Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus to the Rescue of Saint Placidius

This panel showing Saint Benedict ordering Saint Maurus to rescue Saint Placidius, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, dates from about 1445. The Benedictine subject—Maurus miraculously walking on water to save the drowning Placidius—was popular in monastic communities and allowed Lippi to create a compelling narrative of divine intervention. His influence on the next generation of Florentine painting was decisive: his pupil Sandro Botticelli took Lippi's lyrical elegance and developed it into the mythological paintings that became the defining images of Medici humanist culture.

Lippi renders the miracle with narrative clarity, Maurus striding across the water's surface with serene confidence, while the landscape setting shows the artist's growing interest in naturalistic spatial depth.