great library, an interior by Michelozzo. So, his own personal cell and wouldn't it be wonderful. And it was. It was to coin the phrase, it was a...as the Italians say, amolissimo, too much. It was just the ultimate charm.
Fra Angelico began 1418 and worked for the next eighteen years until 1436. And produced this most splendiferous series of frescoes and crucifixes. And the artwork just seems to simulate there, the qualities of Fra Angelico. And I'm sorry I haven't slides. I'm incapacitated. I'll pass these around later. But there is a gilt explosion of light and within that clustered in the most beautiful pastel pure colors, mineral based colors. The folds and clothing of the angelic orders wearing the fresh faces of those that one might run across on the streets of Florence, if they were young and pure enough. Somehow it began to occur to people that perhaps paradise wasn't so far away after all. Perhaps it was true as the old gothic cathedral orders had implied that all men really need is a spiritual threshold. And that art is, as the Aba Subar in the Middle Ages had said, art can provide that aesthetic threshold. Raising man's sensibility and imagination to a level above the bestial. Above even just the human to that elevated plane wherein he can with the personal aspiration and dedication of the culmination of his life, step with ease on to the clouds. And in fact, in the high Renaissance on the upper apexes of the cupolas, Tania(?) and Raphael and so forth will paint clouds exactly there.
With Fra Angelico spending all this time there in Florence it was only expected that when the chance came to have a new Prior for the Dominicans that he would have been chosen. But then the unexpected, he turned down the offer. He said I have only one dedication in this life. I live in Christ. My being is not human being my being is beingness in Christ and my art comes from the other, through me. I could no more become a friar then give up my painting, give up my work. And he suggested that a friend of his be named Prior and that friend proved so worthy of the spot. So that he was canonized later on in Italian history, made a saint. This development of relinquishing all possibility of human advancement was characteristic of Fra Angelico. And by now he was called Fra Angelico by everyone. He was simply the person of the moment. He was then chosen to work Cosimo de Medici was known sometimes as El Vecchio, the elder.
He was chosen to work on more projects, and he was noted by Pope Eugenia the Fourth as being the only man who could decorate the new papal study apartments in the Vatican. And in 1447 he was invited to Rome. And when he went to Rome the Pope passed on just about the same time that he arrived. But the new Pope Nicholas the Fifth had been the librarian in San Marco. Cosimo always did things right and prepared everything well in advance, decades ahead. And in fact, the Renaissance owes a great deal to the conniving genius of Cosimo de Medici. When we get to him, you'll appreciate his sagacity.
In order to forestall any complications with the political scene, remember he had seen the contest of the three popes as a young man, he left Rome for four months and went up to the little Tuscan town of Orvieto and began to plan a series of frescoes there. He left them about half finished because in October of that year he returned back to Rome and began laying out the frescoes. I think the Italians refer to it today in their travel logs as the Nicolini, the papal studies of Nicholas the Fifth []. And there Fra Angelico brought his life to a completion. He died in 1455 and it is a....he died at age 68.
And it's quite amazing this, this design of architectural space to accommodate a fresco story of course has its origins in Giotto as we've talked about. It has its ultimate Himalayan watershed in Dante. It was reflected in Boccaccio Decameron and so forth. But Fra Angelico in bringing the elements together brought back in with more emphasis than had been previous to him. The sense of atmosphere that the human when it achieves its conscious form is already divine. That what we call human is human and humane in its fragmentation and in its planning. In its design aspect. But when all of the aspects of the plan come together the design element the plan aspect of it dissolves and the achievement of form. Man's conscious integrated form is already in the angelic orders.
And so, Fra Angelico properly named Brother Angel was the individual who brought this to a visual experiential culmination. And in the works of Fra Angelico, we have this quality the Nicolini, the papal apartments, study apartments of Nicholas the Fifth house in fact two lives. Saint Stefan who was martyred very early in Christianity and Saint Lawrence. There is a part of the fresco of the life of Saint Lawrence where he is being given the treasures, the monies, the material resources of the church to distribute to the poor. And Fra Angelico in that particular part of the fresco has brother Lawrence dressed in a beautiful pink, almost like a salmon pink flowing gown with gold stars and gold plating along the edges. He's dressed like a regal envoi not so much of the papacy but of heaven itself. That the angels who come to man come to bring the divine into the waiting plans of men. And if the plans of men are integrated well enough, they will receive the divine. And in the reception of it transformed themselves into an expression of God's will.
