Fra Lippo Lippi

Three views of art are presented in “Fra Lippo Lippi”: Cosimo’s, the Prior’s, and Fra Lippo Lippi’s. Fra Lippo Lippi counters the conventional and more reductive views of art offered by the other men to instead advocate for an art that is more realistic, combining the flesh with the spirit and celebrating the beauty of the world.

Both Cosimo de Medici and the Prior use art for their own ends, while pretending to care about its religious subject matter. For Cosimo, giving gifts of art to the city of Florence is good business. Fra Lippo Lippi’s art is a commodity to him, assuring his reputation as a benefactor. He is even willing to imprison Fra Lippo Lippi to finish his work, which suggests his concern is not the art itself but the mechanized completion of “saints and saints / [a]nd saints again” (Lines 48-49). The Prior, too, only uses Fra Lippo Lippi. First, he believes art will beautify his church and rival the art found in the churches of other Orders. Again, art is shown to be a commodity. When Fra Lippo Lippi finishes his first fresco, a realistic painting of the parishioners, he exposes the Prior’s mistress. The Prior deflects from his own hypocrisy by making Fra Lippo Lippi erase the work, and then insults his purpose: “Your business is not to catch men […] / [w]ith homage to the perishable clay” (Lines 179-80).