INFLUENCE OF THE WIFE
If she, in character the worst kind of wife a man can have, so inspired her husband, how rare and exquisite must have been the influence of Lucrezia Buti (boo´tee) over Fra Filippo Lippi (lip´pee), of Helena Fourment (hel-en-ah fur´-ment) over Rubens (roo-benz), of Maria Ruthven over Van Dyck, of Saskia over Rembrandt, of Elizabeth Siddal over Rossetti! For these women were devoted to their artist-husbands, and were in turn adored by them. Doubtful, indeed, if any of these men would have subscribed to the doctrine that he rides fastest who rides alone.
Lucrezia Buti, who was the wife of Fra Filippo Lippi, must not be confused with the Lucrezia Fedi (fay´-dee) whom Andrea married. Moreover, the circumstances under which Fra Filippo wooed and won his Lucrezia were far more romantic. He was a man whose great talent manifested itself early in life, and, although he had been put in a monastery because his relatives were too poor to educate him, his evident genius for art earned him many liberties. In fact, he was decidedly gay, and the hero of numerous escapades, the most famous of which has been immortalized by Browning, who found in the two Italian artists, Andrea and Lippo, subjects for two of his finest poems.
DETAIL OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY FRA FILIPPO LIPPI
Lucrezia Buti was the model for the Virgin.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI
The adventure of which Browning writes occurred upon the triumphant return to Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici (med´-e-chee) and his patronage of Fra Filippo. Cosimo, frequently annoyed by the friar’s loose habits, and despairing of his ever finishing an important picture that he had commissioned him to paint, caused him to be locked up in a room of the Medici Palace. Fra Filippo stood this for a few days. Then one night, wearying of his confinement, he escaped. The friar’s own pleading in Browning’s poem tells the story:
I could not paint all night—
Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—
… Round they went.
Scarce had they turned the corner with a titter,
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three slim shapes,
And a face that look’d up.… Zooks, Sir, flesh and blood,
That’s all I’m made of! Into shreds it went,
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed furniture—a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them.
Notwithstanding his conduct, so out of keeping with his cloth, he was appointed chaplain to the nuns of the convent of Santa Margherita (mahr´-gare-ee-tah) in Prato (prah´-to) and commissioned by the abbess to paint a picture of the Madonna for the altar of the convent church. It chanced that there was in the nunnery a novice to whom convent life was just as ill suited as monastic life would have been to Fra Filippo had he been obliged to abide by its tenets.