LIPPI, Fra Filippo
(b. 1406, Firenze, d. 1469, Spoleto)

Coronation of the Virgin (detail)

1441-47
Tempera on wood
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Between 1441 and 1447, Fra Filippo Lippi depicted himself in an "assistenza portrait" (a composition in which the painter "conceals" his own figure in the painting) in the Coronation of the Virgin. In the left foreground of this large painting, he has mingled with the praying onlookers: a little hidden behind a pious character at the lower edge, but once you have discovered him, his pose is quite striking. His gaze is turned away from the central event and, almost challengingly self-assured, directed towards the beholder. His chin resting on his hand, he kneels there on the margins of this heavenly coronation scene.