Portrait of a Man and Woman at a Casement

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide, 1983 page 161.

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3 FRA FILIPPO LIPPI, Florentine, ca. 1406—d. 1469
Portrait of a Man and Woman at a Casement
Tempera on wood; 251/4 x161/2 in. (64.1 x 41.9 cm)

This painting, datable between 1435 and 1440, is the earliest surviving double portrait and the earliest Italian portrait in an interior setting; it may have been painted to celebrate an engagement or marriage. The lady is elaborately dressed in the French style and wears a richly embroidered headdress with scarlet lappets. The word picked out in pearls on the sleeve seems to read leal[tai (fidelity). The young man looking through the window rests his hands on the coat of arms of the Scolari family, and the sitters have been identified as Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, who were married in 1436. The landscape is thought to have been inspired by Flemish models. Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889, 89.15.19