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Secondary sourcePaintingc. 1445-1450

Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus to the Rescue of Saint Placidus

Filippo Lippi · c. 1445-1450

A tempera panel by Fra Filippo Lippi showing Benedict sending the monk Maurus to rescue young Placidus, a famous episode from Benedict's legend.

Shows Benedict as the authoritative founder directing his monks, illustrating a famous legend about him.

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Painting of a red-columned arcade. On the left, a white-robed monk with a halo kneels in an alcove, hands raised. Center, another white-robed monk kneels in an alcove, hands clasped. Right, a robed figure reaches toward a small haloed figure standing in a blue pool beneath green trees.
Fra Filippo Lippi, Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus to the Rescue of Saint Placidus, c. 1445-1450. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

About this source

What it is

This small tempera-on-panel painting was made by the Italian artist Filippo Lippi around the mid-1400s. It shows an episode from the life of Saint Benedict: he orders the monk Maurus to save the boy Placidus, who has fallen into water. The panel is now kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Why it matters

The painting was made almost a thousand years after Benedict lived, so it does not show real events as witnessed at the time. Instead it shows how later Christians, including Lippi and whoever commissioned the painting, imagined and celebrated stories about Benedict's miracles and authority as founder of monastic life.

Look closer

  • What details tell you this is a religious scene rather than an everyday one?
  • Why might an artist choose this particular story to paint?
  • What does the painting leave out about who Benedict really was?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Saint Benedict on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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