Wounded centaur, by Italian painter Filippino Lippi (1485 ca.), now in the collections of Christ Ch
Wounded centaur, by Italian painter Filippino Lippi (1485 ca.), now in the collections of Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, EnglandFilipino Lippi (Prato, Tuscany April 1457 – Florence, April 1504), a close friend and collaborator of Botticelli, belonged to a generation of Florentine painters who established a new way of painting.The subject matter of this painting (in egg tempera and oil on wood) seems to derive from the Roman writer Ovid (Fasti, Book V) in which he tells the story of the centaur Chiron, who fatally wounded himself while inspecting the arrows of Hercules tainted by the poison of the Hydra.This painting offers a variant of that story in that the centaur is presumably examining the quiver of Cupid, seen reclining beneath the rocks behind, and Lippi may have intended to depict an allegory on the dangers of playing with love. The evidence of this is the attitude of the centaur who, far from be annoyed by the wound, observes with curiosity the arrows in the quiver decorated with gold and with a string ending in fluttering tassels creating sinuous curves, in the most typical style of the artist. The classical subject matter and anatomically correct torso of the centaur are consistent with the Renaissance ideals of late fifteenth-century Florence. Another important feature is the landscape in which the scene is set. The geological formation of the cave and the reflections in the water reveal the growing interest of the artists of the time in nature.The work entered the art collection of Christ Church College in 1834 with the Fox-Strangways donation. -- source link