Female Saint with a Flail (Saint Walburga?)

This female saint tentatively identified as Saint Walburga, holding a flail, dates from about 1450 and is now at the Courtauld Gallery. The unusual attribute suggests a specific devotional context, perhaps a commission from a religious house dedicated to the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon saint who became patron of harvests. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays linear grace combined with a new emotional warmth, delicate color, innovative compositional devices including the tondo format, lyrical landscape backgrounds.

Lippi's delicate treatment of the female face follows his established ideal of gentle beauty, with soft modeling and downcast eyes characteristic of his female saints and Madonnas.