A Gift for the Magus is a novel about the painter, Fra Filippo Lippi, his adventurous life and his dramatic relationship with his patron, Cosimo de' Medici. According to Alberti, to be a good painter you must be a good man. Was Alberti wrong, or was Lippi a better man than generally believed? While telling Lippi’s compelling story, this novel explores the nature of goodness. Set in Florence in the 1450s, it acts as a prequel to 'The Botticelli Trilogy'.