Annunciation, with St. Julian

Filippo Lippi e bottega 1460-1465

Audio description of the artwork

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The small panel for private devotion, exhibited in the room on Filippo Lippi and the Prato Workshop, is the prototype of a popular composition reproduced various times in Lippi’s workshop. In the quiet, intimate scene, with the careful perspective of the room, various elements recall the altarpiece with the Madonna of the Belt for the monastery of Santa Margherita, begun by Lippi and completed by his workshop with the intervention of Fra Diamante, to whom some figures closely resembling those of the Annunciation are attributed.

Technical information

Author: Filippo Lippi e bottega
Title: Annunciation, with St. Julian
Date: 1460-1465
Material and technique: Tempera on panel
Size: 73x48 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
First Floor

In Renaissance workshops, when pupils reached a certain level in their training they collaborated according to their abilities in the execution of the works, sometimes making copies of subjects created by the master, which were often requested for home devotion. This also happened in Prato in the workshop of Filippo Lippi, where the small museum painting done by the master in collaboration with Fra Diamante (as suggested by the strong resemblance to some figures of the Madonna of the Belt for Santa Margherita, traditionally attributed to Filippo’s collaborator) was replicated at least twice in the workshop. The two lower-quality versions are in the Prato Museum of the Opera del Duomo (Cathedral Works) and the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon.The complex, refined room described in the panel, with its very precise central perspective, is decorated with multicoloured inlaid marble and coffer ceilings, and is divided by a double arch on a black marble column with an Ionian capital. In the lower part, the quiet, intimate scene of the annunciation of the angel to Mary takes place, with luminous, studied figures. The presence behind Gabriel of St. Julian, whom the palm leaf erroneously indicates as a martyr, might be due to the revival of this legendary saint’s cult after the presumed discovery of his left arm in the cathedral of Macerata in 1442. In the window behind Mary we can make out a dawn garden with trees and a cypress, a possible allusion to the Annunciation as the dawn of a new Christian era.

Other works in the museum collection by Filippo Lippi are: The Ceppo Madonna, the Nativity and the Madonna of the Belt.