Fra Lippo Lippi was a street mucker, like Gavroche;
he unconsciously learned to paint portraits by the absolute necessity
of studying human faces on the street. Nothing sharpens observation
like this. He had to be able to tell at a glance whether the man he
accosted would give him food or a kick. When they took him to the
cloister, he obtained a quite new idea about religion. He naturally
judged that, as he judged everything else in life, from the
practical point of view. Heretofore, like many small boys, he had
rather despised religion, and thought the monks were fools.
"Don't you believe it," he cries: "there is a lot in religion. You
get free clothes, free shelter, three meals a day, and you don't
have to work! Why, it's the easiest thing I know." The monks
discovered his talent with pencil and brush, and they made him
decorate the chapel. When the work was done, he called them in. To
their amazement and horror, the saints and angels, instead of being
ideal faces, were the living portraits of the familiar figures about
the cloister.
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