Portrait Of A Woman At A Casement Analysis

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
The purpose of the present paper is to discuss a very interesting piece of art, Fra Filippo Lippi's “Portrait of a woman with a man at a Casement”. I will begin by the analysis of the formal qualities of the painting such as the composition, the color, line, texture, proportion, balance, contrast and rhythm. I will then discuss how the work fits a certain stylistic category. I will demonstrate that the painting reflects the social and cultural trends of the period in which it was created.
“ The paintings of Filippo Lippi are frequently characterized by two features: an interest in minimizing the divide between world, image and the presence of humor, both bodily and representational. Although these
The explanation is to be found in the development of the early Italian Renaissance to use the profile as a standard that came from antiquity. This particular standard limited the freedom of the painter, who did not have the possibility to develop the personality of the character, nor the meaning of the painting through body language or through various facial expressions. Judging from this perspective, we understand that Lippi had limited balance in order to express the message he desired in this painting. Since the body language and the expressions on the faces can’t give the viewer the clues which he needs in order to understand the meaning of the painting, he must appeal to all the other available elements such as the dress, the colors, the details, the position in space. “ While some of Lippi's contemporaries incorporated this distancing into their works, Lippi, for personal and devotional reasons, resisted this solution. Instead, using introductory steps and other compositional devices, he tried to de-emphasize the boundary marked by the physical picture
She is inside and he is outside. The inside of the house is a symbol of the private space, while the outside is the symbol of the public space. Living in these spaces, the characters become symbols of them. We notice a noticeable difference in terms of gender definition. The man belongs to the public sphere, where the decisions are taken. The woman belongs to the private one, where she passively obeys the husband. The painter shows that the social role of the woman was that of a homemaker. The role of the man is a lot more complex, as he stands outside, but gazes inside. Reading between the lines we understand that he is a decision maker in both the spaces where he finds