Between 1488 and 1493, leading Florentine artist Filippino Lippi (c. 1457-1504) relocated to Rome to complete his celebrated frescoes in the funerary chapel of Neapolitan cardinal Oliviero Carafa in the major Dominican church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. During this time, Filippino also painted a magnificent tondo for Carafa: The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret. Focusing on this seminal work in his oeuvre, Filippino Lippi and Rome traces the arc of the painter’s artistic practice before, during, and after his Roman period, illuminating the evolution of his processes and iconographic ingenuities. This in-depth study presents new scholarship on the inspiration Filippino found in the Eternal City and how The Holy Family tondo–the only known independent work produced by Filippino in Rome–influenced artists from Raffaellino del Garbo to Jan Gossaert to Leonardo da Vinci. Moreover, the essays and catalogue entries in this volume draw on recent technical analyses that had, for the first time, revealed the tondo’s underdrawing and pentimenti, shedding new light on Filippino’s painting techniques. )
