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Part of the hall on the first floor has its centrepiece in the exhibition of famous paintings by the artist Fra' Filippo Lippi: the Madonna del Ceppo that he painted for the charitable institution of the Ceppo Nuovo in Palazzo Datini, the Nativity for the convent of San Domenico and the Madonna of the Girdle, commissioned by the monastery of Santa Margherita. It was there that the friar-painter met Sister Lucrezia Buti, with whom he would later fall in love, illustrating her likeness in many of his female portraits.
In this industrious Tuscan town, very active in commerce and cloth fulling at the beginning of the 15th century, Filippo and the other masters linked to him laid the foundations for a radical renewal of Italian art. According to Keith Christiansen, one of the world's leading experts on Renaissance art, “It is impossible to understand the Renaissance without knowing Prato”.
As one of the most fascinating episodes of the early Renaissance, Prato's Duomo factory played an important role in the history of art in the 15th century. It was here that artists of the highest level engaged in memorable enterprises.
In 1428 Donatello and Michelozzo were called upon to make the magnificent pulpit for the display of the Sacred Girdle, and shortly afterwards Paolo Uccello was commissioned to decorate the Chapel of the Assumption. However, the crucial year was 1452, when Filippo Lippi - the Medici's favourite painter - was entrusted with the task of frescoing the main chapel with the cycle of St Stephen and St John, his masterpiece. A precursor of the greatest masters of 16th-century art, Filippo's skill with colour, the extraordinary beauty of his faces and figures, and his ability to convey emotion were evident on those walls.
The development of the frescoes in the cathedral was long and tormented. This was mainly due to the scandal caused by the love between the monk painter and Sister Lucrezia Buti, from whom Filippino was born.
Filippo lived in Prato until 1467, creating numerous masterpieces, such as the Transit of Saint Jerome, which today can be admired in the Opera del Duomo Museum, and the Presentation at the Temple, in the Church of the Spirito Santo.
From the 1550s, Prato's patrons also gave considerable impetus to the work of artists trained in his workshop: first the Maestro della Natività di Castello (Master of the Castello Nativity), then Fra' Diamante, and finally Filippino, the greatest of Prato's painters.
