Pair of Panels from a Triptych: The Archangel Michael and St. Anthony Abbot (1458): Art, History and Details

Pair of Panels from a Triptych: The Archangel Michael and St. Anthony Abbot (1458) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Fra Filippo Lippi (Italian, c. 1406–1469).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

These panels depicting Saints Anthony the Abbot and Michael originally flanked a central scene of the Madonna and Child with Angels, now lost, to form a triptych. Giovanni di Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence commissioned the ensemble in 1457 as a diplomatic gift to Alfonso V of Aragon. Fra Filippo Lippi, a Carmelite friar and one of the great masters of early Renaissance Florence, depicted realistic, weighty figures in a three-dimensional space using a system of linear perspective, inspired partly by Masaccio’s Brancacci Chapel, and reflected in the background architecture. Saint Anthony the Abbot rejected all earthly possessions in pursuit of a contemplative life in the desert. He is generally regarded as the founder of monasticism and is depicted wearing a monk’s habit. Saint Michael’s sword, shield, and exquisitely bejeweled armor celebrate his role as heaven’s defender against evil.

Object facts

• Title: Pair of Panels from a Triptych: The Archangel Michael and St. Anthony Abbot
• Date: 1458
• Creator attribution: Fra Filippo Lippi (Italian, c. 1406–1469)
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Painting
• Technique: tempera on wood panel
• Dimensions: Framed: 94 x 40 x 6.5 cm (37 x 15 3/4 x 2 9/16 in.); Unframed: 81.3 x 29.8 x 3 cm (32 x 11 3/4 x 1 3/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1964.150

A detail from the museum

Saint Michael's opulent appearance reflects the wealth and status of both the patron and the recipient of these paintings.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Leone de Castris, Pierluigi. La pittura del Quattrocento a Napoli: 1400-1458: da Ladislao D'Angiò-Durazzo ad Alfonso D'Aragona. London: Artem (2020).
• Quesada, Francesc Ruiz. "Els primers Trastàmara. In La legitimació mariana d'un llinatge." Capitula facta et firmata: Inquietuds artístiques en el quatre-cents, p. 93. Valls: Cossetània Edicions, 2011.
• Brockwell, Maurice W. et al. A Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the National Loan Exhibition in Aid of National Gallery Funds Held in the Grafton Galleries, London. London: William Heinemann, 1909.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.