Men and Women Part 4

And so all's saved for me, and for the church A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!

Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! 390 The street's hushed, and I know my own way back, Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!

NOTES

"Fra Lippo Lippi" is a dramatic monologue which incidentally conveys the whole story of the occurrence the poem starts from--the seizure of Fra Lippo by the City Guards, past midnight, in an equivocal neighborhood--and the lively talk that arose thereupon, outlines the character and past life of the Florentine artist-monk (1412-1469) and the subordinate personalities of the group of officers; and makes all this contribute towards the presentation of Fra Lippo as a type of the more realistic and secular artist of the Renaissance who valued flesh, and protested against the ascetic spirit which strove to isolate the soul.

7. The Carmine: monastery of the Del Carmine friars.

17. Cosimo: de' Medici (1389-1464), Florentine statesman and patron of the arts.

23. Pilchards: a kind of fish.

53. Flower o' the broom: of the many varieties of folk-songs in Italy that which furnished Browning with a model for Lippo's songs is called a stornello. The name is variously derived. Some take it as merely short for ritornillo; others derive it from a storno, to sing against each other, because the peasants sing them at their work, and as one ends a song, another caps it with a fresh one, and so on. These stornelli consist of three lines. The first usually contains the name of a flower which sets the rhyme, and is five syllables long. Then the love theme is told in two lines of eleven syllables each, agreeing by rhyme, a.s.sonance, or repet.i.tion with the first. The first line may be looked upon as a burden set at the beginning instead of, as is more familiar to us, at the end. There are also stornelli formed of three lines of eleven syllables without any burden. Browning has made Lippo's songs of only two lines, but he has strictly followed the rule of making the first line, containing the address to the flower, of five syllables. The Tuscany versions of two of the songs used by Browning are as follows:

"Flower of the pine! Call me not ever happy heart again, But call me heavy heart, 0 comrades mine."

"Flower of the broom! Unwed thy mother keeps thee not to lose That flower from the window of the room."

67. Saint Laurence: the church of San Lorenzo.

88. Aunt Lapaccia: by the death of Lippo's father, says Vasari, he "was left a friendless orphan at the age of two . . . under the care of Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, who brought him up with very great difficulty till his eighth year, when, being no longer able to support the burden, she placed him in the Convent of the Carmelites."

121. The Eight: the magistrates of Florence.

130. Antiphonary: the Roman Service-Book, containing all that is sung in the choir--the antiphones, responses, etc.; it was compiled by Gregory the Great.

131. joined legs and arms to the long music-notes: the musical notation of Lippo's day was entirely different from ours, the notes being square and oblong and rather less suited for arms and legs than the present rounded notes.

139. Camaldolese: monks of Camaldoli.--Preaching Friars: the Dominicans.

189. Giotto: reviver of art in Italy, painter, sculptor, and architect (1266-1337).

196. Herodias: Matthew xiv.6-11.

235. Brother Angelico: Fra Angelico, Giovanni da Fiesole (1387-1455), flower of the monastic school of art, who was said to paint on his knees.

236. Brother Lorenzo: Lorenzo Monaco, of the same school.

276. Guidi : Tommaso Guidi, or Masaccio, nicknamed "Hulking Tom"

(1401-1429). [Vasari makes him Lippo's predecessor. Browning followed the best knowledge of his time in making him, instead, Lippo's pupil. Vasari is now thought to be right.]

323. A Saint Laurence . . . at Prato: near Florence, where Lippi painted many saints. [Vasari speaks of a Saint Stephen painted there in the same realistic manner as Browning's Saint Laurence, whose martyrdom of broiling to death on a gridiron affords Lippo's powers a livelier effect.] The legend of this saint makes his fort.i.tude such that he bade his persecutors turn him over, as he was "done on one side."

346. Something in Sant Ambrogio's: picture of the Virgin crowned with angels and saints, painted for Saint Ambrose Church, now at the Belle Arti in Florence. Vasari says by means of it he became known to Cosimo. Browning, on the other hand, crowns his poem with Lippo's description of this picture as an expiation for his pranks.

354. Saint John: the Baptist; see reference to camel-hair, line 375 and Matthew iii. 4.

355. Saint Ambrose: (340-397), Archbishop of Milan.

358. Man of Uz : Job i. 1.

377. : this one completed the work.

381. Hot c.o.c.kles: an old-fas.h.i.+oned game.

ANDREA DEL SARTO

(CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER")

1855

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?

I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

Oh, I'll content him--but to-morrow. Love! 10 I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if--forgive now--should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, Both of one mind, as married people use, Quietly, quietly the evening through, I might get up to-morrow to my work Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.

To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20 Your soft hand is a woman of itself, And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.

Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve For each of the five pictures we require: It saves a model. So! keep looking so-- My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!

--How could you ever p.r.i.c.k those perfect ears, Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet-- My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30 And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.

You smile? why, there's my picture ready made, There's what we painters call our harmony!

A common grayness silvers everything-- All in a twilight, you and I alike --You, at the point of your first pride in me (That's gone you know)--but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40 There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape-- As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in G.o.d's hand.

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 50 So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!

I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!

This chamber for example--turn your head-- All that's behind us! You don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak: And that cartoon, the second from the door --It is the thing. Love! so such things should be-- Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say.

I can do with my pencil what I know, 60 What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep-- Do easily, too--when I say, perfectly, I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France.

At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past: I do what many dream of, all their lives, --Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70 And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly pa.s.sing with your robes afloat-- Yet do much less, so much less. Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)--so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of G.o.d in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80 Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a word-- Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.

I, painting from myself and to myself, 90 Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame Or their praise either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Sightly traced and well ordered; what of that?

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray Placid, and perfect with my art: the worse!

I know both what I want and what might gain, 100 And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.

Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago.

('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art--for it gives way; 110 That arm is wrongly put--and there again-- A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right--that, a child may understand.

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: But all the play, the insight and the stretch-- Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think-- 120 More than I merit, yes, by many times.

But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare-- Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged "G.o.d and the glory! never care for gain.

The present by the future, what is that?

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 130 Rafael is waiting: up to G.o.d, all three!"

I might have done it for you. So it seems: Perhaps not. All is as G.o.d over-rules.

Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; The rest avail not. Why do I need you?

What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?