Presentation at the Temple; Adoration of the Magi; Massacre of the Innocents

Fra Diamante e Filippino Lippi 1470-1472

Audio description of the artwork

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Fra Diamante was a Carmelitan friar like Filippo Lippi, and was his most trusted collaborator. He developed his artistic skill in the cycle of frescoes of the Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist in the Cathedral of Prato, one of the masterpieces of Renaissance painting. The predella on display in the first-floor room dedicated to the Prato Workshop, comes from the convent of Santa Margherita in Prato and was the lower part of an altarpiece with the Nativity – painting confiscated by Napoleonic troops and now in the Louvre Museum.

Technical information

Author: Fra Diamante e Filippino Lippi
Title: Presentation at the Temple; Adoration of the Magi; Massacre of the Innocents
Date: 1470-1472
Material and technique: Tempera on panel
Size: 26x160 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
First Floor

The imposing theatrical scene was commissioned for the monastery of Santa Margherita in Prato, where Fra Diamante succeeded Filippo Lippi as chaplain in 1466 and where Lippi many years before had started to paint the Madonna of the Belt, leaving it incomplete. It is probable that Fra Diamante brought to completion this altarpiece before obtaining his personal commission for the Nativity.

The sections of the predella show three episodes from Christ’s childhood, in an unusual right-to-left sequence: the Massacre of the Innocents; the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation at the Temple. While the friar’s typical style is recognisable, this work shows the clear influence of Sandro Botticelli and a new complexity recalling the school of Andrea del Verrocchio, which is particularly marked in the dynamic Massacre of the Innocents.

In the Adoration it has been suggested that the central figure in the group of three personages behind the Magi is a portrait of Carlo de’ Medici, the mulatto son of Cosimo the Elder, who became a provost in Prato in 1460. In some parts of the same scene, the hand of a young Filippino Lippi, son of Filippo, has also been identified, Filippo having been placed in Fra Diamante’s workshop after his father’s death. The young man on the right standing behind the Magi with his face turned to the left might be one of the first interventions assigned by Fra Diamante to Filippino, who interpreted it even more incredibly as a self-portrait. This theory is borne out by the sinuous forms of the young man’s face, the softer volumes and the more delicate shading as compared with Fra Diamante’s recognised style.