When Cosimo was banished from Florence in 1433, and took up his residence at Padua, he was accompanied by a small army of courtiers and artists. It is very probable that Fra Filippo was of their number. Vasari's brief reference to paintings executed by the master in Padua is supported by Filarete and the Anonimo Morelliano, and may therefore be relied upon, although every trace of these works has vanished. There is nothing in the extant records of the artist's movements to make his presence at Padua in 1433-4 appear impossible. On the other hand, Vasari's story of Filippo's capture by pirates on the coast of the Marches of Ancona, his long-extended captivity and final liberation by his master whose favour he had gained by the excellence of art, and his visit to Naples on the home journey, belongs to the realm of fable. In or before 1437, Fra Filippo was certainly back in Florence, since the _Deliberazioni_ of the Company of Orsanmichele show that in that year he was commissioned to paint the great altarpiece of the "Madonna and Child, with Angels and two Abbots" for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre. It is this picture to which Domenico Veneziano refers in a letter to Piero de' Medici, dated Perugia, April 1, 1438, asking to be entrusted with the commission for an altarpiece, since "Fra Filippo and Fra Giovanni have much work to do, and especially Fra Filippo has a panel for Santo Spirito which, should he work day and night, will not be done in five years, so great is the work." Yet in the following year we find him writing a begging letter to the same Piero de' Medici. [Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE ANNUNCIATION (In the National Gallery, London) This charming lunette and its companion, "St. John the Baptist and Six Saints," were painted for the decoration of an apartment in the Riccardi Palace, by order of Cosimo de' Medici, whose crest--three feathers in a ring--is introduced in the stucco ornamentation of the balustrade. They were painted about 1438, towards the end of Fra Filippo's first Florentine period, and show far greater richness of colour and better management of light than his earlier known works at the Florence Academy. The perspective is still faulty, and the vase in the centre of the picture is terribly out of drawing. It has been suggested that this picture and the "Seven Saints" were the very panels on which Filippo Lippi was at work when he effected his romantic escape from Cosimo's palace, which is the subject of Browning's well-known poem.]