Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child

(upbeat piano music)

Voiceover: We're in the
National Gallery in Washington

looking at a lovely little Filippo Lippi

of a "Madonna and Child" from about 1440.

I suppose, this just is so lovely to me.

The beautiful soft curves of the headdress

that she wearing framing her face.

Voiceover: There's a kind
of pathos in her face.

Madonna's so often shown
beautiful but troubled

but her sense of fear
and sadness comes across

in such an incredibly
tender and intimate way.

And the way her hand holds
him back protectively

this is that terrible pointed moment.

Voiceover: And looks out at us too,

in a sort of way saying,

"We all know what's going to happen."

"We all know what this means,

"but look at the price that I pay for this

"as a mother."

Voiceover: A little scorn.

Voiceover: The other
thing that I see with this

is so obviously the early renaissance.

The lessons of the 15th century.

Mary becoming so much more human in

the ways we just described.

Christ looking so much more like a baby

than he did painted 100 years earlier.

Voiceover: The large head, chubby,

not looking like a small man.

Voiceover: Right

Voiceover: But the
artist, here Lippi, being

comfortable with the notion
that here we have God,

this divine figure,

in the body of a child.

Now he's looking down and
slightly to his right.

Which suggests the original placement of

this painting.

Voiceover: And instead of that flat gold

background that we'd have
had 100 years earlier

Lippi's created little
niche for Mary to occupy

So we have some sense of space around her.

Very classical looking.

And then that shadow that
her body casts to the right.

Voiceover: Yes.

Voiceover: So we have a sense of real

natural light coming from the left

casting a shadow.

A sense of her convincing
three dimensionality here.

She's not a flat ethereal figure anymore.

Voiceover: It's really interesting.

She has that sense of physicality.

And this is such an expression
of the 15th century,

in the classical architecture.

But also you are absolutely right

in the way in which the shadow actually

follows the complex contours
of that architecture.

You're absolutely right.

Voiceover: The lesson of Masaccio.

But on the other hand
there's a kind of softness

and lyrical quality to Lippi that

isn't in Masaccio.

To those beautiful little curves

around her face...

Voiceover: Or the
Diaphanes-ness of that vail

is just gorgeous...

Voiceover: You can see how Lippi is

Botticelli's teacher.

This lovely gold foreshortened halo.

Although now that gold is disappearing

and the halo is disappearing.

It's just sort of speckled with gold.

Voiceover: In fact all the color is almost

gem-like with a kind of gentle radiance.

Voiceover: I love that
he's on this little ledge,

like a window ledge.

Voiceover: Sometimes that's been read

as a reference to the eventual entombment.

But she holds him aloft from the tomb.

You know she protects him from it

with a kind of pillow.

Voiceover: Hard to remember when you're

looking at a painting in a museum,

that it's probably been damaged or

suffered some conservation efforts,

that may have not been as good as

we might have hoped.

Voiceover: Well the painting's
almost 600 years old.

And it's gorgeous.

Voiceover: It still is.

(upbeat piano music)