During this period of sixteen years Fra Filippo continued to be employed by the members of the Medici family, by the _proposto_ Gemignano Inghirami, and by many other patrons in Prato and Pistoja. In addition to his frequent absence in Florence, he no doubt undertook several other journeys, of one of which at least we have certain knowledge: his sojourn in 1461 at Perugia, whither he was called to value Bonfigli's frescoes in the Palazzo del Comune--an honourable task which devolved upon him as the sole survivor of the three artists chosen for it by the Signory of Perugia, the other two being Fra Angelico, who died in 1455, and Domenico Veneziano, whose death occurred in the spring of the very year that witnessed the completion of Bonfigli's frescoes. But quite apart from such interruptions in the execution of that superb series of frescoes at Prato, depicting scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen, as were due to professional causes, there was enough excitement and disturbance in the artist's private life to account at least in part for his tardiness in completing the work which constitutes his greatest claim to immortal fame. For Prato was the scene of the great romance of Fra Filippo's life, by which his name has become familiar even to those who know little of, and care less about, his artistic achievement. The abduction of the nun, Lucrezia Buti, by the amorous monk, who was then entering upon the sixth decade of his life, is on the whole correctly recorded by Vasari, and has formed the subject of many a literary romance and pictorial rendering. Subsequent doubts thrown upon it by such eminent critics as, among others, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who maintain that the story rests upon the sole testimony of Vasari, and that "contingent circumstances tend to create considerable doubts of Vasari's truth," almost succeeded in relegating the amorous friar's daring exploit into the realm of fiction, until Milanesi's researches established the substantial truth of the romantic story. The facts, briefly stated, are as follows: