The history of font reserves a special place for the early innovation of the German bible-maker. A goldsmith's son, he never exhibited too fine a sense of obligation to that book which has preserved his name. It is his life and those lives of Vasari's which seem of a spirit with the provenance of font. The flamboyance of Cellini, the famous goldsmith who wrote late in his life that treatise about his craft which he had not occasion to complete earlier, being ever on the run, in flight of one scandal or another. The picaresque and passion of Fra Filippo Lippi whom the great Italian biographer describes as being so lustful that he would give anything to enjoy the woman he wanted and, if she could not be bought, would cool his passion by painting her portrait and reasoning with himself. This is the same Fra Filippo Lippi that Browning immortalized as the herald of a new humanity dawning at the close of the long medieval night. It is these men and their art which laid the foundation of font.