(swing piano music)
- [Narrator 1] We're in the galleries
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
looking at a Renaissance painting by Filippino Lippi
of the Madonna and Child
that was likely commissioned
by one of the wealthiest families in Florence,
the Strozzi family.
- [Narrator 2] This is a typical Madonna and Child scene,
it was very common at the time.
We see Mary tenderly holding Jesus as a baby,
and he is very playfully turning the pages of a book.
Lippi has painted him to look like an actual child,
with all the naturalistic baby fat and rolls.
- [Narrator 1] And Mary, too, looks like a human mother.
She looks down at her child,
although there is that sadness on her face
that we frequently see in images
of Mary holding the Christ-child,
because there's this idea that Mary has a foreboding,
a sense of the tragedy that will come.
- [Narrator 2] And they're seated
inside a Florentine palace,
and there's a window behind them
that looks out onto a cityscape,
and then beyond that we see it receding
into this larger, hilly landscape.
- [Narrator 1] Art historians think
that the building that we're seeing outside
may be the Strozzi villa
that was located outside of Florence.
- [Narrator 2] And there's evidence for this
in the painting as well.
If we look at the top left, we see a portion
of the armorial device for the Strozzi family,
and it was three crescent moons,
of which we're seeing two in the painting.
- [Narrator 1] To me, this painting has everything
that I expect of the Renaissance.
It has figures who are naturalistic,
who are three-dimensional.
Lippi is using modeling
to make the figures have volume and take up space.
There's a consideration
for the human body, for human anatomy,
which is especially evident
in the figure of the Christ-child who's nude.
But there's also this love of the material world.
The blue fabric that feels
like heavy blue woolen or velvety fabric,
the translucency of the fabric
that she wears around her head,
the velvet of the cushion that the book leans on,
the carved wood, the brass candlestick,
this embracing of the material world in a spiritual image.
- [Narrator 2] Part of that interest in textures,
in depicting these luxury materials
in such a naturalistic way,
is actually a result of something
that's happening in Florence
right at the time that Lippi is painting.
This painting dates to around 1483, 1484.
Just prior to this painting
you have the introduction of oil painting into Florence.
You have the "Portinari Altarpiece"
that has come with Tommaso Portinari,
a Florentine banker who is in Northern Europe,
and he becomes very interested in Flemish painting,
where you have oil painting that's developed.
And he brings this "Portinari Altarpiece,"
the first oil painting really to arrive in Florence,
and it's a huge sensation.
Artists like Lippi are drawn to it,
and they begin to adapt oil painting into their technique.
- [Narrator 1] And you can see why
Lippi wanted to paint with oils.
Not only the depth of the color,
the saturation of the color,
but the way he's able to render
the texture of different objects.
For example, that velvet of the cushion,
or the reflections on the brass candlestick
in the background,
or even Christ's hair, which we can see in little wisps.
- [Narrator 2] It really is a masterful pairing
of the sacred and the secular,
where we have Mary placed
into a contemporary Florentine palace
with a contemporary Florentine landscape in the background.
- [Narrator 1] Also that blue of the cloak that she wears
comes from a semiprecious stone,
so it's especially valuable.
- [Narrator 2] The blue of her mantle is ultramarine,
which derives from lapis lazuli,
which comes from mines in Afghanistan,
and it could only be mined about six months of the year.
At this time, in the late 15th century,
lapis lazuli was more expensive than gold.
It was an extremely precious material,
and not everyone could afford it,
but people like the Strozzis could afford it,
and they really wanted to put on display
this material splendor.
- [Narrator 1] What's especially interesting
about this painting too is the view out the window,
and specifically what we see there.
- [Narrator 2] The cityscape and the landscape
that we see through the window
is indebted to these Flemish paintings and painters,
where you often see rooms then with a window outside
where you can get this deeper recession into the landscape.
- [Narrator 1] We could think of paintings
by artists like Rogier van der Weyden,
where you have a spiritual scene,
but a view out the window of a contemporary landscape
going deep into the distance,
but where the artist has paid a lot of attention to it,
so that even though it's far in the distance,
there's quite a lot to see.
And that's what we have here.
- [Narrator 2] We're seeing two peasants
that are crossing a bridge,
carrying what look like agricultural tools.
We see a woman in the middle ground
wearing this bright red dress, so our eye is drawn to her,
and she's pouring water into a pitcher.
Further in the background
we see two men who are spearfishing.
Three of the five figures that you see in the background
are black Africans.
This painting tells us a lot
about what's happening in this moment in terms of slavery.
- [Narrator 1] The Portuguese were engaging
in the slave trade in West Africa,
bringing slaves back to Europe.
- [Narrator 2] The Ottomans,
who had taken over Constantinople in 1453,
disrupted the flow of the slaves
from the Eastern Mediterranean.
And so, with the Portuguese exploration of Western Africa,
they begin to trade for things,
not only objects, but also people.
Women in particular were more desirable.
The figure in the red dress in the background
is an enslaved black African woman.
- [Narrator 1] And we can assume
that the two Africans who are fishing in the background
are also enslaved.
- [Narrator 2] And it was likely that there were
many different enslaved Sub-Saharan Africans here
in places like Florence.
Filippo Strozzi freed one of his African slaves at his death
as a way of trying to atone
for one's sins, the sin of slavery.
- [Narrator 1] And so if you freed your slave,
perhaps you had a better chance of getting into heaven.
- [Narrator 2] This painting is really important,
not only because it shows us
a very typical scene of the Madonna and Child
in a very sumptuous way, using lavish materials,
but it reveals to us that there were
many different types of people
living in Renaissance Florence,
even though we tend to forget
that it's a much more dynamic and complicated place
than we usually think of.
(swing piano music)