in the manner of this artist.[212] Botticelli’s close connection with the Medici is shown by the circumstance that after the conspiracy of the Pazzi he undertook to paint the likenesses of the conspirators on the wall of the palace of the Podestà.[213] Only one work of Filippino Lippi is mentioned as having been executed for Lorenzo—the unfinished fresco, representing a sacrifice, in the hall at Poggio a Cajano—but their intimacy is well known. The commission given to Filippino by Cardinal Olivieri Caraffa for the painting of his chapel in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva is said to have been procured by Lorenzo, and so, probably, were those of Matthias Corvinus. The influence exercised on the views and tendencies of the son by his father’s works, especially those at Prato—where Filippino passed most of his youth—was mingled with that of Botticelli. The former comes out most in the earlier works, notably in the frescoes of the Brancacci chapel at San Pietro in Carmine, painted about 1485; the latter in the wall-paintings begun for Filippo Strozzi, but not finished till long after, in the chapel in Sta. Maria Novella. The immediate neighbourhood of Masaccio’s works had, no doubt, a beneficial effect on the young artist in his earlier works, for Filippino, not yet thirty, shows in the Brancacci frescoes infinitely more fidelity to nature and feeling for historical composition than in the paintings of the Caraffa and Strozzi chapels. The scenes in the last,[214] from the Acts and legends of the Apostles, display undeniable tokens of spirit and imagination, giving a vivid representation of the passions. But there is affected mannerism, inharmonious colouring, and an apparent delight in light tints playing into each other. Some of these defects may be partly laid to the account of restoration. The preference, noticeable in Botticelli, for antique accessories, produces in Filippino an effect of artificial overloading. Among his easel-pieces, the great Madonna with saints, painted in 1485 for the council-chamber of the palace of the Signoria, is distinguished by grace and earnest work.[215] Filippino, too, was fond of introducing figures of contemporaries. In his frescoes at S. Pietro in Carmine may be seen Tommaso Soderini, Piero Guicciardini (father of the historian), Luigi Pulci, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Sandro Botticelli, Francesco Granacci, and the painter himself. In an altar-piece (now in the Uffizi), representing the Epiphany, are portraits of several members of the younger branch of the Medici, doubtless benefactors of the convent of San Donato, for which the picture was painted four years after Lorenzo’s death. There are Pierfrancesco, grandson of Giovanni di Bicci, his son Giovanni, father of the famous leader of the Black Bands and grandfather of the first Grand-Duke, and the younger Pierfrancesco, father of Lorenzino, the murderer of the first Duke of Florence.[216] Other portraits, such as those of the Nerli family in Sto. Spirito, represent donors.