Filippo Lippi - Adoration in the forest

• Title: Adoration in the forest
• Artist: Filippo Lippi (c.1406-1469)
• Date: 1459
• Medium: Oil on poplar panel
• Dimensions: 127 x 116 cm

The “Adoration in the Forest”, also called “Mystical Nativity”, was painted as the altarpiece for the Magi Chapel in the new Palazzo Medici in Florence.

The depiction is a highly personal version of the familiar scene of the Nativity of Jesus in art, placed in a mountainous forest setting with a river flowing, with leftovers from woodcutting all around, rather than the familiar stable in Bethlehem, and with the usual figures and animals around the mother and child replaced by John the Baptist and a prophet.

The forest setting, the finesse of the faces and the technique of “drapé” are precursors of Primavera of Botticelli who was Lippi’s pupil.