III.vi. A Field and a Brother Painter

"It is said that Fra Filippo was much addicted to the pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination might at the moment be predominant .... It was known that, while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works undertaken by him received little or none of his attention; for which reason Cosimo de' Medici, wishing him to execute a work in his own palace, shut him up, that he might not waste his time in running about; but having endured this confinement for two days, he then made ropes with sheets of his bed, which he cut to pieces for that purpose, and so having let himself down from a window, escaped, and for several days gave himself up to his amusements."
- Giorgio Vasari

I don't know what Prato, the first major city south of Bologna and across the Apennines, did to kindle such passion in its greatest of sons, brother Filippo Lippi. Today it is a rather quiet, pleasant place, without much nightlife or intrigue at all. The city is most famous for harboring the Holy Girdle, a belt that the Virgin Mary supposedly dropped to a still incredulous Apostle Thomas as she ascended into heaven. It is still here, encased in crystal and gold, jealously guarded by a wrought iron fence in the Cathedral. Other than this, guidebooks don't recommend much to Prato; it is said to make a nice day trip from Florence, should the visitor grow tired of the crowds. This must have been a different place when Filippo lived there, especially if we are to believe Robert Browning's great poem about his daring escapades:
       I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
       You need not clap your torches to my face.
       Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!
       What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
       And here you catch me at an alley's end
       Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
    The long lines of verse begin by describing an encounter between Filippo, out past curfew, and the Night Watch. The young monk has again snuck out of his convent to visit the nun he is in love with, a nun who would later bear him a painter child named Filippino, much to the delight and dismay of later art lovers who would struggle to differentiate father from son.
    I was in Prato on a crisp sunny morning, with no night watch nor lascivious painters in sight. I came principally to see Filippo's works but, as has become the norm here in Italy, I was astonished by the depth and quality of the art that is everywhere. I have also grown accustomed to being the solitary visitor to most museums for days on end. Often, those working at many of the smaller museums I go to seem genuinely surprised to see a visitor, especially since tourist season is long over. Such was the case at the Cathedral Museum in Prato, where upon walking into a room I surprised two curators who were admiring a tondo by none other than Botticelli. They had it propped up on the floor amidst the sea of bubble rap and canvas it had been packaged in. Presumably, it had just come back from an exhibition held in Florence, and they seemed to be inspecting its condition, though in a terribly ad hoc manner.
    Given the informal way in which the two jovial curators were handling it, I shuddered at the though of how much the waist-high painting might be worth, especially since only a few days earlier the Met in New York had acquired an eight by ten inch Madonna by Duccio- an artists of comparable stature- for a cool forty five million dollars. I found myself assigning value to paintings, something I all too often do. It is useless to give value to paintings in Italian museums; most are unique masterpieces with nothing similar in existence. They become an interesting if irrational sort of economic good, one that has no theoretical limit to its value. The sale of a masterpiece of Italian art has become such an extraordinary event that it causes rationality to evaporate faster than paint thinner. This is why a wealthy California museum can offer thirty five million for a tiny Raphael and why a rich Canadian Magnate's son can bid one hundred million dollars for a hideous Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens.
    But the museum men in Prato quickly wrapped the painting back up and learned it against a wall in the gallery before vacating the room. The package, about the shape of a wagon wheel, was simply marked "Madonna and Child- Botticelli". I could have grabbed it and rolled it out the door, but it would have been cumbersome on the train, so I left it be. I toured the rest of the museum, briefly setting off an alarm when I stepped too close to a little Bellini, seeing Donatello's work that had been moved indoors for safekeeping, and finally being disappointed by the famous frescoes by Filippo that were out of view. As is so often the case in Italy, these were being restored, though I noticed that it was possible to book an appointment to climb up on the scaffolding and watch the restorers at work. I decided this would make a good opportunity to return to Prato at some point in the future.


A view of the Duomo in Prato


A view of the main square and fountain in Prato