550th Anniversary of the Death of Filippo Lippi

A Madonna and Child after Filippo Lippi. Along the upper right rim: the issuing state "SAN MARINO" and the commemorative inscription "FILIPPO LIPPI"; to the left: the date "1469" and the "R" mintmark of the Rome mint. The initials "M.A.C." of designer Maria Angela Cassol and the year "2019" complete the design below.

In 15th-century Florence, Filippo Lippi was one of the defining figures of early Italian painting. Born around 1406 in Tuscany and raised as an orphan in the monastery of Santa Maria del Carmine, he acquired his craft there - contact with Masaccio's frescoes left a clear mark on his artistic development. Lippi was a Carmelite friar, yet his life was anything but monastic: he stood under the protection of the Medici, worked for Cosimo de' Medici, and was repeatedly recorded for worldly transgressions. His son, Filippino Lippi, continued the family's painterly tradition and became in turn a major Renaissance artist in his own right.

Lippi's work is marked by an unusual combination of religious iconography and natural humanity. His Madonna paintings - among which the Madonna with Child is one of his best-known compositions - appear less remote than those of many contemporaries: the figures bear individual features, the bodies are modelled with plasticity, and the gaze of the subjects is occasionally direct and open. These qualities made him a sought-after court painter and had a lasting influence on younger artists, including Sandro Botticelli, who worked for a time in his studio. Filippo Lippi died in 1469 in Spoleto, where he had shortly before begun the frescoes in the local cathedral - a work completed after his death by his pupil Fra Diamante. San Marino honoured the 550th anniversary of the painter's death in 2019 with its own issue.