He painted more pictures, earned money, and worked his way back to Florence. As long as he worked at all he did marvels, but a pretty face was enough to make him forget his art, his work and the Princes and Dukes who employed him. Cosimo de Medici once shut him up with his picture, to keep him at it; he tore the sheets of his bed into strips, knotted them together, escaped by the window--and was of course forgiven. The nuns of Saint Margaret employed him to paint an altar-piece for them; he persuaded them to let the most beautiful of their novices sit as a model for one of the figures; he made love to her, of course, and ran away with her, leaving the picture unfinished. It is characteristic of him that though he never forsook her, he refused the Pope's offer of a dispensation from his early vows which would have enabled him to marry her--for he hated all ties and bonds alike, and a regular marriage would have seemed to him almost as bad as slavery in Africa. Lippo represented one extreme of character, Beato Angelico the other. Between them were many men of almost equal genius, but of more common temper, such as Botticelli, who was Lippo's pupil, or Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Angelico. Of Sandro Botticelli we know at least that he resembled his master in one respect--he positively refused to learn anything from books, and it was in sheer despair that his father, Filipepe, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, who rejoiced in the nickname of Botticello--'the little tun'--perhaps on account of his rotund figure, and it was from this first master of his that the boy came to be called 'Botticello's Sandro.' The goldsmith soon saw that the boy was a born painter, and took him to Lippo Lippi to be taught. Both Botticelli and Gozzoli, like many first-rate artists of that time, were quiet, hard-working men, devoted to their art, and not remarkable for anything else. The consequence is that little is known about their lives. It is natural that we should know most about the men who were most different from their companions, such as Michelangelo on the one hand, and Benvenuto Cellini on the other, or Beato Angelico and Lippo Lippi, or the clever Buffalmacco--whose practical jokes were told by Boccaccio and Sacchetti, and have even brought him into modern literature--and Lionardo da Vinci. Then, as now, there were two types of artists, considered as men; there were Bohemians and scholars. Lionardo and Michelangelo were grave and learned students; so was Beato Angelico in a sense limited to theology. But Benvenuto, Lippo Lippi and Buffalmacco were typical Bohemians. As for the latter, he seems scarcely ever to have painted a picture without playing off a practical jest upon his employer, and he began his career by terrifying his master, who insisted upon waking him to work before dawn. He fastened tiny wax tapers upon the backs of thirty black beetles, and as soon as he heard the old man stirring and groping in the dark, he lighted the tapers