CHAPTER II
Italian Sculpture in the Poems of Browning.
I. General statement.
It is often difficult to estimate separately Browning’s treatment of sculpture and painting, since he discusses the two arts together in several of his poems (for example, Old Pictures in Florence) and since many important Italian artists were both painters and sculptors. However, the predominant art of the man in question, or the art which Browning emphasizes most in connection with him, has been taken as a basis for classification. Estimating in this manner, one finds that the poet refers, in the eight poems, to seven artists—Niccolo Pisano and Giovanni Pisano, Canova, Ghiberti, Giovanni da Bologna, Baccio Bandinelli and Bernini—all of historical interest. Claus of Innsbruck (in My Last Duchess), and Jules (in Pippa Passes) with his companion art students, are purely imaginary. Reference is made to seven historical works of sculpture: the Psiche-fanciulla and Pietà of Canova, the statue of Duke Ferdinand, John of the Black Bands, Pasquin’s statue, the Fountain of the Tritons, and the Bocca-dell’-Verità. Three fictitious pieces of sculpture which are named are also introduced, besides a number of imaginary unnamed works.
Such references to sculpture as exist in the poems seem to conform entirely to the facts of history, where there is any pretense of historical accuracy. Sculpture is so unimportant a feature of most of the poems that there was certainly very little temptation to enlarge on the facts for dramatic purposes, or for any other reason.
II. Historical scope.
The first reference to sculpture is in Sordello (1840), where the lines concerning the Pisani (Book I, l. 574) characterize the art of Sordello’s time as just dawning into the Renaissance. In Pippa Passes (1841) the poet, passing over something like five hundred years’ development, brings before the reader a picture of nineteenth century art life among students in Italy. My Last Duchess (1842) deals with the decadent Renaissance, while The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church (1845) presents a faithful picture of the same period. In Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), the pendulum swings backward to the early days of Christianity, when the church Fathers abhorred the physical beauty of their art inheritance from Greece. The Statue and the Bust (1855) relates events of the sixteenth century also; but they are such as have no historical significance in a chronological way, and could just as readily have happened in the thirteenth or the nineteenth century. Old Pictures in Florence (1855) has the early masters as its theme, with another reference to Niccolo Pisano, the first Renaissance sculptor, though the poem concerns itself mainly with architecture and painters. The Ring and the Book (1868–69) can hardly be said to deal with any particular period in art history.
Chronological order is not followed, nor is there any reason in the logic or emotion of poetry why such order should obtain. Whether one denies or affirms on the question of poetical inspiration, one is compelled to admit that the practice in the past has not been to follow set formulas of time or place. No poet, unless it be a pedantic one whose work would fail utterly in spontaneity, would read history and write a poem on each period as he read.
The diagram below indicates that Browning’s work was no exception to the normal procedure.