In these instances, to which many others might easily be added, the artists' personality and manner of life have been fancifully reconstructed from the character of their work. Very different is the case of Fra Filippo Lippi. Here criticism has seized upon certain authentic facts of the Carmelite friar's life and amorous adventures--facts that in their main current have been established beyond the possibility of dispute, even though they have been embroidered upon by imaginative pens--and has dealt with his art in the light of that knowledge, reading into his paintings not only his artistic emotions, but his personal desires and passions. Only thus can it be explained that generation after generation of writers on art have misconstrued the exquisite and touching innocence and virgin purity of his Madonna type into an expression of sensuality. Again and again we read about the pronounced worldliness of Fra Filippo's religious paintings, about their lack of spiritual significance and devout feeling. [Illustration: PLATE II.--ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST WITH SIX OTHER SAINTS (In the National Gallery, London) The companion picture to the "Annunciation" lunette is the first rendering in Italian art of a Santa Conversatione in the open air. It is just an assembly of seven saints, without any real inner connection, the two pairs at the sides--SS. Francis and Lawrence on the left, and SS. Anthony and Peter Martyr on the right--being absorbed in their own doings and paying no attention to the blessing which St. John apparently bestows upon SS. Cosmas and Damianus, the patron saints of the Medici family. The little glimpse of a landscape background behind the marble bench affords evidence of Fra Filippo's close study of Nature even at that early period.] Vasari, of course, is the fountain-head of this misconception of the Carmelite's art. According to the Aretine biographer, "it was said that Fra Filippo was much addicted to the pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination might at the moment be predominant, but if he could by no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object which had attracted his attention in his paintings, and endeavour by discoursing and reasoning with himself to diminish the violence of his inclination. It was known that, while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works undertaken by him received little or none of his attention."