The Nativity

probably c. 1445

Fra Filippo Lippi

Painter, Florentine, c. 1406 - 1469

Italian 15th Century

Artist

A woman kneels in front of a baby under a stone structure to the right as a man sits and dozes in front of a landscape to the left in this wide, horizontal painting. All three people have pale, peachy skin with rosy cheeks and gold, flat, disk-like halos. To our right, the woman’s head and shoulders are covered with a white cloth as she crosses her hands across her chest. She wears a rose-pink dress under a voluminous, sky-blue robe lined with spruce green. The robe puddles on the floor behind her feet, and one section has been pulled forward to be used as a blanket for the baby. The child has blond hair and round cheeks, and is swaddled in white under the robe. He is propped up against stacked rolls of hay. A room-like space with pale pink stone walls stretches back beyond the woman. The wall to the left is pierced with an arched opening. A trough lines that wall on the woman’s side of the opening, and another is perpendicular to it, just beyond the baby. An ox pokes its head through the opening, and an ass looks across the second trough. To our left, the man sits with at least one knee pulled up. He has long blond hair, a white beard, and wears a sapphire-blue tunic and red robe. He leans one elbow on his bent knee and rests his head in that hand, his eyes closed. A staff with a sack tied to the end rests against his other shoulder. He sits on a flat, green area at the foot of sheer-cut, green, rocky hills. More hills, trees, and a path lead back into the distance to towns along the horizon. The upper and lower edges of the panel are painted with pale pink similar to the building, making it seem that we look through a partial frame at the scene.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 4

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil and tempera (?) on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 23.2 x 55.3 cm (9 1/8 x 21 3/4 in.)
    framed: 27.9 x 59.7 x 5.7 cm (11 x 23 1/2 x 2 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.279

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Comtesse De Lezze, Nice. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold October 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[1] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] The bill of sale from Contini Bonacossi to the Kress Foundation, dated 20 October 1937, for this and several other paintings, gives the provenance as "Formerly in the Collection of Countess De Lezze, Nizza" (copy in NGA curatorial files). It has not been possible to find further information about this collection. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2248.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 107, no. 390, as by Fra Filippo Lippi.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 132, as by Fra Filippo Lippi.

1949

  • Pittaluga, Mary. Fra Filippo Lippi. Florence, 1949: 205, 216.

1950

  • University of Oxford: Catalogue of Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, 1950: 57-58.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 55, repro., as by Fra Filippo Lippi.

1960

  • Brooke, Humphrey, ed. Italian Art and Britain. Exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1960: 107.

1963

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:114.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 76, as by Fra Filippo Lippi and Assistant.

1966

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 108, fig. 291.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 67, repro., as by Fra Filippo Lippi and Assistant.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 107, 646.

1973

  • Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, 1973: 79.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 385.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 196, repro., as by Fra Filippo Lippi and Assistant.

  • Marchini, Giuseppe. Filippo Lippi. Milan, 1975: 15, 168, 207, cat. 33, fig. 60.

1977

  • Lloyd, Christopher. A Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, 1977: 102.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:265-266; 2:pl. 181, as Follower of Fra Filippo Lippi.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 230, repro.

1986

  • Tozzini Cellai, Valeria. L’arte del Rinascimento: Filippo Lippi. Prato, 1986: 170, no. 49.

1993

  • Ruda, Jeffrey. Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue. London, 1993: 62, 63, 71-73, 376, 377, 378-379, 410, pls. 36, 37, 211.

1995

  • Lachi, Chiara. Il Maestro della Natività di Castello. Florence, 1995: 21, 93, figs. 8, 9, as by Fra Filippo Lippi and the Master of the Castello Nativity.

  • Lachi, Chiara. “Il problema della bottega di Filippo Lippi: Nuove scoperte.” In Maria Pia Mannini, ed. La Natività di Filippo Lippi: restauro saggi ricerche. Prato, 1995: 36, 37, fig. 12, as by Fra Filippo Lippi and Collaborators (Master of the Castello Nativity).

  • Boskovits, Miklós. “Attorno al Tondo Cook: Precisazioni sul Beato Angelico su Filippo Lippi e altri.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorichen Institutes in Florenz 39, Bd., H. 1 (1995): 66.

1996

  • Padoa Rizzo, Anna. “Master of the Castello Nativity.” In Jane Turner, ed. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. London, 1996: 20:642, as by Fra Filippo Lippi and the Master of the Castello Nativity.

1997

  • Mannini, Maria Pia, and Marco Fagioli. Filippo Lippi: Catalogo completo. Florence, 1997: 136-137, cat. 63.

1999

  • Holmes, Megan. Fra Filippo Lippi, The Carmelite Painter. New Haven and London, 1999: 257 n. 11.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 406-409, color repro., as by Fra Filippo Lippi.

2005

  • Christiansen, Keith, ed. From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005: 154.

2017

  • Schumacher, Andreas, ed. Florentiner Malerei. Alte Pinakothek: Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 2017: 278.

2018

  • Schumacher, Andreas, ed. Florence and its Painters: From Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci. Exh. cat. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 2018: 216-217.

Wikidata ID

Q20173654

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