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.