Florence: Filippo Lippi and Fra Carnevale

This essay, written by Keith Christiansen, was derived from the exhibition catalogue From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005).

Catalogue numbers (cat. nos.) refer to works of art in the exhibition catalogue. In this essay, links are provided for catalogue numbers that are illustrated and described in the online feature. Please use the back button on your browser to return to the essay.

It is difficult to imagine a more modest claim to a place in the history of Renaissance art than that of the Urbino painter Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini (about 1420/25–1484), who, after joining the Dominican order about 1449, was sometimes known as Fra Carnevale.1 Vasari refers to him only in passing in his biography of Bramante, noting that the great architect "studied carefully the works of Fra Bartolomeo, otherwise known as Fra Carnevale of Urbino, who painted the altarpiece in Santa Maria della Bella." Yet, not only was this brief mention sufficient to assure the artist a place in posterity—fame by association—it served as the basis for ascribing to him what are now recognized as some of Piero della Francesca's greatest masterpieces: the Montefeltro Altarpiece (cat. 46), the Senigallia Madonna (fig. 2), and the Saint Michael (National Gallery, London).2 Although today he strikes us as an artist having an altogether different stature from that of Piero, their careers did run along parallel tracks and at important points intersected. We would, moreover, be well advised not to underestimate the originality of Fra Carnevale's art, which to no less a degree than Piero's illuminates some of the salient themes of the Renaissance. He was responsible for two of the most intriguing paintings of the fifteenth century (see cat. 45a, b)—pictures that remain enigmatic after more than a century of scholarship—and if, as a result of archival research undertaken for this exhibition, it is now possible to lay out the bare bones of his career, much remains to be discovered.3 His art poses fundamental questions about the meaning of style in the Renaissance and the manner in which artists employed it both to advance their careers and to define an artistic persona—something separate from the social determinants of birth and social condition. It also serves as a paradigm for the ways in which the Renaissance culture of Florence was transported beyond the Apennines and was transformed into a court style—the precondition to its emergence in the sixteenth century as the lingua franca of Europe.

Fra Carnevale is first documented in Florence in the spring of 1445, when he joined the busy workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi (about 1406–1469). It is not possible to say whether, in moving from Urbino to Florence, Fra Carnevale was motivated solely by artistic ambitions—a desire to acquire the prestige that attended the mastery of Renaissance style—or whether he had been encouraged in this venture by someone in the entourage of the newly installed young count, Federigo da Montefeltro (1422–1482). Federigo, who succeeded his assassinated half brother, Oddantonio, in July 1444, was at the beginning of what was to be an illustrious military career. Although he was to become one of the great figures of the Renaissance—an outstanding military leader (it was on this that his wealth depended), a proponent of humanist studies, and the patron and friend of Piero della Francesca, Leon Battista Alberti, and Francesco di Giorgio—in 1445 he was only twenty-three and the heir to a small state heavily in debt. His position was far from secure, and artistic patronage cannot have been foremost in his mind. His childhood friend, kinsman, and future adviser, Ottaviano Ubaldini (1423/24–1498), had the sensibility and cultural background necessary to spot Fra Carnevale's promise and to encourage him, but in 1445 Ottaviano was still at the court of Filippo Maria Visconti in Milan, where he had been sent at the age of nine. While there he met one of the foremost artists of the day, Pisanello, whose work he greatly admired—at least to judge from two sonnets composed by the Urbino secretary and poet Angelo Galli.4 Count Ottaviano was later to befriend Fra Carnevale, but as he did not return to Urbino until 1447 it seems unlikely that in 1445 he had any knowledge of the young, aspiring artist.5

It may not be coincidental that financial and military ties linked Federigo with the Medici even before he became the ruler of Urbino: His surviving correspondence with Cosimo de'Medici's son Giovanni (1421–1463) —an almost exact contemporary—begins in 1439, and he was soon referring to Giovanni as a most dear brother ("Magnifice frater carissime").6 In September 1445 Federigo was officially employed by the Florentine commune (negotiations were entrusted to none other than Angelo Galli).7 Thus, there is a possibility that a Medicean connection played a part in Fra Carnevale's transfer to Florence. Such a scenario would go far in explaining both Fra Carnevale's association with Lippi—together with Fra Angelico the Medici's favorite painter—and the interest in Medici-funded architectural projects that are reflected in his mature paintings (discussed in the essay by Matteo Ceriana). Indeed, it is difficult to suppress the impression that Fra Carnevale's true goal in Florence was to become conversant with every aspect of Renaissance culture so that it might be introduced into Urbino. If this is so—and it remains no more than a hypothesis based both on the evidence of the paintings and on his later, documented contacts with Florentine architects and sculptors—then he could not have arrived at a better time, for the city was being transformed by the Medici.