This was understood increasingly during the life of Fra Angelico. Remember that when he died in 1455, the great Marsilio Ficino was already 22 years of age. Already within eyesight and planning of Cosimo de Medici. And it was Ficino who would train the high Renaissance, everybody involved would be trained by him. The notion was quite clearly that Fra Angelico's capacities had brought this insight to the notice of those who planned Florence and northern Italy. To those who planned this movement and the specific realization to be had there is that man's planning is to achieve this integration. Not to war among factions of men for ascendency but to bring any particular planning capacity to its ultimate formation. So that consciousness may have a form which is a threshold by which it may transcend and achieve the divine. The paradise is achievable by man through art and integration.
This confidence that this could be done this was not a scheme. This is not pie in the sky. This was in fact rather like in our time the space program, where John Kennedy and 1961 said at the end of this decade we will put men, Americans on the moon. This was saying we have the ability as human beings, not as animals grown up but as angelic orders needing but to be polished. Man really needs to be burnished to become a part of the angelic orders. And it is the integration of his understanding and of his sensibilities that allow this to happen and transpire.
Why else should we put all of the resources of our money and our genius into architecture and painting and sculpture. Because this is the real vehicle. This is the exact threshold. This is the only vehicle that man could produce that would have this effect. And it is really, as one notices when we get to Cosimo de Medici, is really Fra Angelico who as the personal representative of this aesthetic placed into the ethical life of humility which he always observed all the way through. Seemed to indicate that it was well within reach.
The sense then of power and wealth that was coming together in Florence, and it was tremendously powerful. The Florentine as a monetary unit both the silver and the gold would very soon be the currency of the whole Western world. The Florentine bankers would be like the Swiss and New York bankers of the 20th century. They would simply hold the wealth on deposit of whoever had it. All of this would have been catastrophically destructive and had been left to an errant characterless political chaos. And Florentine history was a maelstrom of political innuendo. I haven't gone into it so much. When we get to Cosimo, I'll show you how he ordered that political history.
But it was Fra Angelico's vision incapacity which allowed all of these great powerful lines of dynamic that were being developed and brought into being played with. Toyed with planned with. Had them all converge upon developing art as the saving vehicle, the integrating vehicle. And so, it's not unusual here is a description in a book on Fra Angelico translated from the German about 60 years ago, "Cosimo il Vecchio', Cosimo the elder, who was to have his own cell decides that this also shall be adorned. The subject being three kings kneeling at the feet of the holy babe. Here then was one body corporate yet with many busy hands all moreover obedient to one supreme head and swayed by a common soul. That is Fra Angelico." And we'll come back to that point in just a moment.
Cosimo's cell is to be his Hermitage. It is to be the cell of a saint. One whose life is given over to the gold. The magnificence the pleasures of the world. Yes, his life dealt with gold. The gold in the icons of Fra Angelico is the Medici gold. The face in the midst of the gold is the face of the Medicis and their friends, their attendants. The purpose of that face in that gold though is gods and not man's. This is the message of Fra Angelico.
Yet for all this it is not the cell of an ascetic, it is rather that of a full-blooded man who having embarked on life's journey at one end seeks down to close it at the other. And the notion that in life could be brought together that there is in fact a form to human life. We do not live on an endless journey that begins somewhere nebulous and continued somewhere nebulous. In the Italian Renaissance a life was a life. It had the possibilities of being designed and planned to culmination to an integration where it would achieve form. And the achievement of form consciously was in fact the whole purpose and support of art at this time.
It is thus not surprising that the first great collection of human biographies on a massive scale was to be for Vasari's Lives of The Artists. If you've ever wondered why is such a thing written. Why there at that time. It is for this reason. Because the perception of the purpose of life, the quality of living and the directedness of all of our endeavors to the point of integration and transcendence was now dawning.
