It was a “eureka” moment when a young family member recently showed me his orangutan toy (pictured above). Its extended arms and appearance triggered a thought and recollection of both ape and long arm features in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Annunciation.

Leonardo’s ape connected to the monkey featured in one of Ismail al-Jazari’s Candle Clocks which I explained in a post almost a year ago. 

I sensed the orangutan’s long arm was in some way associated with the Virgin Mary’s unusual extended right arm, but at the time could not come up with a satisfactory explanation until a few days ago when I discovered her long arm, often faulted by art critics and historians, was actually inspired by another feature found in Fra Lippi’s Seven Saints painting, proving that the distortion was indeed intentional and DID refer to the long arm of an ape.

Much of what is known about Fra Lippi is his biography featured in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, first published in 1550 and almost a century after Lippi produced the Seven Saints painting.

While Vasari refers to several of Lippi’s paintings he makes no mention of the Seven Saints panel. Elsewhere in Lippi’s biography Vasari relates an account of the time the painter and a group friends were captured by Barbary pirates.

“Now, chancing to be in the Marches of Ancona, he was disporting himself one day with some of his friends in a little boat on the sea, when they were all captured together by the Moorish galleys that were scouring those parts, and taken to Barbary, where each of them was put in chains and held as a slave; and thus he remained in great misery for eighteen months. But one day, seeing that he was thrown much into contact with his master, there came to him the opportunity and the whim to make a portrait of him; whereupon, taking a piece of dead coal from the fire, with this he portrayed him at full length on a white wall in his Moorish costume. When this was reported by the other slaves to the master (for it appeared a miracle to them all, since drawing and painting were not known in these parts), it brought about his liberation from the chains in which he had been held for so long. Truly glorious was it for this art to have caused one to whom the power of condemnation and punishment was granted by law, to do the very opposite—nay, in place of inflicting pains and death, to consent to show friendliness and grant liberty! ”

This account is generally dismissed by art historians. Louis Gillet (1876-1943) wrote that Vasari’s account of Lippi being seized by Barbary pirates and held captive “is assuredly nothing but a romance”.

But was it? There is evidence in the Seven Saints painting that points to this account, even if it was a romantic notion on the part of Fra Lippi. Leonardo da Vinci was also aware of the story and adapted Lippi’s reference for his Annunciation painting.

• More on this in a future post.