Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/183

1469] and of the large sums which he received for these works, the friar was always poor and needy, beset with impatient creditors, and writing begging letters to the Medici. In August 1439, he addressed a querulous epistle to Piero, complaining that his illustrious patron had not sent him a farthing, although he insisted on keeping his picture, and calling himself the poorest friar in Florence. And since it is his grievous misfortune to have six orphan nieces, sickly and incapable girls of marriageable age, depending upon him, he implores Piero for God's sake to send him a little corn and wine, in order that they may not starve during his absence. "I cannot leave home," he adds in conclusion, "for I have not enough to buy a pair of socks, and if I stay here I am a dead man, so great is the terror I live in! So I entreat you to reply at once, and send word to your house that something may be paid me." In his distress, he occasionally had recourse to the most unscrupulous measures, and, in 1450, forged a receipt for the sum of forty florins, which he owed to one of his assistants. A law-suit followed, and Fra Lippo, being put to the rack, confessed his crime, and in May 1455, was deprived of his benefice of S. Quirico, partly because of his misdeeds, and partly because, in spite of repeated warnings, he never visited his church or parish. Nothing daunted, the guilty friar appealed to Pope Calixtus III., but his Holiness only confirmed the sentence, and declared the said Fra Lippo to be guilty of many and great wickednesses.

After this disastrous affair Lippi retired to Prato, where he had been engaged four years before, to paint the choir of the Pieve, or parish church, which