es he had no vocation, and the irregularities of his behaviour caused
scandal even in that age of cynical indulgence. It can scarcely be doubted
that the schism between his practice and profession served to debase and
vulgarise a genius of fine imaginative quality, while the uncongenial work
of decorating choirs and painting altar-pieces limed the wings of his
swift spirit with the dulness of routine that savoured of hypocrisy. Bound
down to sacred subjects, he was too apt to make angels out of
street-urchins, and to paint the portraits of his peasant-loves for
Virgins.[179] His delicate sense of natural beauty gave peculiar charm to
this false treatment of religious themes. Nothing, for example, can be
more attractive than the rows of angels bearing lilies in his "Coronation
of the Virgin;"[180] and yet, when we regard them closely, we find that
they have no celestial quality of form or feature. Their grace is earthly,
and the spirit breathed upon the picture is the loveliness of colour,
quiet and yet glowing--blending delicate blues and greens with whiteness
purged of glare. The beauties as well as the defects of such compositions
make us regret that Fra Filippo never found a more congenial sphere for
his imagination. As a painter of subjects half-humorous and half-pathetic,
or as the illustrator of romantic stories, we fancy that he might have won
fame rivalled only by the greatest colourists. One such picture it was
granted him to paint, and this is his masterpiece. In the prime of life he
was commissioned to decorate the choir of the cathedral at Prato with the
legends of S. John Baptist and S. Stephen. All of these frescoes are
noteworthy for their firm grasp upon reality in the portraits of
Florentine worthies, and for the harmonious disposition of the groups; but
the scene of Salome dancing before Herod is the best for its poetic
feeling. Her movement across the floor before the tyrant and his guests at
table, the quaint fluttering of her drapery, the well-bred admiration of
the spectators, their horror when she brings the Baptist's head to
Herodias, and the weak face of the half-remorseful Herod are expressed
with a dramatic power that shows the genius of a poet painter. And even
more lovely than Salome are a pair of girls locked in each other's arms
close by Herodias on the dais. A natural and spontaneous melody, not only
in the suggested movements of this scene, but also in the colouring,
choice of form, and tre