Fra Filippo was not so successful in the choir of the cathedral at Spoleto, where he undertook; to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin.  Yet those who have not examined these frescoes, ruinous in their decay and spoiled by stupid restoration, can form no just notion of the latent capacity of this great master.  The whole of the half-dome above the tribune is filled with, a “Coronation of Madonna.”  A circular rainbow surrounds both her and Christ.  She is kneeling with fiery rays around her, glorified by her assumption into heaven.  Christ is enthroned, and at His side stands a seat prepared for His mother, as soon as the crown that He is placing on her head shall have made her Queen.  From the outer courts of heaven, thronged with multitudes of celestial beings, angels are crowding in, breaking the lines of the prismatic aureole, as though the ardour of their joy could scarcely be repressed; while the everlasting light of God sheds radiance from above, and far below, lies earth with diminished sun and moon.  The boldness of conception in this singular fresco reveals a genius capable of grappling with such problems as Tintoretto solved.  Fra Filippo died at Spoleto, and left his work unfinished, to the care of his assistant, the Fra Diamante.  Over his tomb Lorenzo de’ Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of a painter highly prized by his patrons.

The space devoted in these pages to Fra Lippo Lippi is justified not only by the excellence of his own work, but also by the influence he exercised over two of the best Florentine painters of the fifteenth century.  Whether Filippino Lippi was in truth his son by Lucrezia Buti, a novice he is said to have carried from her cloister in Prato, has been called in question by recent critics; but they adduce no positive arguments for discrediting the story of Vasari.[181] There can, however, be no doubt that to the Frate, whether he was his father or only his teacher, Filippino owed his style.  His greatest works were painted in continuation of Masaccio’s frescoes in the Carmine at Florence.  It is the best warrant of their excellence that we feel them worthy to hold the place they do, and that Raphael transferred one of their motives, the figure of S. Paul addressing S. Peter in prison, to his cartoon of “Mars’ Hill.”  That he was not so accomplished as Masaccio in the art of composition, that his scale of colour is less pleasing, and that his style in general lacks the elevation of his mighty predecessor, is not sufficient to place him in any position of humiliating inferiority.[182] What above all things interests the student of the Renaissance in Filippino’s work, is the powerful action of revived classicism on his manner.  This can be traced better in the Caraffa Chapel of S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome and in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella at Florence than in the Carmine.  The “Triumph of S. Thomas Aquinas” and the “Miracle of S.