...the point of integration and transcendence was now dawning. And it was emphasized that this was an ideal not only of the wealthy or the ascetic few or they artistically gifted but of every man. Fra Angelico's paintings in the chapels, in the cathedrals were for everyone. The citizenry of Florence, the citizenry of northern Italy and of Rome could enter in and tutor themselves through their lives. Adjust themselves minutely from month to month and from year to year to this ideal. Let it penetrate. Let it under...be understood by them. That this was something achievable. And the whole notion of honor, the whole notion of courage and attainment, that of charity, all of the virtuous became recognizable in an ordering of life because of this. So, it is quite amazing that one artist should occupy the exact moving apex finger of that whole development. Fra Angelico.
Now it is true many of the works that we have are ascribed to Fra Angelico and in the critical century between 1880 and 1980 many of the works were found to have other hands in them on minute analysis. But this was already seen by Vasari. Already seen in fact by Cosimo, seeing very clearly by Fra Angelico himself. His notion of art was not the individual artist seeking to egotistically commandeer each work this is mine possessively. His was a transcendental integrative interpenetration of the divine in humans fears. His beingness was in Christ. It wasn't he who was doing this painting. And the motion of his work was so specific. The character of his line. The quality of his volumes. The classical balance achieving integration in form were so recognizable. He had dozens of assistants who apprenticed themselves to him. Learned his style perfectly and worked with him. He was planning great fresco series in Cathedral after Cathedral. It took lifetimes to make these happen. To bring them into being. They all moved and painted in the constant harmony of Fra Angelico. They were a part of him. He was a part of Christ. And it was a movement of the divine coming to the human rather than the other way around. So seriously and solemnly did these Italian men take that responsibility that he was literally named Brother Angel. So that he really was the moving center, the moving apex at this this time. There are so many things that could be said. I wish I had more work to show you. Later on, I'll have slides for you.
One of the peculiarities of Fra Angelico's life and you have to realize now that it's all consonant with the meaning of the man. And when we intend a life of purpose and we carry it through with dedication and resolution, that diligence itself creates the form it would make. Shelley in Prometheus Unbound says, "we hope till hope itself creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates. This alone is life, joy, empire, and victory."
Frangelico in his life, the last two years spent in Rome was in the church which is known as Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. And the reason it was known as that, it was a church for the Virgin Mary, but it had been positioned upon an old temple to Minerva who was Athena. So that the same site had been occupied by two virgin wisdom paradigms. The ancient world and the world of the Renaissance. So that the contemporary when the medieval and the Byzantine and the ancient were brought together in the same building Santa Maria above Minerva, Athena. And it was there that Fra Angelica when he died was buried because his life seemed to exemplify those. Hidden within the folded perceptual balance and unity was the classical Greek purity of line balance of form. Wholeness of integration. all of its petals for manifestation were the periods of the Byzantine, Gothic and the nascent Renaissance coming together and collected into one hand. And quite often that hand at its finest and most elegant would paint angels with the dedicated faces of human beings that one might know.
This one up here coming to announce to that Virgin Mary, Athena the birth of the Savior which was the very ground in which Fra Angelico moved mystically all of his life. Inseparably with it. And in Fra Angelico for the first time in art we find a great series of frescoes put together in high arching volume called The Coronation of the Virgin. And it is Mary being coronated by her son Jesus. Being raised, the feminine being raised to divinity. It wasn't until 1950 that there was a papal bull giving the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Divinizing that archetypal, mythological reality. But 500 years before in 1450 Fra Angelico had already done this. It already brought the ancient world and the Renaissance, the Byzantine, and the Gothic together in one tremendous insightful unity. And posited that though this be a human world the substance of human existence is an experiential flow that can leap off time-space to the paradise beyond.
Well let's take a break and we'll come back to somebody totally different who lived at the same time.
We're sort of involved in doing the version of the old Florentine Platonic Academy up here on Hyperion Boulevard here in Los Angeles. We've been offering courses on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon for a month now. And it's starting to get a little bit of traction. If any of you would like to have some homemade vegetable soup and herb tea after this, you're all invited to come over. We could give you a ride there and a ride back. Or we could tell you directions. Anyway, just something to let you see what's going on. A few people have been there who are here now. And it's an interesting situation. It's a sort of school that would have been very recognizable in 1450.
