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chapel had been recently painted in the convent church by an excellent master, and it was there that Filippo and other boys, his comrades, came to draw. His progress was rapid, and when he was ordained a deacon he threw off the friar's frock and painted a series of beautiful pictures for the magnificent Cosimo de' Medici. Unfortunately, the painter was inordinately fond of the company of women, and when in that humour he scarcely touched a brush. One day, at a time when Cosimo de' Medici was pressing for the completion of an altarpiece intended as a present to Pope Eugenius the Fourth, Filippo neglected his work so thoroughly that Cosimo caused him to be locked up in order that he might not play truant; but this was not an effectual bar to the painter's inclination. He knotted the sheets of his bed and dropped out of the window into the street, where he enjoyed the liberty which his patron had been desirous to curtail. Leaving Florence and wandering into the March of Ancona, the friar led a free and easy life, and, amongst other pastimes, indulged in a boating trip in company of some friends. He had soon reason to repent of his imprudence. He was captured at sea by, the great corsair Abdul Maamen, who enrolled him as a galley slave and made him wield the oar instead of the brush. After some cruising, the season came to an end, the corsair lay up for the winter, and employed Fra Filippo in gardening. But Lippi disliked digging as much as rowing. He exercised his leisure by drawing with charcoal on a garden wall a likeness of Abdul, and this so pleased the corsair, that he bid the galley slave to paint some pictures for him, Ultimately he gave him his liberty, and finally landed him on the Neapolitan coast. Later on Fra Filippo found means to obtain possession of a beautiful Florentine girl, daughter of Francesco Buti, by whom he had a son, also a celebrated painter, and Pope Eugenius would have given Fra Filippo a dispensation to marry, though he was in deacon's orders, but that the friar preferred his liberty and remained single. It is a remarkable fact that this story of Lippi which Bandello put into Leonardo's mouth and Vasari only in part transcribed, has since been confirmed in many ways. Records, it is true, give no information as to the friar's captivity. But they show that Fra Filippo did not refuse the Pope's dispensation to marry; and they confirm his relations with the chief of the Medici family, his connection with the Carmelites, his adventure with Lucretia Buti, and the Pope's offer to make that lady his lawful wife. In addition to these passages, other incidents in the friar's life have been discovered, which denote that he was a scoundrel of the worst class, and that if he was by chance reduced to the position of a galley slave as a Moorish captive, he deserved later on to row in the galleys of the Florentine State as a swindler guilty of perjury and forgery. Thus the boy who had distinguished himself as an associate of artists at the Carmine, fell into bad courses when he left the monastery;

became entirely corrupted under the discipline of the corsair's galley, and returned to the practice of the arts to show that, though he was still a master of extraordinary skill, he really deserved to be treated as a reprobate. Yet Leonardo himself is made to tell the friar's story as if he felt indulgence rather than regret for the culprit's conduct. The cool way in which he relates that Lippi refused to accept the Pope's dispensation for his marriage shows that da Vinci thought as little of the sanctity of religious vows as the friar himself. He thought more of art as conferring honour on bad men than of the actions which displayed the friar's moral turpitude. Meanwhile the fact that Fra Filippo sinned, whilst Fra Angelico's fame remained unsullied, may be attributed to the misfortune that Filippo passed from childhood to adolescence, and thence into manhood, without the care of parents or the guidance of strict monastic discipline. Separated at an early age from his mother, he found no substitute for her amongst his companion friars. He was then led into temptation by the facilities which the constitution of the Church in the fifteenth century gave to ecclesiastics in holy orders to associate with women, chiefly when serving the office of chaplains to nunneries; and the small command which he had over himself, as well as the bad experiences which he had made, completed his moral ruin.

