Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/265

1504] Fra Bartolommeo. He did, however, succeed in completing one large altar-piece, the Adoration of the Magi, for which Leonardo had received a commission from the monks of S. Donato, in the year 1481, but which he had never finished. Filippino's picture contains as many as thirty figures, among whom are several portraits of the Medici. In the young king, who is in the act of taking his gift in his hand, while a page removes his crown, we recognise Giovanni di Pier Francesco, who became the third husband of Caterina Sforza, the famous Madonna of Forli, and was the father of the bold Condottiere, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. As usual in Filippino's works, the figures are noble and life-like, but the tendency to overload them with ornament becomes more apparent, and there are evident signs of haste in the execution. On the back of the panel we read the inscription: "Filippus me pinxit de Lipio Florentinus ad dì 29, di Marzo, 1496."

The next year, Filippino, who was now forty years of age, married Maddalena dei Monti, by whom he left three sons, the eldest of whom, Francesco, became a goldsmith, and was the gentle youth with whom Benvenuto Cellini formed so fair a friendship. In the same year, 1497, the painter was chosen, together with Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli and Perugino, to value Alesso Baldovinetti's frescoes in the Trinity, and, in 1498, he was among the artists and architects who met to consult over the restoration of the cupola of the Duomo, which had been struck by lightning. That summer he went back to his native city of Prato, and painted the beautiful fresco which still adorns a tabernacle in the corner of the market-place, close