among his friends, more particularly to Cosimo de' Medici[1] and Pope Eugenius IV.[2] The latter had offered in his lifetime to give him a dispensation, that he might make Lucrezia di Francesco Buti his legitimate wife[3] but Fra Filippo, desiring to retain the power of living after his own fashion, and of indulging his love of pleasure as might seem good to him, did not care to accept that offer.
During the pontificate of Sixtus IV., Lorenzo de’ Medici was sent ambassador from the Florentines, and took the journey to Spoleto, for the purpose of demanding the remains of Fra Filippo from that Commune, to the end that they might be deposited in the Florentine cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. But the Spoletines replied that they were but poorly provided with ornaments, above all with distinguished men; they consequently begged permission as a favour to retain them, that they might honour themselves therewith, adding, that since they possessed so many great men in Florence as almost to have a superfluity, they might content themselves without this one, and that reply was all that Lorenzo received. But being still resolved to do all the honour that he possibly could to Fra Filippo, he sent Filippino, the son of the latter, to Rome, to the cardinal of Naples, that he might paint a chapel for that prelate, and on this occasion Filippino, passing through Spoleto, was commissioned by Lorenzo to construct a sepulchre of marble over the sacristy and beneath the organ. On this work he expended two hundred ducats, which were paid by Nofri Tornabuoni, master of the bank to the Medici. Lorenzo likewise caused the following epigram to be made by Messer Agnolo Poliziano, which was engraved on the tomb in letters after tlie antique;—
“Conditus hic ego sum pictures fama Philippus
Nulli ignota meae est gratia mira manus;
Artefices potui digitis animare colores
Sperataque animos fallere voce diu:
Ipsa meis stupuit natura expressa Jiguris,
Meque suis fassa est artibus esse parem.
Marmoreo tumulo Medices Laurentius hic me
Condidit, ante humili pulvere tectus eram.”
- ↑ “Neither Cosmo de’ Medici nor Pope Eugenius could possibly lament the death of Fra Filippo,” remark the latest Florentine commentators, “since both had died before him.”
- ↑ Vasari has written Eugenius IV. instead of Paul II.
- ↑ It was probably Pius II. who offered this dispensation. That it was offered sufficiently proves Filippo to have been at least professed.