We have our other artist Fra Filippo Lippi who is totally different from Fra Angelico. Filippo was a character. Lippi was left in... he was born in Florence, but his parents passed away very quickly, and he was left in a Carmelite monastery at the age of 8 to be raised. And I guess he actually at least thought of himself as a part-time brother. Lippi was a toughie. He and his friends used to indulge in a lot of pranks and things. And in fact, one time when he was still quite young about 17 or so, they were in a boat on the Adriatic not far off Ancona on the Adriatic side of Italy. They were captured by some Muslim pirates, and they were taken to North Africa, probably to be sold. And Lippi not relishing this very much decided upon an interesting plan of escape. He took some old embers from one of the campfires and since it was pretty good charcoal, he drew a portrait, full-length life-size portrait of the Muslim leader of this band of ruffians. And he was charmed by this thing. Muslim artists were not nearly so advanced as the Italian artists by this time and it was an amazing thing.
So, Lippi's chains came off and silk scars were brought he was paraded around. And his talent was paraded around and talked about. You know in North Africa this sort of there's nothing better than having a treasure which everyone knows that you have, and they don't. So, you have to show off your treasure but not too much.
But Lippi finally earned his freedom through his art and when he got back to Italy he began to paint and be given commissions. In fact, Cosimo de Medici thought maybe he had another brother on his hands. He had Fra Angelico working over here and now with Fra Filippo Lippi. What couldn't he do? But Lippi kept going off in search of things he felt he needed. Lippi was an essentialist. When he needed something, he felt that he desperately needed it, and he would give anything in order to get it. Wine, women, and song in any order at any time. And so, Cosimo began to lock him in. What Lippi did was he spent two days tearing all the draperies and sheets into strips and making a rope and let himself out of this huge window way off (laughs)
And Cosimo instead of being angry realized that a guy could get killed doing that. So, he told Lippi he wouldn't lock him up anymore if he would stay in paint. If there was something he needed couldn't Cosimo provide for it. So, a little catering service was set up in the chapels that probably should not have been. But Cosimo was an intending to get this thing done. And he was a man of our own heart. He was determined that this was going to happen. This Renaissance going to get underway.
Well Lippi interestingly enough who was a tremendous draftsman. His presentation of figures extraordinary. And it's interesting to note that he also did a coronation of the virgin. But she's not being crowned by Christ she's being crowned by God the Father. Who with his doubled white beard and his massive forehead and long white locks is incontestably in control of the highest heavens. And as one's eye comes down in Fra Filippo's Coronation of The Virgin, you realize that instead of these being angelic hosts playing instruments...usually in Fra Angelico the angels are bearing instruments because song and dance were a part of the ritual of celestial integration. But in Fra Filippo Lippi they're looking very glum as if they would rather be somewhere else and they're having to sit for this portrait. It looks like the cheerleaders in the football team who are fully forced to have a group portrait. And their focuses are not on the interior life, at least not the interior life that we have been talking about.
And even with all the beautiful draftsmanship one can see that where Fra Angelico's emphasis was on the beyond, Fra Filippo Lippi's emphasis was on here and now. So that Lippi is actually the exact opposite. And I think it's interesting to know how many times in history that pairs of exact opposites have come in together. Have been there together. It's like Cain and Abel all over again, that notion of brothers. They were both frates. They're both in the Dominican orders. They were diametrically opposed in terms of their personalities. And their art came together.
And the two of them did in fact a massive painting together. It is the greatest mandala of the early Renaissance and it's owned by the United States and the National Gallery of Art and Samuel Crest collection. It's called The Adoration of the Magi. It's about a five-foot diameter circular canvas. And the dynamic is helped because the Christ child here at the crescent arch of the crash is balanced by a peacock looking back down its own tail. And it's quite interesting to see that both the qualities of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi were blended together. The opposites were brought together on this tremendous dynamic masterpiece painted about 1455.
Fra Filippo Lippi was lived until 1469. He lived another 14 years beyond Fra Angelico. Somewhat younger than Fra Angelico, about 20 years younger. But in studying this great mandala work here and remember the whole idea of a crash(?) was Francisca. He was Saint Francis who made the first Christmas crashes(?). The babe, the manger, the wise men, the animals, Mary, and Joseph. It was Saint Francis' visionary way of making real to the human the fact that God incarnates inhuman (?) comes exactly here, where we are. And in this work, we're able to see that as a combination of the two Fras. That by 1455 it seemed as if the Florentine vision had come to a great spiritual, psychological stability.
