Fra Angelico had been unable to undertake. Here he bought a house close to the convent of Santa Margherita, and was appointed chaplain to this community and requested by the Abbess to paint a Madonna for the nuns' chapel. Although he was already past fifty, the incorrigible Friar now fell in love with his model, a beautiful orphan girl of twenty-one, named Lucrezia Buti, the daughter of a Florentine silk-weaver, who had been placed in the convent by her brother, and had taken the vows two years before. On the festival of the Holy Girdle, which was celebrated with great pomp at Prato, the Friar carried off Lucrezia to his own house, where she was soon followed by her elder sister Spinetta, who, like herself, had little vocation for the cloister. Towards the end of 1457, Lucrezia gave birth to a son, the painter Filippino Lippi; but two years later, both she and her sister were compelled to return to the convent, and, on the 23rd of December 1459, solemnly renewed their vows, in the presence of the Bishop of Pistoia. Before long, however, Lucrezia and her sister found the convent rule intolerable, and once more sought refuge in Fra Lippo's house. This time a charge of unlawful abduction was brought against the painter, who appealed to his powerful friend Cosimo, at whose intercession Pope Pius II. absolved both the guilty parties from their vows and declared them to be lawful man and wife. The whole story is a curious illustration of contemporary morals, and throws light on the habits and practices of religious communities of the age.
The Friar's adventures, as might be expected, excited not a little merriment among his friends in Florence.
