THE ROMANCE OF FRA FILIPPO LIPPI.*
This story of the nun Lucrezia and the "glad friar" is cleverly built up on a framework of facts and traditions. It is a pleasantly written book, full of merry talk and practical common-sense. The characters have the advantage of that most romantic of backgrounds,—Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century. They are all real men and women, and " they lived thus once at " Prato under Duke Cosimo de' Medici. Of course various interpretations can be put on the contemporary documents, and on the account of the Prate and his doings that has come down to us in Vasari. That he was a popular, kindly man, with many friends, there can be no doubt. He spent his childhood and youth with the Carmelite friars, and when his artistic talent developed he was urged by his Prior to take Orders, so that the Pope might present him with a sinecure. " Then you will be free from temporal cares, and enabled to paint solely for the honour of God." He followed this advice, with the result, as he said to his friend Diamante, that "here am I, a friar without a vocation, a priest without learning." However, he had his art and his friends, and he cannot have lived a really selfish life even before he met Lucrezia, for " we find a letter written in the beginning of his artistic career to. Pietro de' Medici, from which we learn that Filippo had undertaken the care of six unmarried nieces, infirm and helpless, and that the little they had on earth came from him." If we have not much contemporary mention of Lucrezia, we have pictures of her painted by .Filippo. As our author says of her portrait in the Pitti tondo of the " Madonna and Child," she " must have been very sweet and gentle in her disposition—not, perhaps, very intellectual, but refined and delightfully piquant: the picture shows us a serious face and yet one that is not in the least sad, and the mouth is ever ready for laughter." She, and her sister Spinetta, of whom we hear a good deal, were the "daughters 'of an honest and excellent silk merchant of Prato."- At his death they entered the convent of Santa Margharita as parlour-boarders, and after a while they took the veil. Fra Filippo was the chaplain of the convent, and on the few occasions when he caught sight of Lucrezia he had seen in her his ideal of the Madonna: We need not suppose that he fell in love with her at first sight, or that he laid plans to carry her off ; but when the Abbess commissioned him to paint the "Madonna of the Girdle" (now in the Duomo of Prato), he seized the oppor- tunity and secured her as his model. The result of the companionship brought about by the sittings was a foregone conclusion. The kind and simple old nun who chaperoned them was almost as much interested as Lucrezia in the Frate's merry tales of life at the Medici villa. She was some- times called away, and then the talk changed to the discussion of Plato and of themselves, and at the last sitting they were "made immortal in a kiss." This gradual change from merriment to love is cleverly drawn, and then we come to the chapter headed " Across the Rubicon."
For some time after they left Prato they were very happy at the little town of St. Alessandro. There they fell in with an acquaintance of Filippo's, Messer Leon Battista Alberti, the learned and pompons archaeologist, whose influence was in some ways comparable to that of Leonardo. He was also a great gossip, and there is an amusing account of the meeting in the inn dining-room. When it became necessary for Filippo to earn some more money, they decided to return to Prato. The artist bad an empty house there, and the bold course of hiding the nun within sight of her convent seemed the safest as well as the most practical thing to do. Lucrezia was, of course, miserably lonely, as Filippo bad to exercise great caution in his visits to her. Then they thought of sending for Spinetta. The flight of the younger sister from the convent is capable of another interpretation than that of devotion to ,Luorezia, =hut we prefer to accept the view taken of it in this story. And so life went quietly on at Prato for a few ' months. But all the while the lovers were growing more conscious of wrong- doing. They were bothhonestand. straightforward people, and the more faithfully. they loved each other the more reason was there for. parting. No one then had even begun to think, that for normal men and women the monastic life was • The lioinance of Fra Lippi. I3y A J.'Andereon. London : Stanley I'm' and Co. [10e. 64, net.] a selfish way of escape from the work of the world. The crisis was reached with the birth of the baby Filippino. As soon as he could walk Lucrezia returned to the conr vent, leaving the child to his father. Then came a time of great misery for the artist. His life with Lucrezia was dis- covered by the authorities, and his benefice was suspended. His old friends left him, except his comrade Diamante, and Alberti. His only comfort was Filippino. Then when " the world was dark before him, and he saw not his way," a wonderful thing happened. We have only the authority of Vasari for it, but, as the author says, it is difficult to believe that be could have invented such an unprecedented thing as a Papal brief relieving a priest and a nun from their vows, and making the dispensation retrospective. The part taken in the giving of the brief by Duke Cosimo, always a good friend to the artist, and the happy second home-coming of Filippo and Lucrezia, are charmingly told. Then followed some peaceful years, the events of which were the birth of Alessandra, the completion of the Pieve frescoes, and the decoration of the Cathedral at Spoleto. The end of the painter's life came in the Cathedral in the midst of his work.
His personality is so interesting that many people have written about him. Our author is very warm in his—or should we say her P—championship of the lovers, and makes out a good case for them in the appendices. The book is well illustrated by a number of reproductions of Filippo's pictures.
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