It is not within the scope of this brief sketch of the life and art of Fra Filippo Lippi to enter into a detailed critical discussion of his extant works. I am not here concerned with questions of debatable attributions, or with the share that Fra Diamante and other assistants or pupils may have had in the execution of works that pass generally under his name. All that can here be attempted is, to gather from the cumulative evidence of the pictures that are unquestionably by the master's own hand, the real significance of his great achievement and the place he occupies in the evolution of Italian art. In the progress of his style from the early "Nativities" to the Prato frescoes is reflected the whole course of Early Renaissance art from Gothic awkwardness to full freedom. Of course, Fra Filippo lived in a period of transition and of passionate striving for expression; and to a certain extent every artist is the product of the spirit of his time. The tendencies which resulted in the full blossoming of Renaissance art were at work, and would, no doubt, have conquered in the end, even if Filippo Lippi had never existed. Nevertheless, he was one of the greatest initiators of the Renaissance in painting; and it is his peculiar merit that, at a period of artistic pupilage, when every painter's training was directed towards the close assimilation of his particular master's peculiarities, and when progress consisted largely in the grafting of some personal note or other on to the inherited tradition, Fra Filippo not only liberated himself from the narrow confines of his early training by his readiness to benefit from the example of any native or "foreign" master who had added some new word to the language of art, but he was also ever ready to learn direct from the greatest source of artistic inspiration--from Nature. [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS AND TWO ABBOTS (In the Louvre, Paris) This altarpiece was commissioned in 1437 by the Company of Orsanmichele for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito. It is the picture referred to by Domenico Veneziano in a letter to Piero de' Medici, dated April 1, 1438, in which he says that by working day and night Fra Filippo could not finish it within five years, which was probably a correct estimate of the time actually taken. Even in its present state of deterioration this stately altarpiece, which shows how much Filippo had learnt from the study of Masaccio's Carmine frescoes, justifies the high praise bestowed upon it by Vasari. The two figures kneeling before the steps of the throne are St. Augustine on the right, and St. Fredianus on the left.]