Fra Filippo Lippi. Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, ca. 1440. Tempera on wood, 25 1/4 x 16 1/2 in. (64.1 x 41.9 cm).
Credit Line: Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889.
Gallery Label:
As the earliest surviving Italian double portrait in a domestic setting, this painting is doubly groundbreaking and innovative. The two figures have been plausibly identified as Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari (1407–1478) and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, who were married in 1436. The painting is usually dated around 1440 and may have commemorated their wedding or the birth of a child. The careful attention to the woman’s dress and jewels, and the topographical depiction of the buildings and gardens in the background, seem almost to document the Scolari family possessions.
