IN Vasari's gossipy Lives of the Painters, and indeed in most art histories written before the era of scientific critical research, there is an inclination, in the absence of documentary material, to reconstruct the old masters' characters and lives from the evidence of their extant works. Many a charming legend, that was originally suggested by the expression of the painter's personality in his art, and has been handed down from generation to generation, had to be shelved as dusty archives yielded new knowledge of indisputable prosaic facts to the diligent searcher. Whilst the serious student owes a debt of deep gratitude to those who devote their time and labour to the investigation of documentary evidence, and to establishing critical standards for the sifting of the great masters' works from those of their followers and imitators, the elimination of romance from the history of art is a hindrance rather than a help to the ordinary person who cares not a jot about morphological characteristics, but loves nevertheless to spend an hour now and then in communion with the old masters. For him, paradoxical though it may seem, there is more significant truth in many an entirely fictitious anecdote, than in the dry facts recorded by the conscientious historian.

Thus we know now that Domenico Veneziano outlived Andrea dal Castagno by several years, and could therefore not have been foully murdered by his jealous rival. But does not the fable of this act of violence, suggested no doubt by the fierceness and rugged strength of Andrea's art, help the layman to understand and appreciate the qualities which constitute the greatness of that art? We know now that Fra Angelico, far from accounting it a sin to paint from the nude, was an eager student of human anatomy; but the stories told of his piety and angelic sweetness have become so fused with everybody's conception of the Dominican friar's art, that even those to whom the spiritual significance of art is a sealed book, search almost instinctively for signs of religious fervour and exaltation in Fra Angelico's paintings. The stories of Sodoma's habits of life and of his strange doings at Mont' Oliveto belong probably to the realm of fiction, but they serve to explain and accentuate the worldly tendencies of his artistic achievement.

In these instances, to which many others might easily be added, the artists' personality and manner of life have been fancifully reconstructed from the character of their work. Very different is the case of Fra Filippo Lippi. Here criticism has seized upon certain authentic facts of the Carmelite friar's life and amorous adventures—facts that in their main current have been established beyond the possibility of dispute, even though they have been embroidered upon by imaginative pens—and has dealt with his art in the light of that knowledge, reading into his paintings not only his artistic emotions, but his personal desires and passions. Only thus can it be explained that generation after generation of writers on art have misconstrued the exquisite and touching innocence and virgin purity of his Madonna type into an expression of sensuality. Again and again we read about the pronounced worldliness of Fra Filippo's religious paintings, about their lack of spiritual significance and devout feeling.

Vasari, of course, is the fountain-head of this misconception of the Carmelite's art. According to the Aretine biographer, "it was said that Fra Filippo was much addicted to the pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination might at the moment be predominant, but if he could by no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object which had attracted his attention in his paintings, and endeavour by discoursing and reasoning with himself to diminish the violence of his inclination. It was known that, while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works undertaken by him received little or none of his attention."

It so happens that many of the discreditable incidents of the friar's life, recorded by Vasari, have been confirmed by documentary evidence. There is not a shadow of doubt that Fra Filippo did abduct the nun Lucrezia Buti from her convent; that Filippino Lippi was the offspring of this illicit union; and that the Frate subsequently did not avail himself of the special papal dispensation to wed the nun. There is also abundant proof to show that Fra Filippo, in spite of the high esteem in which he was held as an artist, and which caused him to be entrusted with many a remunerative commission, was for ever in financial straits, was involved in many vexatious law cases, attempted to cheat his own assistants, and had no hesitation to break faith with his patrons. But all this does not affect his art. To read sensuality into his types of womanhood can only be the result of prejudice, of approaching his pictures in the light of the knowledge gathered from the pages of the chroniclers. Worldly he is compared with the pure, exalted spirituality of the Dominican Fra Angelico, but only in so far as he belonged already to the new era which had discovered, and revelled in, the visible beauty of this world of ours, whilst Fra Angelico, his contemporary, still belongs to the earlier age that looked to the empyrean for all true happiness. The art of both masters is planted in Gothic soil, though it bore different fruit, that of Fra Angelico being still essentially Gothic, though often tinged with a Renaissance flavour, whilst that of Fra Filippo has all the richness and fullness of the Renaissance, of which he was one of the great initiators.

That such conceptions as the Virgin in National Gallery "Annunciation," or the lovely Madonna in the tondo at the Palazzo Pitti, and many other authentic works by the master, are lacking in spirituality of expression, cannot be seriously maintained by anybody who approaches these pictures with an open mind and judges the artist by his achievement, not by his manner of life. Even Mr. Berenson, the most authoritative modern critic of Italian art, denies Fra Filippo a "profound sense of either material or spiritual significance—the essential qualifications of the real artist," although he admits in the same essay1 that "his real place is with the genre painters, only his genre was that of the soul, as that of others—of Benozzo Gozzoli, for example—was of the body." Browning, with the true poet's intuition, states the case of Fra Filippo more clearly than the vast majority of professional critics from Vasari to the present day, when he makes the friar exclaim: