Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie et un saint évangéliste

This early painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and a saint evangelist, dated about 1425 and now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, is among the earliest works attributed to Lippi. At this date the young friar was still absorbing the revolutionary example of Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel frescoes in his own Carmelite church, which would transform his approach to painting. Characteristic of Lippi's approach, the work displays elegant linear grace, tender humanity, lyrical Madonna types, decorative refinement.

The stiff, somewhat archaic treatment of the figures reveals Lippi's apprentice-level grasp of the new Masacciesque naturalism, with residual Gothic conventions in the gold ground and formal poses.