Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/256

216 secured him the favour of the Medici and brought him important commissions. In 1482, when he was only five-and-twenty, he was engaged to paint a fresco in a hall of the Palazzo Pubblico, at the same terms which had been offered to Perugino, who had gone to Rome without executing the work. Two years later, he was chosen by the Carmelite friars to complete the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel which Masaccio had left unfinished in 1428. The Brancacci family was extinct, and now that the chapel had become the property of the convent, the friars were anxious to complete the work. The best fresco-painters—Botticelli, Ghirlandajo and Rosselli—were absent in Rome, so, by Lorenzo de' Medici's advice, they entrusted the task to the son of Fra Filippo, who had himself been a brother of their order. The result justified the wisdom of their choice, and the five subjects which the young master painted in the famous chapel are not unworthy of the proud place they occupy. First of all, Filippino completed Masaccio's unfinished fresco of the Raising of the King's Son, adding the kneeling figure of the youth, the group of men under the wall, on the left, and the row of eight figures on the right. All of these are said to be portraits of contemporary personages. The naked boy is the painter Francesco Granacci, then fourteen years of age, and among the citizens on the left are Filippino's patron, Piero della Pugliese, the poet Pulci, Marco Soderini, and Piero Guicciardini, the father of the historian. On the opposite wall, Filippino, following Masaccio's example, combined two subjects in one large fresco, the Trial of St.