901 



LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO. 



LISCOV, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG. 



802 



Mr. Linton bag not feared to grapple with the most trying themei 

 which can employ the landscape-painter's pencil. To begin with hi 

 British pictures' The Vale of Keswick ; ' ' The Vale of Lonsdale ; 

 'Morning after a Storm Linton, North Devon;' 'Corfe Castle' (1848) 

 one of the most impressive representations of those noble ruins evei 

 painted; and 'Lancaster' (1852), one of the latest of his larger 

 English pictures, and in its way one of the finest pictures of the 

 English school. Among the scenes from Greece and Italy, and other 

 scenes eminent in history or poetry, which have most served to renHe: 

 him famous, are the ' Italy ' which forms a chief ornament of th 

 Duke of Bedford's English collection at Woburn ; ' Positano," in thi 

 collection of the Earl of Ellesmere ; ' The Temple of Fortune,' pur 

 chased by the late Sir Robert Peel ; ' The Embarkation of the Greeks 

 for Troy ; ' ' A O reek City, with the Return of a Victorious A rinament ; 

 4 Venus and .JOneas before Carthage ; ' ' JEtna. and Taormina ; ' ' Thi 

 Lake of Lugano,' 1838; 'Corinth,' 1842; 'The Bay of Naples,' 1843 

 'An Arcadian Landscape;' 'Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion; 

 ' The Ruins of Paestum ; ' ' Bay and Castle of Baise,' 1845 ; 'Athens, 

 1347, painted about the same time as 'Corfe Castle," and in the same 

 grand style; 'Temple of Minerva at Rome,' 1850; 'Venice,' 1851 

 ' Ruins near Empnlum,' 1852; 'A Mountain Town in Calabria,' 1853; 

 'The Tiber,' 1856. 



Mr. Linton' s landscapes are many of them on canvasses of the larges! 

 siz, and are painted in the broadest and boldest manner, with perfed 

 simplicity of treatment, but correct in drawiug ; clear, though sobei 

 even to sombreness, in colour ; and with fine atmospheric effect, 

 though without any atmospheric exaggeration or trickery. Over all is 

 diffused an air of poetry almost epic in its severity, but in strict 

 accordance with the elevated character of the scenes and subjects. 

 This very elevation and severity of style however, combined with an 

 entire absence, indeed almost ostentatious contempt, of everything 

 approaching to minute finish, have served to prevent Mr. Liiiton from 

 ranking along with the popular painters of the day. Among the 

 gaudy and glittering canvasses which cover the walls of the annual 

 exhibitions such pictures as Mr. Linton's are little likely to attract the 

 general eye, while in the public galleries, where their sterling merits 

 would speedily ensure their appreciation, they find no place. Had 

 Mr. Linton painted such pictures as many of those we have enume- 

 rated either in France or Germany they would have been at once pur- 

 chased for a national gallery ; here, till there is a really national 

 collection formed, Mr. Liuton must rest content to find admirers fit 

 though few, and remain comparatively unknown to the bulk of his 

 countrymen. Being a member of the Society of British Artists, Mr. 

 Linton has of course received no academic distinctions. 



LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO, a celebrated Italian painter and one of the 

 most distinguished of the ' Quattrocentiati,' was born at Florence in 

 1412. He was the son of Tommaso Lippi, who died when Filippo 

 was only two years of age. His mother died soon after he was born, 

 and he was brought up by his father's sister Mona Lappaccia, until 

 he waa eight years old, when she placed him in the Carmelite con- 

 vent Del Carmine, to commence his novitiate. Here he showed such 

 a strong disinclination for study and so great a propensity for scrib- 

 bling figures and other objects in his books, that the prior came to the 

 wise conclusion of having him educated fur a painter, then an occu- 

 pation not in th least inconsistent with the assumption of a monastic 

 fife. Filippo was accordingly permitted daily to visit Masaccio, who 

 was then employed in painting the chapel of the convent, and he took 

 extreme delight in contemplating the works of Masaccio there. Filippo 

 himself gave early evidence of his extraordinary ability, by a fresco of 

 the papal confirmation of the rules of the order of the Carmelites, 

 painted near a work by Masaccio, in the cloister of the convent, but 

 both are now destroyed; he executed also several other works in 

 various parts of the convent and in the church Del Carmine, each 

 work superior to its preceding, and so like those of Masaccio that his 

 spirit was said to have passed into Filippo. All these works however, 

 or at least what remained of them, were destroyed in the conflagration 

 of the church in 1771. 



