Allegory of Music (Erato)

Filippino Lippi painted this Allegory of Music as the figure of Erato around 1500. Allegorical representations of the arts and muses were popular in humanist culture. Filippino's inventive decorative sense was well suited to such mythological and allegorical subjects for learned Florentine patrons. The tempera medium required careful preparation on a gessoed panel and a disciplined layering technique that produced precise, durable surfaces suited to the intricate detail expected of devotional painting.

Oil on panel with Filippino's characteristic decorative inventiveness and refined drawing. The musical allegory is rendered with the ornamental complexity that defines his late style.