Selections From The Poems And Plays Of Robert Browning Part 44

The bare facts of this poem are taken from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. Vasari, once a pupil of Andrea del Sarto, hated Lucrezia and in his account spared no details of her evil influence. Later chronicles give a somewhat more favorable view of her, but the main facts of the story remain undisputed. Of the origin of the poem, Mrs. Andrew Crosse (see "John Kenyon and His Friends" in _Temple Bar Magazine_, April, 1900) writes; "When the Brownings were living in Florence, Kenyon had begged them to procure him a copy of the portrait in the Pitti of Andrea del Sarto and his wife. Mr. Browning was unable to get the copy made with any promise of satisfaction, and so wrote the exquisite poem of Andrea del Sarto--and sent it to Kenyon!" For another literary presentation of Andrea del Sarto see _Andre del Sarto_, a play by Alfred de Musset.

15. _Fiesole_. A town on a hill above the Arno about three miles northwest of Florence. See _Pippa Pa.s.ses_.

40. _We are in G.o.d's hand._ Andrea's fatalistic view of life aids him in escaping the poignancy of remorse.

65. _The Legate's talk._ The representative of the Pope praised Andrea's work. For the high esteem accorded Andrea when he was in Paris at the court of Francis I, see lines 149-161.

82. _This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand._ Eugene Muntz (quoted in _Masters of Art_ series, in the number ent.i.tled "Andrea del Sarto") says of Andrea's skill: "No painter has excelled him in the rendering of flesh.... No painter, moreover, has surpa.s.sed him in his grasp of the infinite resources of the palette. All the secrets of richness, softness, and _morbidenza_, all the mysteries of _pastoso_ and _sfumato_ were his. It is not then as a technician that we must deny Andrea del Sarto the right to rank with the very greatest. It is as an artist (using the word in its highest sense) that he falls below them, for he was lacking in the loftier qualities of imagination, sentiment, and, worst of all, conviction." _Histoire de l'Art pendent la Renaissance_.

93. _Morello_. A mountain of the Apennines and visible from Florence.

98. _Or what's a heaven for._ According to Browning's theory, perfection gained and rested in means stagnation. Aspiration toward the unattainable is the condition of growth. The artist who can satisfy himself with such themes as can be completely expressed by his art, is on a low level of experience and attainment.

105. _The Urbinate._ Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, one of the greatest of Italian painters. He died in 1520; hence the date of this poem is supposed to be 1525.

136. _Agnolo._ Michael Agnolo (less correctly, Angelo), 1475-1566, great both as sculptor and painter.

149. _Francis._ Francis I of France was a patron of the arts. When Andrea was thirty-two and had been married five years, King Francis sent for him to come to Fontainebleau, the most sumptuous of the French royal palaces. Andrea greatly enjoyed the splendor and hospitality of the French court, and he was happy in his successful work, when Lucrezia called him home. He obtained a vacation of two months and took with him money with which to make purchases for the French king. This money he used to buy a house for Lucrezia.

241. _Scudi._ Italian coins worth about ninety-six cents each.

261. _Four great walls._ _Revelation_, xxi, 15-17.

263. _Leonardo._ Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), one of the greatest of Italian painters.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT ST. PRAXED'S CHURCH

There is an old church in Rome named in honor of St. Praxed or Praxedes.

The Bishop's Tomb, however, "is entirely fict.i.tious, although something which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sightseers."

(Mrs. Orr, _Handbook to Robert Browning's Works_, p. 247.)

Ruskin says of this poem: "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages--always vital, right, and profound, so that in the matter of art, with which we are specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the medieval temper that he has not struck upon in these seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his....

I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance, in thirty pages of 'The Stones of Venice,'

put into as many lines, Browning's also being the antecedent work."

(_Modern Painters_, Vol. iv, pp. 337-9.) "It was inevitable that the great period of the Renaissance should produce men of the type of the Bishop of St. Praxed; it would be grossly unfair to set him down as the type of the churchmen of his time." Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p.

81.

1. _Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity._ Cf. ll. 8-9, 51-52, as ill.u.s.trative of the religious professionalism of the Bishop's talk. He drops into the ecclesiastical conception of life and death, and into the phraseology of his order.

21. _Epistle-side._ The right-hand side facing the altar, where the epistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel being read from the other side by the priest acting as a.s.sistant.

29. _Peach-blossom marble._ This rosy marble delights the Bishop as much as the pale cheap onion-stone offends him. The lapis-lazuli, a rich blue stone (l. 42), the antique-black (Nero-antico), a rare black marble (l.

34), the beautiful green jasper (l. 68), the elaborate carving planned for the bronze frieze (l. 56-62, 106-111), show not only that the Bishop covets what is costly, but that his highly cultivated taste knows real beauty.

34. _That conflagration._ The eagerness of the Bishop for the lump of the lapis-lazuli has made him steal even from his own church.