In 1430, or when only seventeen years of age, Filippo gave up the 

 monastic life, left the convent Del Carmine, and went to Ancona. Here, 

 while on an excursion of pleasure at sea with some other young men, 

 he was captured by a pirate and carried in chains to Africa, and there 

 gold as a slave. Eighteen months after the commencement of his 

 captivity he amused himself one day with drawing, from memory, 

 his master's portrait in chalk upon a white wall. The perform- 

 ance appeared to his master a sort of prodigy ; he immediately released 

 Filippo from his captivity, and after he had employed him to execute 

 various pictures for him, sent him back safe to Italy. Filippo was 

 landed in Naples, where he was, probably shortly after his arrival, 

 employed by Alfonso duke of Calabria, afterwards Alfonso I. of 

 Naples, to paint a picture for the chapel of the Cantell' Nuovo, then 

 in hi* pouesoion, which would fix the date at about 1435, or five years 

 from the time that Filippo left his convent. He remained only a few 

 months in Naples, and then returned to Florence ; and one of the first 

 works which he executed at this time was a email picture of the 

 Adoration of the Madonna,' for the wife of Cosmo de' Medici, which 

 is now in the Imperial Gallery at Florence. 



FraFUippo executed many excellent works at Florence, Fiesole, 

 Arezzo, and at Prato. While engaged in 1459 in, the convent of Santa 



Margherita, in the last-named place, he seduced and carried off a young 

 Florentine lady, Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti, who was being 

 educated at the convent; and he had a son by her called Filippino 

 Lippi, who became likewise a celebrated painter. ' The Death of San 

 Bernardo,' painted for the cathedral of Prato, is one of Lippi's finest 

 works ; it is in oil and on panel, and is still in the cathedral. The 

 passages also from the lives of John the Baptist and St. Stephen, 

 painted in fresco, in the choir of the same church, from 1456 to 

 1464, the figures of which are colossal, are among the best works of 

 the 15th century: Vasari terms the martyrdom of St. Stephen his 

 masterpiece. Filippo has introduced his own portrait into this piece, 

 and he has painted that of Lucrezia Buti as Herodias in one of the 

 series from the life of the Baptist. These frescoes bave been restored 

 by a painter of Prato of the name of Marini. 



Fra Filippo died at Spoleto in 1469, aged fifty-seven; this is no 

 doubt the correct a?e of Filippo, though Vasari, who is followed by 

 Baldinucci, makes him to have been sixty-seven. But that the year of 

 his death was 1469, was ascertained by Baldiuucci in the Necrology 

 of the Carmelites. But Baldinucci and all other writers have over- 

 looked the value of the evidence connected with Masaccio, and have 

 assumed 1400 to be about the time of Filippo's birth, whereas Masaccio 

 himself was born only in 1402. 



Fra Filippo is said to have been poisoned by the relations of_Lucrezia 

 Buti ; Lanzi speaks of the fact as certain, but Vasari merely alludes to 

 it as a vague report, which is the more probable version, especially as 

 his death also did not take place until eleven years after the abduction 

 of Lucrezia, for Filippino was ten years old when his father died. Fra 

 Filippo was buried at Spoleto, in the cathedral, which he was engaged 

 in painting at the time of his death. His son WHS instructed in paint- 

 ing by Filippo's pupil and assistant Fra Diamante. He afterwards 

 erected a marble monument, with a Latiu inscription by Politian, to 

 his father in the cathedral of Spoleto, by the order and at the expense 

 of Lorenzo de' Medici. 



