DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0117
LIPPI AND DA FIESOLE.
113
rate many convents and churches in the neighbour-
hood. His life during all this time appears to have
been most scandalous, even without consideration
of his religious habit ; and the sums of money he
obtained by the practice of his art were squandered
in profligate pleasures. Being called upon to paint
a Madonna for the convent of St. Margaret at Prato,
he persuaded the sisterhood to allow a beautiful
novice, whose name was Lucretia Buti, to sit to
him for a model. In the end he seduced this girl,
and carried her off from the convent, to the great
scandal of the community and the inexpressible
grief and horror of her father and family. Filippo
was then an old man, nearly sixty : but for his great
fame and the powerful protection of the Medici,
he would have paid dearly for this offence against
morals and religion. His friends Cosmo and Lo-
renzo de’ Medici obtained from the pope a dispen-
sation from his vows, to enable him to marry
Lucretia ; but he does not seem to have been in
any haste to avail himself of it; the family of
the girl, unable to obtain any public reparation for
their dishonour, contrived to avenge it secretly, and
Fra Filippo died poisoned, at the age of sixty-nine.
This libertine monk was undoubtedly a man of
extraordinary genius, but his talent was degraded
by his immorality : he adopted and carried on all
the improvements of Masaccio, and was the first
who invented that particular style of grandeur and
113
rate many convents and churches in the neighbour-
hood. His life during all this time appears to have
been most scandalous, even without consideration
of his religious habit ; and the sums of money he
obtained by the practice of his art were squandered
in profligate pleasures. Being called upon to paint
a Madonna for the convent of St. Margaret at Prato,
he persuaded the sisterhood to allow a beautiful
novice, whose name was Lucretia Buti, to sit to
him for a model. In the end he seduced this girl,
and carried her off from the convent, to the great
scandal of the community and the inexpressible
grief and horror of her father and family. Filippo
was then an old man, nearly sixty : but for his great
fame and the powerful protection of the Medici,
he would have paid dearly for this offence against
morals and religion. His friends Cosmo and Lo-
renzo de’ Medici obtained from the pope a dispen-
sation from his vows, to enable him to marry
Lucretia ; but he does not seem to have been in
any haste to avail himself of it; the family of
the girl, unable to obtain any public reparation for
their dishonour, contrived to avenge it secretly, and
Fra Filippo died poisoned, at the age of sixty-nine.
This libertine monk was undoubtedly a man of
extraordinary genius, but his talent was degraded
by his immorality : he adopted and carried on all
the improvements of Masaccio, and was the first
who invented that particular style of grandeur and