Browning’s interest in painting, as well as in sculpture, was retained throughout his life. On September 19, 1846, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Browning set sail for Italy; and from that time on, the wife’s letters are full of references to her husband’s interest in art. In a letter from Pisa dated November 5, 1846, she says she means to know something of pictures; for Robert does, and he will open her eyes for her. Here at Pisa, she continues, the first steps in art, for her, are to be taken. A letter dated October 1, 1847, mentions their friend, Mr. Powers, the American sculptor. Mr. Story, another sculptor; Mr. Kirkup, the art connoisseur; Fredrick Leighton; a French sculptress named Mme. de Fauveau; Gibson; Page; a Mr. Fisher, who was painting the portraits of Mr. Browning and Wiedemann; Mr. Wilde, an American artist; and Harriet Hosmer—all these artists are named as acquaintances of the literary Brownings who were stay-at-home people in Florence. Many letters also mention trips to certain places where individual pictures were seen, such as “a divine picture of Guercino” (August 1848), Domenichino’s “David” at Fano (August, 1848), and the works of Guido Reni, Da Vinci, the Carracci, and Correggio.
Although Browning never had a course of thorough instruction in art, he gave some attention to drawing during the reaction from literary work that followed the publication of Men and Women, in 1855. A letter from Mrs. Browning to her old friend, Mrs. Jameson, dated May 2, 1856, gives the story. After thirteen days application on the part of her husband, she tells us, he produced some really astonishingly good copies of heads, though his purpose was only to fill in the pause in his literary career. Then Mrs. Browning adds: “And really, with all his feeling and knowledge of art, some of the mechanical trick of it can not be out of place.”
IV. Relation to sculpture.
In 1860, a letter from Mrs. Browning says that her husband has begun modeling under the direction of Mr. Story at his studio. She speaks of his progress, of his turning his studies in anatomy to account, and of the fact that he had already copied two busts—those of young Augustus, and of Psyche. At this time he was working six hours a day at modeling. “His habit,” says Mrs. Browning, “was to work by fits and starts”; and as in the case of drawing, he had undertaken work in sculpture until his mind should be ready again for poetical work.
V. Significance of the preceding sections.
VI. Time spent in italy.
VII. English knowledge of italian art in browning’s time.
During the nineteenth century, the history of art began to assume a more important place as a distinct branch of general history. The century was well advanced, however, when the first complete work in this subject appeared—Kugler’s Handbook of the History of Art. It was not translated from the German until 1855, when the part referring to Italy was published in an English translation by Sir Charles Eastlake. (Many of Browning’s best art poems were published in 1855, and some of them previous to that time.) Taking this work as the beginning of modern treatment of art history, and noting the fact that the next work of importance referring to Italian art alone and treating it from the historical standpoint was published by Crowe and Cavalcaselle in 1876, it is evident that nothing like the present general knowledge of it could have existed in England in Browning’s time. Certainly this makes his treatment of art history, particularly the facility with which he presents the tendencies of different periods, more remarkable than similar attainment would be in more recent times. Even with the added knowledge resulting from recent investigations, no other writer has been able to produce such perfect poems of the musician or the painter as Browning has built about Fra Lippo Lippi, or the Italian by adoption, Abt Vogler.[166]