The date hitherto assigned to the birth of Fra Filippo is 1412. But the books of the Carmine reveal that he took the vows on the 8th of June, 1421, after a year's novitiate; and the regulations which forbade any youth to become a novice before the age of fifteen must lead us to conclude that Lippi was born, at the latest, in 1405 or 1406. If he entered the Carmine at eight years of age, as historians relate, he had the run of the cloisters as early as 1414. He learnt as much reading and writing as the Carmelites were able to cram into him, at the same time that he associated with the workmen and painters who at that time were rebuilding the church, founding new chapels, and adorning them with frescoes. The convent accounts tell us how he professed in 1421, and what was paid to his debit for the frock and cowl in which he afterwards wandered through the cloisters and aisles of the Carmine. It was at this very time that momentous events occurred in the monastery. The Brancacci chapel was finished and consecrated, and Fra Filippo, who had hitherto only been a subordinate, covering his grammars and the grammars of his playmates with sketches, became an assistant to the painters, who were his daily companions, saw Masolino da Panicale and Masaccio begin the frescoes which gave the Carmine an undying repute, and became himself a master. There are clear traces of his residence at the Carmine from 1422 to 1430, and Vasari mentions his frescoes of a Pope confirming the rules of the Carmelites, St. John the Baptist, and St. Martial, and scenes from the life of the Baptist in various parts of the church. His labours met with approval. In 1431 he

doffed the cowl, after having been ordained a priest, and, entering the world under good patronage, he bid fair to become an artist of high rank as well as a respected member of society.

The first evidence of Fra Filippo's activity after he left the Carmine is the picture of the Nativity which he painted for the ornament. of a cell or chapel in the convent of the Camaldoles of Florence, to which the wife of Cosimo de' Medici habitually resorted. At the Academy of Arts in Florence, where this masterpiece is now preserved, it was long considered to have been the work of Masolino da Panicale, but it is now acknowledged to be by Lippi, and it is generally assumed that the predella which Cosimo de' Medici sent to Pope Eugenius the Fourth at Rome was that which Fra Filippo was painting when locked in by his jealous patron. There is no improbability in the assumption that it was about this time (that is, in 1431–1432) that the truant friar left Florence for the northern provinces of Italy. Records show that he was painting in the Santo of Padua in 1434, and it may be that this is the period when Lippi's adventure with the corsair happened. Not till 1436 did he venture back into Tuscany. But then he remained, as it seemed, permanently at Florence, where he produced the Virgin and Child with saints, which long adorned the Sacristy of Santo Spirito and was carried away at the close of the last century to Paris, where it now remains and is exhibited at the Louvre. For many years Fra Filippo was industrious, and his capacity for work was proved in numerous portable pictures. But the struggle for life proved severe, because the friar, according to his own account, had six marriageable nieces to support, and according to contemporary scandal-mongers, his expenditure on pleasure was quite beyond his means. He wrote in 1438-39 to Piero de' Medici that he was the poorest friar in all Florence, and it is, perhaps, in consequence of this complaint that, on the 23rd of February, 1452, a bull was issued by Pope Eugenius the Fourth giving him the office of rector and abbot in commendam of the church of San Quirico in Legnaia, near Florence.

During these and subsequent years the friar's practice continued large; he employed assistants, and in other ways he indulged in luxury and extravagance. About 1459 he took into his painting room Giovanni di Francesco della Cervelliera, who had been apprenticed to Andrea del Castagno, and engaged him for an annual salary of forty gold florins. At the end of the term, he not only refused to pay Giovanni his wages, but swore that the claim for salary was not justified, as he had already paid it in instalments. Giovanni summoned Fra Filippo before the archiepiscopal court, and the judge, in order to decide whether the receipt which the master tendered was genuine or not, put the accused as well as the accuser to the torture. Giovanni, on the rack, repeated his charge against Filippo. The

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friar, unable to bear the pains to which he was subjected, confessed that he had forged Giovanni's signature.