41. _Olive-frail._ A basket made of rushes, used for packing olives.

57. _Those Pans and Nymphs._ The underlying paganism of the Bishop produces a strangely incongruous mixture on his tomb--the Savior, St.

Praxed, Moses, Pan, and the Nymphs.

58. _Thyrsus._ The ivy-coiled staff or spear stuck in a pine-cone, symbol of the Bacchic orgy.

68. _Travertine._ A white limestone, the name being a corruption of Tiburninus, from Tibur, now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this stone comes.

77. _Choice Latin._ The Bishop's scholars.h.i.+p was as good as his taste in marbles. The _Elucescebat_ ("he was ill.u.s.trious") of l. 99 Browning called "dog-latin" and he called "Ulpian, the golden jurist, a copper latinist." (See letter to D. G. Rossetti. Quoted by A. J. George, _Select Poems of Browning_, p. 366.) Tully's Latin was Cicero's (Marcus Tullius Cicero), the purest cla.s.sic style. The Grammarian in "The Grammarian's Funeral" was equally intense on a point of elegance or correctness in the ancient languages.

80-84. The Bishop rejoices in all that has to do with the forms and ceremonies of the church. Note in ll. 119-121 his insistence on form and order.

91. _Strange thoughts._ From this point on the Bishop's mind seems to wander.

108. _A visor and a Term._ The visor is a mask. A term is any bust or half-statue not placed upon but incorporated with, and as it were immediately springing out of, the square pillar which serves as its pedestal.

CLEON

The quotation preceding this poem is from _Acts_ xvii, 28, and is, in full, "As certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'" The poet thus referred to by Paul was Aratus, a Greek poet from Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Cleon and Protus of Browning's poem are not historical characters, but they are representative of the tone of thought and inquiry on the part of the Greek philosophers at the time of Paul. Lines 1-158 give an account of the achievements of Cleon, a man who has attained eminence in the various realms of poetry, philosophy, painting, and sculpture. He is not in any one accomplishment equal to the great poets, musicians, or artists of the past, and yet he represents progress because he is able to enter into sympathy with the great achievements in all these realms.

1. _Sprinkled isles._ Presumably the Sporades, the "scattered isles."

4. _Profits in his Tyranny._ Free government [in Greece] having superseded the old hereditary sovereignties, all who obtained absolute power in a state were called tyrants, or rather despots; for the term indicates the irregular way in which the power was given rather than the way in which it was exercised. Tyrants might be mild in exercise of authority, and, like Protus, liberal in their patronage of the arts.

8. _Gift after gift._ Protus, a patron of the arts, shows his appreciation of the work of Cleon by many royal gifts. Chief among the slaves, black and white, sent by Protus, is one white woman in a bright yellow wool robe, who is especially commissioned to present a beautiful cup. Lines 136-8 are also descriptive of this girl.

41. _Zeus._ The chief of the Grecian G.o.ds.

47. _That epos._ An epic poem by Cleon engraved on golden plates.

51. _The image of the sun-G.o.d on the phare._ Cleon has made a statue of Apollo for a lighthouse. _Phare_ is from the island of Pharos where there was a famous lighthouse.

53. _The Poecile._ The Portico of Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus.

69. _For music._ "In Greek music the scales were called moods or modes and were subject to great variation in the arrangement of tones and semitones." (Porter-Clarke, note in Camberwell edition.)

82. _The checkered pavement._ This pavement of black and white marble in an elaborate pattern of various sorts of four-sided figures was a gift to Cleon from his own nation.

100-112. The similitude is involved but fairly clear. The water that touches the sphere here and there, one point at a time, as the sphere is revolved, represents the power of great geniuses who, each at one point, have reached great heights. The air that fills the sphere represents the composite modern mind that synthesizes the parts into a great whole.

132. _Drupe._ Any stone-fruit. The contrast is between the wild plum and the cultivated plum.

139. _Homer._ The poet to whom very ancient tradition a.s.signs the authors.h.i.+p of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. _Terpander_, the father of Greek music, flourished about 700-650 B.C. Phidias, a famous Athenian sculptor, lived 500-432 B.C. His friend was Pericles, the ruler of Athens.

304. _Sappho._ A Greek poetess. She wrote about 600 B.C.

305. _aeschylus_, a Greek tragic poet, 525-456 B.C.

340. _Paulus._ Paul died about 64 A.D. The date of this poem is therefore about the last quarter of the first century A.D. Cleon had heard so vaguely about the Christian religion that he did not know the difference between Christ and Paul. The "doctrine" spoken of in the last line was the Christian teaching concerning immortality. The Greek, Cleon, had felt a longing to believe in another existence in which man would have unlimited capability for joy, but Zeus had revealed no such doctrine, and the cultivated Greek was not ready to receive it at the hands of a man like Paul.