only modern thing other than liking things made of glass.
  Our little chapel had for centuries been bare. It was, like the four towers of our 
castle and all the walls around, built of a blond stone which is common in Northern 
Tuscany. This is not the dark stone you see so much in Florence, which is gray and looks 
perpetually unclean. This northern stone is almost the color of the palest pink roses.
  But my father had brought pupils up from Florence when I was very young, good painters 
who had studied with Piero della Francesca and other such, to cover these chapel walls 
with murals taken from the lovely stories of saints and Biblical giants in the books 
known as The Golden Legend.
  Not being himself a terribly imaginative man, my father followed what he had seen in 
the churches of Florence in his design and instructed these men to tell the tales of John 
the Baptist, patron saint of the city and cousin of Our Lord, and so it was that during 
the last years of my life on earth, our chapel was enfolded with representations of St. 
Elizabeth, St. John, St. Anne, the Blessed Mother, Zachary and angels galore, all dressed 
- as was the way of the time - in their Florentine finest.
  It was to this "modern" painting, so unlike the stiffer work of Giotto or Cimabue, that 
my elderly uncles and aunts objected. As for the villagers, I don't think they exactly 
understood it all either, except they were so overawed in the main by the chapel at a 
wedding or baptism that it didn't matter.
  I myself of course was terrifically happy to see these paintings made, and to spend 
time with the artists, who were all gone by the time that my life was brought to a halt 
by demonic slaughter.
  I'd seen plenty of the greatest painting in Florence and had a weakness for drifting 
about, looking at splendid visions of angels and saints in the rich dedicated chapels of 
the Cathedrals, and had even - on one of my trips to Florence with my father - in 
Cosimo's house, glimpsed the tempestuous painter Filippo Lippi, who was at that time 
actually under lock and key there to make him finish a painting.
  I was much taken with the plain yet compelling man, the way that he argued and schemed 
and did everything but throw a tantrum to get permission to leave the palazzo while lean, 
solemn and low-voiced Cosimo just smiled and talked him down more or less out of his 
hysteria, telling him to get back to work and that he would be happy when he was finished.
  Filippo Lippi was a monk, but he was mad for women and everybody knew it. You could say 
that he was a favorite bad guy. It was for women that he wanted out of the palazzo, and 
it was even suggested later at the supper table of our hosts in Florence on that visit 
that Cosimo ought to lock a few women in the room with Filippo, and that maybe that would 
keep Filippo happy. I don't think Cosimo did any such thing. If he had, his enemies would 
have made it the grand news of Florence.
  Let me make note, for it is very important. I never forgot that glimpse of the genius 
Filippo, for that is what he was - and is - to me.
  "So what did you so like about him?" my father asked me.
  "He's bad and good," I said, "not just one or the other. I see a war going on inside of 
him! And I saw some of his work once, work he did with Fra Giovanni" - this was the man 
later called Fra Angelico by all the world - "and I tell you, I think he is brilliant. 
Why else would Cosimo put up with such a scene? Did you hear him!" "And Fra Giovanni is a 
saint?" asked my father.
  "Hmmmmm, yes. And that's fine, you know, but did you see the torment in Fra Filippo? 
Hmmm, I liked it." My father raised his eyebrows.
  On our next and very last trip to Florence, he took me to see all of Filippo's 
paintings. I was amazed that he had remembered my interest in this man. We went from 
house to house to look at the loveliest works, and then to Filippo's workshop.
  There an altarpiece commissioned by Francesco Maringhi for a Florentine church - The 
Coronation of the Virgin - was well under way, and when I saw this work, I nearly fainted 
dead from shock and love of it. I couldn't leave it alone. I sighed and wept.
  I had never seen anything as beautiful as this painting, with its immense crowd of 
still attentive faces, its splendid collection of angels and saints, its lithe and 
graceful feline women and willowy celestial men. I went crazy for it.
  My father took me to see two more of his works, which were both paintings of the 
Annunciation.
  Now, I have mentioned that as a child, I had played the Angel Gabriel coming to the 
Virgin to announce the Conception of Christ in her womb, and the way we played, he was 
supposed to be a pretty beguiling and virile angel, and Joseph would come in and, lo, 
find this overwhelming male with his pure ward, the Blessed Mary.
  We were a worldly bunch, but you know, we gave the play a little spice. I mean we 
cooked it up a bit. I don't think it says anything in scripture about St. Joseph 
happening on a tryst.
  But that had been my favorite role, and I had particularly enjoyed paintings of the 
Annunciation.
  Well, this last one I saw before I left Florence, done by Filippo sometime in the 
1440s, was beyond anything I had beheld before.
  The angel was truly unearthly yet physically perfect. Its wings were made of peacock 
feathers. I was sick with devotion and covetousness. I wished we could buy this thing and 
take it back home. That wasn't possible. No works of Filippo were on the market then. So 
my father finally dragged me away from this painting, and off we went home the next day 
or so.
  Only later did I realize how quietly he listened to what I said as I ranted on and on 
about Fra Filippo:
  "It's delicate, it's original, and yet it is commendable according to everybody's 
rules, that's the genius of it, to change, but not so much, to be inimitable, yet not 
beyond the common grasp, and that's what he's done, Father, I tell you." I was 
unstoppable.
  "This is what I think about that man," I said. "The carnality in him, the passion for 
women, the near beastly refusal to keep his vows is at war always with the priest, for 
look, he wears his robes, he is Fra Filippo. And out of that war, there comes into the 
faces he paints a look of utter surrender." My father listened.
  "That's it," I said. "Those characters reflect his own continued compromise with the 
forces he cannot reconcile, and they are sad, and wise, and never innocent, and always 
soft, reflective of mute torment."
  On the way back home, as we were riding together through the forest, up a rather steep 
road, very casually my father asked me if the painters who had done our chapel were good.
  "Father, you're joking," I said. "They were excellent."
  He smiled. "I didn't know, you know," he said. "I just hired the best." He shrugged. I 
smiled.
  Then he laughed with good nature. I never asked him when and if I could leave home 
again to study. I think I figured I could make both of us happy.
  We must have made twenty-five stops on that last journey home from Florence. We were 
wined and dined at one castle after another, and wandered in and out of the new villas, 
lavish and full of light, and given over to their abundant gardens. I clung to nothing in 
particular because I thought it was my life, all those arbors covered with purple 
wisteria, and the vineyards on the green slopes, and the sweet-cheeked girls beckoning to 
me in the loggias.