Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/178

146 patron in Cosimo de' Medici, who took the lively friar under his especial protection, and not only appreciated his talent, but looked indulgently on his freaks and follies, saying that men of his rare genius were angels of light, and must not be treated like beasts of burden. But Fra Lippo's idle and dissolute habits were a sore trial to his employers, and once, when Cosimo, in despair of ever seeing him finish the picture upon which he was engaged, locked him up in a room of the Via Larga Palace, the friar knotted his bed-clothes into a rope, and let himself down into the street from the window! Yet Cosimo himself and all the members of his family looked kindly on the wayward artist, and not only employed him to paint pictures for their own houses and chapels, but sent his works as gifts to the Pope and the king of Naples. Through their powerful influence, he was appointed rector of S. Quirico, at Legnaia, in 1442, and ten years later became chaplain to the nuns of S. Niccolò in Florence. Among the first works which Lippi painted for the Medici Palace were the two charming lunettes of the Seven Saints and of the Annunciation in the National Gallery. The patron Saints of the family, Cosimo and Damiano, figure prominently in the first group, and the Annunciation bears the badge of the Medici—three feathers held together by a ring. Both of these little paintings are executed with the brilliancy and finish of a miniature, and are among the most exquisite examples of tempera in existence. The same freshness and charm distinguish the youthful Virgin adoring the Child sleeping on the flowery meadow with the little St.