On the death of the Florentine silk merchant, Francesco Buti, in 1450, his son, Antonio, found himself charged with the responsibility of a not too profitable business, and a large family of twelve brothers and sisters. The eldest of these sisters, Margherita, was married off to Antonio Doffi in 1451, and in the same year two other sisters, Spinetta, born 1434, and Lucrezia, born 1435, were placed with the nuns of Sta. Margherita at Prato, Antonio paying the required fee of fifty florins for each of them. Needless to say, the two girls thus committed to a living tomb at the very time when life beckoned to them with all its joys and seductions, were not consulted in this matter any more than was Fra Filippo when, as a mere child, he had to enter the establishment of the Carmelites in Florence. Presumably the two lively, handsome girls had no more vocation for the cloistral life than the pleasure-loving friar--which circumstance may be pleaded in mitigation of the scandalous offence of which they subsequently became guilty. Whether Fra Filippo had become acquainted with the Buti maidens before they entered the nunnery of Sta. Margherita, which was then in charge of the Abbess Bartolommea de' Bovacchiesi, it is impossible to say. Certain it is, on the other hand, that the Madonna of the Pitti _tondo_, painted in 1452, already bears the features of the model who, in other pictures, has been identified as Lucrezia Buti. From this it may be assumed that Fra Filippo, who came to Prato only a year after the two sisters, and who lived there in a house opposite the convent of Sta. Margherita, must have known Lucrezia at least four years before she sat to him for the "Madonna della Cintola" in 1456, the year of her abduction. It is quite possible that the love-struck monk used the influence of his powerful protectors to secure his appointment as chaplain of Sta. Margherita, so as to facilitate intercourse with the object of his affection and desire. Nor did his by no means untainted reputation and the papal stigma (_qui plurima et nefanda scelera perpetravit_) stand in the way of the coveted post being actually conferred upon him in the year 1456.