Fra Filippo excelled in invention, in drawing, in colouring, and ill 

 chiaroscuro, and for his time was certainly a painter of extraordinary 

 merit; he must, even without reference to time, be counted among 

 the greatest of the Italian painters from Masaccio to Raffaelle, both 

 inclusive. Some of his easel pictures in oil are finished with extreme 

 care and great taste ; there are a few in the gallery of the Florentine 

 Academy, of which the ' Coronation of the Virgin,' formerly in the 

 church of Sant' Ambrogio, is an admirable work. There arc some 

 chalk studies of hands by Filippo in the British Museum. Several of 

 his works have been engraved by Lasinio. 



FILIPPINO LIPPI, though not equal to his father in the higher 

 qualities, surpassed him in others, especially in general accessaries, 

 which he was perhaps the first to bestow great attention upon, and 

 he had much more taste than most of his contemporaries ; he under- 

 stood better the rendering of mere appearances, one of the most 

 essential, though not one of the highest qualities in pictorial art. He 

 excelled in painting Madonnas ; but his chief works are the frescoes 

 of the Strozzi Chapel, in Santa Maria Novella, and of the Brancucci 

 Chapel of the Carmine, where, besides others, he painted ' Peter and 

 Paul before the Proconsul,' which was long attributed to Masaecio, as 

 in the 'Etruria Pittrice,' where it is engraved, and in many other 

 works. He died in 1505, aged forty-five. 



(Vasari, Vite d Pittori, &c. ; and the Notes to the German Transla- 

 tion by i-chorn ; Baldanzi, Ddle Pitlure di Fra Filippo Lippi nel Cora 

 delta Cattedrale di Prato, <tc. ; Baldinucci, Notizie dei Profcssori del 

 Diseyno, Ac. ; Rumohr, Italitnische Fonchungen ; Speth, Kunst in 

 Italien ; Gaye, Carteggio ineditu d'Artisti, <frc.) 



LIPSIUS, JUSTUS, was born at Isque, a village between Brussels 

 and Louvain, on the liith of October 1547. He was educated at 

 Brussels, Cologne, and Louvain, and at the age of nineteen published 

 ' Variso Lectiones' of some of the principal Roman authors : this work 

 was so highly esteemed by his learned contemporaries, that he waa 

 received with distinguished honour at Rome, whither he went in the 

 same year, by the Cardinal Grauvelle and Pope Pius V. After remain- 

 ing two years at Rome he was appointed professor of history at Jena, 

 where he resided till 1574. lu 1579 he was appointed professor of 

 iistory at Leyden, and took an active part in the ecclesiastical disputes 

 of the times. During his residence at this place he professed the 

 Reformed religion, but on quitting Leyden in 1591 he returned to the 

 Roman Catholic Church, in which he had been brought up, and pub- 

 islied two treatises in defence of the worship of saints and their 

 miraculous powers. ('Diva Virgo Hallensis,' 1604; 'Diva Virgo 

 Sichemiensis,' 1605.) He was afterwards professor of history at 

 jouvain, where he remained till his death March 24th, 1606. 



The works of Lipsius, which are very numerous, were collected and 

 . 'Ublished at Antwerp in 1637, and also at Wesel in 1675 : they consist 

 of notes on the Latin authors, of wMch the commentary on Tacitus is 

 he best, and is very useful ; treatises on moral and political philosophy, 

 and dissertations on Roman antiquities aud historical subjects. 



LISCOV, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG, born at Wittenberg in 1701, 

 ilthough very little known in this country, still ranks high in Germany 

 or his satirical writings, which in their caustic irony show their author 

 :o have had a congenial turn of mind with Swift. Very few particu- 

 ars of his life have been recorded, further than that about the year 

 .739 he was private tutor at Lubeck, where a pedant named Sievers 



