The Cleveland Museum of Art is shining new light on Filippino Lippi, the Florentine painter whose Roman years profoundly changed his artistic language. Bringing together 20 exceptional works, including the artist’s only independent Roman tondo, the exhibition reveals how antiquities, powerful patrons, and the creative energy of the Eternal City reshaped one of the Renaissance’s most inventive minds.
Running through February 22nd, 2026, this focused presentation centers on The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret, a monumental tondo representing the only independent work Filippino created during his five-year Roman sojourn.
Why Filippino Lippi was sent to Rome and how it changed everything
Lorenzo de’ Medici orchestrated one of the most consequential relocations in Renaissance art history when he sent Filippino Lippi to Rome in 1488. The painter, in his thirties, was already revered throughout Tuscany and was busy decorating the Strozzi family chapel in Florence when Cardinal Oliviero Carafa requested his services. Carafa wanted frescoes for his chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a commission that occupied Filippino for five years.
During the winter months, when fresco painting was impractical, Filippino accepted another commission from his powerful patron. The result was The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret, an exquisite circular painting measuring 153 centimeters in diameter. This tondo format was uniquely Florentine and technically demanding, requiring artists to arrange multiple figures within a circular composition.
A tondo that blends virtuosity, symbolism, and spiritual intensity
As you walk up to the painting, you notice how Filippino mastered the challenge that his father, Filippo Lippi, and his teacher, Botticelli, had grappled with before him. The Virgin holds the Christ Child on her knee, and Saint Margaret cradles the young John the Baptist, who reaches toward Christ. Saint Joseph sits separately on the left, partially obscured by the Virgin’s drapery and separated by an ancient column. He is your entry point into the composition, gazing at the sacred group with serene contemplation.
The objects on the parapet appear close enough to touch. Filippino painstakingly captures the weave of a reed basket, influenced by Northern European devotional paintings. Between the basket and a small oval box lies an open book whose text hovers between legibility and illegibility. The characters resemble Latin words, but do not quite form them. This is a unique feature among all of Filippino’s known works.
Hidden messages for cardinal Carafa: theology, power, and politics
Cardinal Carafa is embedded throughout this painting. A proud theologian who claimed Thomas Aquinas as an ancestor, Carafa used an open book as a personal symbol. However, he also served as admiral of the papal navy, and the painting hints at his military career. Saint Margaret hails from the coast of Asia Minor, where Carafa laid siege in 1472 and returned with Ottoman prisoners. The hunched figures carved into the column capital are thought to represent those captives.
The column itself displays reliefs of arms and armor, referencing Ephesians, where believers are told to wear the “armor of God,” complete with the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith. Filippino painted the column to resemble a ruin, complete with chipped pieces and vegetation growing on the capital. This suggests that Christ rises from the ashes of paganism. He likely based this on specific ancient Roman architecture.
How ancient ruins and rediscovered murals rewired Filippino’s style
Rome had far more antiquities than Florence. Around 1480, after a teenager fell into Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea by accident, the Eternal City became a pilgrimage site for artists. Filippino filled sketchbooks with records of the architecture, sculptures, and murals that he found underground. He transformed a sketch of an ancient Venus sculpture into a template for holy women, including Saint Margaret in this tondo.
His Roman years became the fulcrum of his career. He began incorporating decorative elements from antiquity, pulling principal figures closer to the foreground and drawing inspiration from ancient reliefs on sarcophagi. This painting balances intricate still-life elements in the foreground with monumental sacred figures in the background, filled out by figures of varying sizes, with the Madonna dwarfing the others.
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Luxury, lapis lazuli, and the visual splendor of the Renaissance
Fabric was central to Florence’s economy, and Filippino recognized quality silk. Painting it well created an impression of wealth and magnificence that Carafa eagerly sought. Lapis lazuli, imported from the Middle East at a cost exceeding that of gold, usually appeared only on the Virgin’s mantle. Here, however, it covers everything, even the background roofs and sky. The voluminous, jewel-toned fabrics cast deep shadows that are sculptural and craggy, like mountains, which gives the figures tremendous weight.
Filippino departs from ancient traditions in which fabric clung to bodies or accentuated muscles. Except for Christ, who wears a diaphanous veil, you cannot discern anyone’s physique. This veil demonstrates extraordinary delicacy, glinting like soap bubbles with an opalescent halo. Observe how it ascends from the half-open box on the parapet, passes the reed cross, and encircles Christ. The Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection appear in one vertical line that continues upward and becomes the Madonna’s veil.
Filippino’s radical spatial techniques that influenced Raphael
Filippino’s strong lines, influenced by Botticelli, indicate and collapse space simultaneously. Look closely at the Virgin’s hand reaching over John the Baptist’s shoulder. You can see a clearly defined border between her index finger and Christ’s pinkie, but you cannot tell if they are touching or hovering apart. No one in the painting touches Christ directly; he is always separated by veils or ambiguous space. The children’s faces overlap without actually touching; the line that defines Christ’s cheek also defines John the Baptist’s nose.
Though not the first to depict children with overlapping faces, Filippino’s unique spatial technique was adopted by Raphael and other prominent Florentine artists. The painting itself did not travel to Florence, but Filippino’s preparatory cartoons did, spreading the influence of this motif. After the Carafa commission, upon returning to Florence, Filippino counted Leonardo da Vinci as a peer and took over three of Leonardo’s commissions when Leonardo moved to Milan.
The Tondo’s extraordinary journey from Italy to Ohio
The painting’s journey to Ohio was dramatic. After spending most of its life in the Carafa collections in Rome and Naples, it was acquired around 1900 by Susan Cornelia Clarke, a Boston socialite and philanthropist whose collecting fervor was second only to that of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Everyone assumed Clarke would donate it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. However, her children were concerned about the gallery conditions there and tried to give it to Isabella Stewart Gardner, an avid Filippino Lippi fan. However, Gardner had already finalized her museum’s arrangement and tearfully declined because the tondo was too magnificent to simply slot in.
Dealer Joseph Duveen expressed interest in the painting, sending coded telegrams to his London office. However, Clarke’s heirs insisted that the painting remain on public display under suitable conditions. In 1929, the Cleveland Museum of Art emerged as the surprise winner. The institution now presents the painting alongside 20 other paintings, drawings, and antiquities that trace Filippino’s artistic evolution before, during, and after his time in Rome.
The Filippino Lippi and Rome exhibition reunites related artworks for the first time, including numerous paintings with their preparatory studies. This careful selection illuminates how Rome fundamentally altered Filippino’s artistic practice. Visitors can trace the arc of his career across time and media, discovering the artistic processes and iconographic innovations of a preeminent Renaissance painter. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s tondo is the most significant work by Filippino outside of Europe.
