About the brutality of the Feast of Herod, Figure 105, Fra Filippo has cast a dreamy glamour, as indeed Giotto had before him. The youthful guests are absorbed in Salome’s dancing. Following the sculptors of the day, Fra Filippo has made her slight and graceful, as she trips a careless measure. The air is simply that of a gentle society. The grim motive of the delivery of the head of John the Baptist to Herodias is gently emphasized by the charming act of two little handmaids who clutch each other for fright. The sprightliness of the invention, the generalized idyllic charm of the feeling, the rich variety of accessories, the youthful timbre of the whole—make this not merely one of the best but also one of the most characteristic narrative mural paintings of the Early Renaissance. It strikes the note which will be echoed by Fra Filippo’s apprentice, Sandro Botticelli; which will be exaggerated by Fra Filippo’s son, Filippino, and distantly imitated by many another Florentine successor. [Illustration: FIG. 105. Fra Filippo Lippi. Feast of Herod. Salome’s Dance. Fresco.—_Collegiata. Prato._ ] If the Feast of Herod best exemplifies the element of homely poetry and inventive grace in Fra Filippo, the Burial of St. Stephen, Figure 106, just opposite in the choir proves that he was not oblivious to the high and decorous prose of his master Masaccio. In formality and power of construction few painters then living could have equalled it, and those few could not have rivalled its spacious architectural setting and its suggestion of atmosphere. At first sight it seems nearly equal to the Tribute Money or at least to the Tabitha. On more careful survey it is less noble, more insistently pathetic, and in every way more loosely knit. In particular the portraits at the sides have little but a mechanical relation to the theme. Masaccio himself had admitted a similar gallery of mere bystanders in The Miracle of the Prince, but had he lived to complete the fresco, he would doubtless have brought the portrait figures into some relation of interest in the miracle. Fra Filippo virtually waives that problem and merely flanks his real subject with bordering groups of persons of contemporary importance. As a matter of fact, the Florentine donor was no longer humble-minded and content to appear among the saints in miniature and unobtrusive guise. He now insisted in being painted to the life with his family, friends, and dependents,—a complacent, incongruous apparition amid the humility or heroism of the saints. Fra Filippo made the sensible adjustment that the donors should serve as a sort of human frame for the religious picture in the centre. This solution became tiresomely standard and lasted for fifty years or so, until the High Renaissance had authority enough to impose considerations of taste and self-effacement even upon wealthy donors.