Chap. XIX. FILIPPINO LIPPI. 431 CHAPTER XIX. FILIPPINO LIPPI AND THE RAPHAELS. From tlie numerous and interesting works of Botticelli we naturally turn to those which illustrate the career of Filippino. But before we venture upon the analysis of his great and important creations, we pause to inquire when he was born and who are his parents. History responds in the page of Vasari: that Filippino is the nat ural son of Fra Filippo, a Carmelite friar, and Lucrezia Buti, a novice. We shall be slow to accept this version of a story which reposes on no secure foundation, and we may ask whether the doubts suggested in the life of Fra Filippo Lippi are not capable of receiving additional force from other considerations. The strongest argument upon which Vasari’s assertion rests is the name of Filippino. He calls himself in a let ter and in a public record, Filippo di Filippo Lippi; 1 in a picture at Bologna, Philippinus; in the Strozzi frescos at S. Maria Novella .in Florence, Philippinus de Lippis, and in the adoration of the Magi at the Uffizi, Philipus de Lipis. In the public accounts of the city of Florence (1485) he is called Filippo Filippi, and Filippo alterius Filippi. 2 The history of Italian art affords numerous ex amples of painters taking the names of adoptive fathers or of teachers. Mantegna is called “fiuolo de M. Francesco 1 In a letter from Home to Fi lippo Strozzi dated May 2. 1489 (Vide “Alcuni document!” &c. printed for tlie Nozze Gentile. Farinola Vai. ub. sup. p.p. 15—16), and in a record (Ibid. p. 18). , 2 G( iye, ub. sup. I. p.p. 579.