The fact is that Cosimo de Medici was orchestrating the whole show by this time. He in fact in 1439 had sought to have the Ecumenical Christian Council, which was trying to reintegrate the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches together met in Florence. And he hosted the whole thing. Fed everybody, put everybody up, made all the contacts. And in 1450 promoted a great confab in Rome itself. So that this work was commissioned and made to exemplify this meeting of the opposites and proving that there wasn't a context which permitted this. And by implication that man was really ready, as it was said in our time for a great leap forward, a giant step for mankind.
At the same time that this painting was being made by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, Cosimo was beginning to think in his mind about setting up the old academy that Plato had had for well... the Platonic Academy lasted for a thousand years. It was founded by Plato in Athens probably sometime around 400 BC. It closed in the reign of Justinian in the 520's ad no one closed it. It closed because there were no more students. The ancient world actually went out with a whimper. There were just no more students. No one cared anymore at that time. And so, it was Cosimo's dream in 1455 to reinstate Plato's Academy. Not in Annapolis but in Florence. In fact, not exactly in Florence but just outside up towards the direction of Fiesole, Coredo. And that's where he began to build this enormous villa. Michelozzo was doing some of the plans.
And it was then that Cosimo was looking around for some young genius to bring back into manifestation, now that man had a direct tie line to the divine. This is a two-way street if we have a direct tie line to the divine, can't we bring those energies of the ancient world back into manifestation. We know how to do it. We know how to make the form. We know how to integrate that form. We have artists and writers and thinkers and the spiritual genius and capacity to do it. Let's do it. Let's make a ritual sacred precinct centered around the city of Florence. So that the divine will bring the lightning of the Holy Spirit back into incarnation. And we'll set the tone. We'll set the pitch. And we'll bring back the ancient civilization at the apex of its Greek white-hot genius, the time of Plato. We'll bring Plato back.
And so, about the time that this great mandala was being made Cosimo was searching and would soon find the young Marsilio Ficino who would do just that. In his attempt though. There are a number of individuals that we must cover before we can get to Ficino. The stage is jam-packed. By the 1450s the streets of Florence not to say the byways to Ferrara and Padua and Rome and Pete, Pisa and Siena were filled with genius.
We have to look next time at an area that we haven't looked at so far, the area of sculptural. Sculpture creates space. Sculpture is a form commands space. Spatiality, the inner kinesthetic perception of spatiality is a part of the dynamic spiritual balance. And the first real great Italian sculptor Donatello, who is a great friend of Brunelleschi's. Who knew Fra Angelico. Who was there with Cosimo. Who was chummy sometimes with Lippi. We'll have to look at him. And when we look at Donatello, we have to also look at an incredible intellectual genius. Because the early Italian Renaissance by this time was understandable, they were not blindly, blithely moving into one of the great eras of human history. These things do not happen blindly. They knew what they were doing.
And there was at this particular point an intellectual genius of the first order his name was Nicholas of Cusa. And so, when we look at Donatello's form and sculpture, we have to look at Nicholas of Cusa's form in ideation. In ideation and sculpture both create space. Sculpture, the space out here which eventually becomes an informed order when we realized that we could make this space into a Palazzo. We could have a human being who would be a new kind of a man. A man for whom the manifestation generative space is the open forum. We'll take Socrates but our Socrates will be the eloquent Socrates of Florence. We will raise young Florentine men to be like the bright cream of Athens eighteen hundred years ago. And we will create not just one forum but will create these Palazzos everywhere. Every city will have its center and Florence will have several. What we're going to do is we're going to instead of encasing it in a cathedral is we're going to take the essential space of the Cathedral and put it outside now. We're going to link this up with an interior sense of spatiality based on a cosmic understanding of ideas in their ultimate order.
So, Nicholas of Cusa and Donatello, sculpture, and philosophy, come together next week. And we'll see that this prepares us to finally understand how there can be such a thing as a humanistic Magus, Cosimo the elder. Who could envision all this in one mind in one lifetime and make it happen.
Well, I want to quit a little early so I can feed you soup and herb teas if you care to have it.
END OF RECORDING