lettering IS PERFECIT OPUS. The features are rather coarse and heavy, but scarcely express that low sensuality which his biographers have tried to read into them. The expression of his eyes in particular is intelligent, frank, and good-natured.

III

The Sant' Ambrogio altarpiece must have added enormously to the reputation which the Carmelite painter enjoyed among his contemporaries. It was only natural that he should have been chosen by the proposto Gemignano Inghirami and by the magistrates of Prato to undertake the fresco decoration in the choir of the cathedral of that city, when Fra Angelico, in spite of repeated urging, refused to accept this important commission, his time being fully occupied by the completion of the series of frescoes at the Vatican. In the spring of 1452, Fra Filippo, accompanied by his assistant, Fra Diamante, took up his abode at Prato, and entered upon the most eventful and artistically the most significant period of his career. As we have seen, he still kept up his workshop in Florence, where his temporary presence is repeatedly testified by documentary evidence during the next few years. Thus, although he began to work in the choir chapel immediately after his arrival at Prato, as may be seen from the entry in the Libra delle spese in the Archivio del Patrimonio ecclesiastico in Prato, recording under date of May 29, 1452, the payment of fifty lire to "Fra Diamante di Feo da Terranuova, gharzone di Fra Filippo di Tommaso," his frequent absence and general dilatoriness were the cause of so much delay that the decoration of the chapel was not completed before 1468, a year before the master's death.

During this period of sixteen years Fra Filippo continued to be employed by the members of the Medici family, by the proposto Gemignano Inghirami, and by many other patrons in Prato and Pistoja. In addition to his frequent absence in Florence, he no doubt undertook several other journeys, of one of which at least we have certain knowledge: his sojourn in 1461 at Perugia, whither he was called to value Bonfigli's frescoes in the Palazzo del Comune—an honourable task which devolved upon him as the sole survivor of the three artists chosen for it by the Signory of Perugia, the other two being Fra Angelico, who died in 1455, and Domenico Veneziano, whose death occurred in the spring of the very year that witnessed the completion of Bonfigli's frescoes.

But quite apart from such interruptions in the execution of that superb series of frescoes at Prato, depicting scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen, as were due to professional causes, there was enough excitement and disturbance in the artist's private life to account at least in part for his tardiness in completing the work which constitutes his greatest claim to immortal fame. For Prato was the scene of the great romance of Fra Filippo's life, by which his name has become familiar even to those who know little of, and care less about, his artistic achievement. The abduction of the nun, Lucrezia Buti, by the amorous monk, who was then entering upon the sixth decade of his life, is on the whole correctly recorded by Vasari, and has formed the subject of many a literary romance and pictorial rendering. Subsequent doubts thrown upon it by such eminent critics as, among others, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who maintain that the story rests upon the sole testimony of Vasari, and that "contingent circumstances tend to create considerable doubts of Vasari's truth," almost succeeded in relegating the amorous friar's daring exploit into the realm of fiction, until Milanesi's researches established the substantial truth of the romantic story. The facts, briefly stated, are as follows:

On the death of the Florentine silk merchant, Francesco Buti, in 1450, his son, Antonio, found himself charged with the responsibility of a not too profitable business, and a large family of twelve brothers and sisters. The eldest of these sisters, Margherita, was married off to Antonio Doffi in 1451, and in the same year two other sisters, Spinetta, born 1434, and Lucrezia, born 1435, were placed with the nuns of Sta. Margherita at Prato, Antonio paying the required fee of fifty florins for each of them. Needless to say, the two girls thus committed to a living tomb at the very time when life beckoned to them with all its joys and seductions, were not consulted in this matter any more than was Fra Filippo when, as a mere child, he had to enter the establishment of the Carmelites in Florence. Presumably the two lively, handsome girls had no more vocation for the cloistral life than the pleasure-loving friar—which circumstance may be pleaded in mitigation of the scandalous offence of which they subsequently became guilty.

Whether Fra Filippo had become acquainted with the Buti maidens before they entered the nunnery of Sta. Margherita, which was then in charge of the Abbess Bartolommea de' Bovacchiesi, it is impossible to say. Certain it is, on the other hand, that the Madonna of the Pitti tondo, painted in 1452, already bears the features of the model who, in other pictures, has been identified as Lucrezia Buti. From this it may be assumed that Fra Filippo, who came to Prato only a year after the two sisters, and who lived there in a house opposite the convent of Sta. Margherita, must have known Lucrezia at least four years before she sat to him for the "Madonna della Cintola" in 1456, the year of her abduction. It is quite possible that the love-struck monk used the influence of his powerful protectors to secure his appointment as chaplain of Sta. Margherita, so as to facilitate intercourse with the object of his affection and desire. Nor did his by no means untainted reputation and the papal stigma (qui plurima et nefanda scelera perpetravit) stand in the way of the coveted post being actually conferred upon him in the year 1456.

In the same year, as soon as he had entered upon his new duties, the Abbess of Sta. Margherita commissioned the new chaplain to paint an altarpiece for the high altar of the convent church. This afforded Fra Filippo a welcome opportunity for carrying out what must have been a carefully and cunningly devised scheme. He begged the Abbess to allow Lucrezia Buti, "who was exceedingly beautiful and graceful," to sit for the head of the Madonna; and, having obtained this favour, presumably did not fail to advance his cause. His clerical habit and the great difference of age between the monk and the nun—he was then about fifty, and Lucrezia twenty-one—may have helped to disarm suspicion: they did not prevent the young nun from taking the fatal step which was bound to bring disgrace and dishonour upon her; which, indeed, was accounted a crime, for Lucrezia was not, as Vasari has it, "either a novice or a boarder," but one of the eight "choral and professed nuns" who formed the establishment of Santa Margherita.