Le Couronnement de la Vierge

This altarpiece was set in motion by a death. The canon Francesco Maringhi, who looked after the convent of Sant'Ambrogio in Florence, left money for it in his will when he died in 1441, and Filippo Lippi worked on it for years, finishing around 1447 for well over 400 gold florins. Lippi was himself a friar, and he slipped his own likeness into the crowd, kneeling at the lower left in white, chin propped on one hand, looking straight out at us. God the Father crowns the Virgin among ranks of saints and angels, laid out so the scene read clearly for the nuns who watched from their raised choir. An angel near that self-portrait holds a scroll reading is perfecit opus, meaning he completed the work.