An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 38

20.

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it.

The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit.

The worthies began a revolution, Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge, Why, honor them now! (ends my allocution) Nor confer your degree when the folks leave college.

21.

There's a fancy some lean to and others hate-- That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series; Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

22.

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,-- When our faith in the same has stood the test,-- Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labor are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of G.o.d: And I have had troubles enough, for one.

23.

But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter--who but Cimabue?

Nor even was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, Could say that he missed my critic-meed.

So, now to my special grievance--heigh-ho!

-- St. 23. Nicolo the Pisan: Nicolo Pisano, architect and sculptor, b. ab. 1207, d. 1278; the church and monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Florence, and the church of San Antonio, at Padua, are esteemed his best architectural works, and his bas-reliefs in the Cathedral of Sienna, his best sculptural.

Cimabue: Giovanni Cimabue, 1240-1302, "ends the long Byzantine succession in Italy. . . . In him 'the spirit of the years to come'

is decidedly manifest; but he never entirely succeeded in casting off the hereditary Byzantine asceticism."--Heaton. Giotto was his pupil.

Ghiberti: Lorenzo Ghiberti, the great Florentine sculptor, 1381-1455; his famous masterpiece, the eastern doors of the Florentine Baptistery, of San Giovanni, of which Michael Angelo said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise.

Ghirlandajo: Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandajo, or the garland-maker, celebrated painter, b. in Florence, 1449, d. 1494; "in treatment, drawing, and modelling, G. excels any fresco-painter since Masaccio; shares with the two Lippis, father and son, a fondness for introducing subordinate groups which was unknown to Ma.s.saccio."--Woltmann and Woermann's History of Painting.

24.

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: --No getting again what the Church has grasped!

The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime!"

(I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quicklime.)

25.

When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, Where many a lost work breathes though badly-- Why don't they bethink them of who has merited?

Why not reveal, while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted?

Why is it they never remember me?

-- St. 25. dree: endure (A. S. "dreo'gan").

26.

Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a sc.r.a.p of Fra Angelico's: But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?

Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

-- St. 26. Bigordi: Ghirlandajo; see above. {note to St. 23.} Sandro: Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli (1437-1515), "belonged in feeling, to the older Christian school, tho' his religious sentiment was not quite strong enough to resist entirely the paganizing influence of the time" (Heaton); became a disciple of Savonarola.

Lippino: Filippino Lippi, son of Fra Filippo (1460-1505), "added to his father's bold naturalism a dramatic talent in composition, which places his works above the mere realisms of Fra Filippo, and renders him worthy to be placed next to Masaccio in the line of progress."--Heaton.

Fra Angelico: see under the Monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi.

Taddeo Gaddi: "foremost amongst these ('The Giotteschi') stands the name of T. G. (1300, living in 1366), the son of Gaddo Gaddi, and G.o.dson of Giotto; was an architect as well as painter, and was on the council of Works of S. Maria del Fiore, after Giotto's death, and carried out his design for the bell-tower."--Heaton.

intonaco: rough-casting.

Lorenzo Monaco: see under the Monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi.

27.

Could not the ghost with the close red cap, My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, Save me a sample, give me the hap Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?

No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly-- Could not Ales...o...b..ldovinetti Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

-- St. 27. Pollajolo: "Antonio Pollajuolo (ab. 1430-1498) was a sculptor and goldsmith, more than a painter; . . .his master-work in pictorial art is the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, in the Nat. Gal., painted for the Pucci Chapel in the Church of San Sebastiano de' Servi, at Florence. 'This painting', says Vasari, 'has been more extolled than any other ever executed by Antonio'. It is, however, unpleasantly hard and obtrusively anatomical. Pollajuolo is said to have been the first artist who studied anatomy by means of dissection, and his sole aim in this picture seems to have been to display his knowledge of muscular action. He was an engraver as well as goldsmith, sculptor, and painter."--Heaton.

Tempera: see Webster, s. vv. "tempera" and "distemper". {paint types} Ales...o...b..ldovinetti: Florentine painter, b. 1422, or later, d. 1499; worked in mosaic, particularly as a restorer of old mosaics, besides painting; he made many experiments in both branches of art, and attempted to work fresco 'al secco', and varnish it so as to make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished for extreme minuteness of detail. "In the church of the Annunziata in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco, but finished 'a secco', wherein he represented the Nativity of Christ, painted with such minuteness of care, that each separate straw in the roof of a cabin, figured therein, may be counted, and every knot in these straws distinguished."--Vasari.

His remaining works are much injured by scaling or the abrasion of the colors.

28.

Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor?

If such remain, as is my conviction, The h.o.a.rding it does you but little honor.

-- St. 28. Margheritone: Margaritone; painter, sculptor, and architect, of Arezzo (1236-1313); the most important of his remaining pictures is a Madonna, in the London National Gallery, from Church of St. Margaret, at Arezzo, "said to be a characteristic work, and mentioned by Vasari, who praises its small figures, which he says are executed 'with more grace and finished with greater delicacy' than the larger ones. Nothing, however, can be more unlike nature, than the grim Madonna and the weird starved Child in her arms (see 'Wornum's Catal. Nat. Gal.', for a description of this painting). Margaritone's favorite subject was the figure of St. Francis, his style being well suited to depict the chief ascetic saint. Crucifixions were also much to his taste, and he represented them in all their repulsive details.

Vasari relates that he died at the age of 77, afflicted and disgusted at having lived to see the changes that had taken place in art, and the honors bestowed on the new artists."--Heaton.

His monument to Pope Gregory X. in the Cathedral of Arezzo, is ranked among his best works. "Browning possesses the 'Crucifixion'

by M. to which he alludes, as also the pictures of Ales...o...b..ldovinetti, and Taddeo Gaddi, and Pollajuolo described in the poem."

--Browning Soc. Papers, Pt. II., p. 169.

29.

They pa.s.s; for them the panels may thrill, The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

-- St. 29. tempera: see Webster, s.v. {a type of paint} tinglish: sharp?

Zeno: founder of the Stoic philosophy.

Carlino: some expressionless picture by Carlo, or Carlino, Dolci.

His works show an extreme finish, often with no end beyond itself; some being, to use Ruskin's words, "polished into inanity".

30.