Stoning of Saint Stephen

The Stoning of Saint Stephen in Prato Cathedral forms part of Lippi's ambitious fresco cycle begun around 1452 and completed by 1465. These frescoes—depicting the lives of Saints Stephen and John the Baptist—were Lippi's most demanding commission, and the project was famously complicated by his scandalous elopement with the nun Lucrezia Buti. 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.

The fresco technique demands rapid, confident execution in wet plaster, and Lippi's vigorous handling captures the violence of the stoning with dramatic gestures and a compressed spatial setting characteristic of his narrative style.