Filippino Lippi

From the very beginning of his career, Lippi preferred to use pen and ink for the inventive compositional sketches in which he began to work out his ideas for a given subject. In the present sheet, each figure is quickly but firmly jotted down with short, sharp angular lines, with depth created by vigorous parallel hatching and a veil of thin wash. Despite the abbreviations, the poses and even the facial expressions of the main characters are fully resolved. The main scene of this compositional study is taken from the Book of Job in the Old Testament, which tells the story of a righteous man, rich and fortunate until tested by God with multiple afflictions and great suffering. Against the backdrop of the Visitation, in which the Virgin accompanied by St. Joseph seeks out St. Elizabeth at the Golden Gate, the figure of Job can be seen in the foreground at left recumbent beneath a ramshackle roof.

Job is visited by three figures, the foremost of which, apparently female, is clothed in a long mantle and veil. She holds her nose to fend off the stench from the loathsome sores afflicting Job and the dunghill on which he sat, according to the biblical account, while indicating heavenward with the other hand. This figure must represent Job’s wife, who challenges him to bless or curse God—depending on the translation— and to die. She is, however, accompanied by two other, apparently male, visitors, suggesting that here Filippino combined two episodes: the threesome constitutes a visual reference to the slightly later scene of the visit of Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who comforted him, sat with him for seven days, and ultimately despaired and berated him.¹

A related sheet of rapidly drawn pen studies by Filippino now at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford (inv. JBS 36B), shows at top a recumbent male in a pose very similar to that of Job in the Morgan composition, two single figures on either side of him, a sketch of an architectural detail at lower left, and a narrative scene comprising a reclining haloed male and two standing women. Scholars have generally considered it preparatory to the Morgan composition, yet a number of details suggest a reverse order, with the Oxford sheet documenting the further develop- ment by the artist of details in the Morgan sheet. Notably, the arm supporting Job’s head in the upper study of the Oxford sketch floats illogically in space, whereas the Morgan study reveals that it was originally resting on a stone block. Job is flanked at left by a devil in the guise of a fantastical figure with wings, claws and sagging breasts that is repeated, and partly canceled, at upper right. In the scene below, Job is approached by two female figures, one of whom bears a basket on her head— presumably Job’s wife and her servant. This reprise offers a resolution to the iconographically problematic conflation of two biblical events in the Morgan study. This scene must have been drawn last, since some of its lines lie above those demarcating the ground below Job in the upper sketch. Furthermore, the Christ Church drawing is extensively pricked for transfer in its lower sections, also suggesting it was the later, chosen version.

As noted by Carmen Bambach, the unusual addition of a crown in the foreground—probably a reference to Job’s former wealth—is not based on a textual source but finds precedence in an anonymous drawing of Job Afflicted with Boils in an album from ca. 1470–75 known as the Florentine Picture Chronicle (British Museum, inv. 1889,0527.19).²

Filippino joined the Confraternity of St. Job in Florence apparently soon after its foundation, serving as its procurator in 1500 and 1501.³ He may well have assisted in its decoration, a project that could have prompted the creation of the Morgan and Christ Church drawings. A prayer in Filippino’s hand referring to Santo Giobo (Job) on the verso of a drawing in Berlin is probably also related to his membership in this confraternity.⁴ Apparently a pious man, Filippino was also a member of the Confraternity of St. Paul in Florence and of the Compagnia dello Scalzo.⁵

—REP

Footnotes:

1. Book of Job, 2:11–13 (three friends visit Job) versus 2:9–10 (his wife speaks to him).
2. New York 1997–98, no. 95.
3. Nelson 1991, 51n49–50. See also the docu- ments discovered by Louis A. Waldman published in Falletti and Nelson 2004, 48.
4. Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, KdZ 2367, dated 1495–1501; see New York 1997–98, no. 96. For the transcription of the prayer, see Zambrano and Nelson 2004, 48 and 68n29.
5. Zambrano and Nelson 2004, 68n28.