The Miracles of Prato by Laurie Albanese and Laura Morowitz

Set during the year of 1456 of the Italian Renaissance and based on true characters. This is a story of beautiful Lucrezia Buti, daughter of silk merchant of Florence and Fra Filippo Lippi, a monk and an accomplished artist. 

Lucrezia Buti arrives with her sister at the Convent Santa Margherita in Prato due to diminished circumstances. At the same convent, a monk, who acts as chaplain to the nuns, is also a great artist named Fra Filippo Lippi, famed for his portraits of Madonnas. He keeps searching for “a face worthy of the Virgin.” One morning as he enters the chapel, he sees unfamiliar figure kneeling at the altar. He notices her perfect face features.

Both lives of Lucrezia and Fra Filippo are beautifully revealed in layers. Human emotions come alive. Hunger for a life outside the convent brings those two closer and closer. She questions, “Why does God ask me for devotion and sacrifice without showing me the way?” She misses her pearl baptism bracelet and her mother’s blue pitcher. He, “An impetuous man, he’d been jailed, whipped, and endured stinging shame for acts of lust, greed, and temptation.” They both search for a meaning in it all. He in his art of painting. She in the art of herbs.

The book is vividly written. I always appreciate authors who search for unexplored artists and bring them to life. It also brings the subject of the Sacred Belt, “believed to be a miraculous relic of the Virgin Mary, has been housed in the locked chapel in the Cathedral of Santo Stefano in Prato, Italy, since the thirteen century. It is presented to the public several times a year.”

“At the time of his meeting with Lucrezia Buti, Fra Filippo Lippi was a successful artist with many outstanding commitments and a record of legal problems.” The legal problems seemed to be following him his whole life.

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