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.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY FRA FILIPPO LIPPI
_Lucrezia Buti was the model for the Virgin._]
[Illustration: 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.