There was little room now for Fra Filippo in Florence. not tried for perjury or forgery. But he withdrew to Prato, where Inghirami, superintendent of the cathedral, gave him commissions to paint several panels illustrating the legend of St. Bernard. He then 'obtained permanent employment, and Prato became to the friar a mine with very productive seams. Fra Filippo worked more or less regularly for years at a large and important series of frescoes, which still adorn the cathedral; and, thanks to his interest with the Medici, who were amongst the patrons of that foundation, he obtained a new piece of preferment and was made in 1452 chaplain to the nuns of San Niccolò de' Fieri at Florence. It was a timely appointment. Complaints of Fra Filippo's neglect of his duty at San Quirico, had been sent in to the Archbishop of Florence, who after many warnings and admonitions had suspended and then deprived the chaplain of his benefice. Yet Lippi's interest, even then, was so great that on appeal to Rome he obtained a revision of the sentence, and the papal authorities appointed Ugolino Giugni, Bishop of Fiesole, to reopen the case. The Florentine curia, however, disregarded the papal injunctions. The Bishop of Fiesole received an intimation that he had not to intervene, the Archbishop of Florence reported to the Vatican that Fra Filippo, in his appeal, had distorted the facts, and Pope Calixtus the Third, in a brief of the 15th of June, 1455, confirmed the original sentence, ordered Lippi to be deprived because he had been guilty of many infamous crimes,' and the benefice was transferred in due course. It is characteristic of the times and of the man that, in spite of these adverse proceedings, Fra Filippo managed to keep the temporalities of the office of which he had been deprived, and in a public document of 1457 he is still called rector in commendam of San Quirico of Legnaia.

Meanwhile, and as early in the century as the year 1452, Fra Filippo had bought the freehold of a house at Prato on the hire and purchase system of annual payments to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova of Florence. On the square opposite this house lay the convent of the Carmelite nuns of Santa Margarita, to which Fra Filippo, early in 1456, became attached in the capacity of a chaplain. An order to paint a Madonna for the high altar of the church was obtained by the friar, and permission was given him at the same. time to take sittings for the Virgin's head from Lucretia, daughter of a Florentine, Lorenzo Buti, who had placed her in charge of the abbess, either for purposes of education or that she might become a nun. Fra Filippo took advantage of the occasion to declare his passion for Lucretia; she confessed her desire to leave the convent, where she was really confined for the purpose of being immured,

and the lovers seized an early opportunity for a flight, which they successfully accomplished in the early days of May.

Prato, it is well to remember, is celebrated as a place of pilgrimage to a chapel in which the Virgin's girdle is preserved as a relic. During the annual Festival of the Girdle in May, at which it was the custom of the nuns of St. Margaret to attend in a body, Lippi carried off Lucretia, who meanwhile had become a nun, and the pair, accompanied by Spinetta, Lucretia's sister, took refuge in Lippi's house, where they lived from 1456 till 1458. But the scandal had been so great and so public that steps were taken to put an end to it. When Lorenzo de' Medici heard of the new adventures of the friar to whom he extended his protection, he laughed and made light of it. But the people of Prato did their best, and although Lucretia had already borne a son to the chaplain (who called him by his own name and afterwards taught him his own art of painting), the authorities forced Lucretia and her sister to renew their vows and return to Santa Margarita two days before Christmas 1459. Little more than a year elapsed, and the two Butis had again left the nunnery and were traced without any difficulty to the house of Fra Filippo, and then it became clear to the painter's patrons that nothing would retrieve his character but the intervention of the highest ecclesiastical power, and they obtained a dispensation for Lucretia Buti, who became Fra Filippo's wife and bore him a daughter in 1465. But the action which rehabilitated the friar, did not improve the painter's worldly position. He was deprived of the chaplaincy of Santa Margarita of Prato, as well as of his rectorship at Legnaia, and his creditors at Florence distrained upon the properties of his painting room at Florence. From that time till 1469, when Fra Filippo died at Spoleto, where he spent three years in decorating the choir of the cathedral, he had to work for his daily bread, and did an enormous amount of pictorial work; now and then he showed signs of neglect and produced altarpieces of unequal merit. But throughout his chequered career Lippi kept his character as an artist of great ability, and though he lost the noble simplicity and sweetness of conventual art which Angelico preserved to the last, it is not to be doubted that he is a representative example of the highest form of painting in the fifteenth century at Florence.

We saw that he had the good fortune to witness the first appearance at the Carmine of Masolino and Masaccio. Vasari tells us that his frame was entirely filled with the spirit of Masaccio. But Masaccio in Vasari's view is always a master who painted in two styles the style illustrated by Masaccio at San Clemente of Rome, in which the influence of Masolino appears, and that which displays its varieties in the later frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel at Florence. The beautiful Nativity and Adoration of the Infant Christ in the Academy of Arts at Florence, which was so long attributed to Masolino