Stories of Saint Stephen and Saint John the Baptist

Geminiano Inghirami, the preposto of the Cathedral of Prato, then capitular church, was at the time an influential man in culture and politics, with important friendships in Rome and Florence.

[1] Himself a humanist, he often commissioned artworks to Renaissance artists, and sometimes called them to Prato, such as with Donatello and Michelozzo for the cathedral's external pulpit.

[3] The completion of the work took fourteen years, with lates, pauses and scandals, such as that involving the painter (also a professed Carmelite friar and ordained priest)[4] and a nun from the monastery of Santa Margherita, where Lippi had been chaplain from 1456 to the issue of a tamburazione (secret accusation) in May 1461.

According to his biographer Giorgio Vasari, Pope Eugene IV released, only after the intercession of Cosimo de' Medici, Lippi from his vows and "had offered in his lifetime to give him a dispensation, that he might make Lucrezia (...) his legitimate wife, but [that] Fra Filippo desiring to retain the power of living after his own fashion, and of indulging his love of pleasure as might seem good to him, did not care to accept that offer.

In October 1993 the paintings were vandalized with a black pen by Pietro Cannata who had already performed vandalistic acts on other works of art among which the David of Michelangelo in 1991.