I. General statement.
II. Extent of browning’s knowledge.
The fact that Browning had an interest in studying the London galleries before he went to Italy, and indeed, was a student of pictures from his childhood, has already been noted in the introductory remarks.[176] Just how great the poet’s knowledge of Italian art was at this period, is hard to determine. But his first poem, Pauline, contains a reference to Andromeda, a picture by Caravaggio, who was a Renaissance artist. Mrs. Orr[177] tells us that the picture was always before him as a boy and that he loved the story of the divine deliverer and the innocent victim which it represented. In one of his early letters to Elizabeth Barrett, Browning gives the following account of his fondness for Andromeda: “How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me. My Polidore’s perfect Andromeda along with ‘Boors Carousing’ where I found her—my own father’s doing, or I would say more.”
These statements prove that a fondness for some Italian art, at least, had been a part of his life from a very early age; and in addition, they suggest that a person who had so keen an appreciation for a picture by an artist so little known as Caravaggio, must have known a great deal more about Italian art than is implied in this one statement. Browning was in his twenty-first year when Pauline, the poem referring to Andromeda, was published. This was five years before his first visit to Italy, but even at this time, his appreciation of the picture was so complete that he compared the ever-beautiful and unchanging Andromeda to himself and seemed to feel that she had as real an existence.
III. Irregular distribution of references.
IV. Sources of the poems.
Besides showing, as do many other statements of their life in Italy, that Browning was deeply interested in art, these words suggest both the title and the origin of Old Pictures in Florence, in which the poet reproaches the spirits of the early masters for failing to leave some of their works to one so appreciative as himself. What could be more natural in its development? A poet-artist finds the pictures, is told that they are genuine, and is very desirous of believing it. His interest in personality turns his mind to the painters themselves, his fancy runs with a loose rein—and we have the half-thoughtful whimsicality of Old Pictures in Florence. On the serious side it pleads for the following: (1) more attention to the early almost unknown masters, instead of praise for Angelo, Raphael, and such famous artists; (2) a greater appreciation of the development of Italian painting, because it was development, than of the dead perfection of Greek sculpture; (3) Italian freedom from Austria, and with it the return of art to Florence, resulting in the completed Campanile with the new flag upon it. The first two pleas are made on the ground of the noble development of the early Italian painting, in contrast with the later art of Italian painting and that of perfect Greek sculpture, which were at a standstill.
The Guardian Angel was the direct result of a visit by the Brownings to Fano; probably in 1848, for during that year Murray sent them there to find a summer residence. Mrs. Browning reports[178] that it was unspeakable for such a purpose, but “the churches are very beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino’s is worth going all that way to see.” The poem was published with the group of 1855, and in it mention is made of three trips to see the picture while the Brownings were at Fano.
While The Guardian Angel may be the only poem written as a direct result of seeing a picture, Andrea del Sarto was at least the result of the existence of a picture. Mr. Kenyon, an intimate friend of the Brownings, and a relative of Mrs. Browning, asked them to obtain for him, if possible, a copy of Andrea’s picture of himself and wife. Since he was unable to secure it, Browning wrote the poem and sent it as a record of what the picture contained.
Vasari was the source of much of the historical material which Browning used in his poems. His gossipy narrative was followed almost exactly in Fra Lippo Lippi, and partly in Andrea del Sarto and other poems. Baldinucci’s histories of the Italian painters furnish material for Beatrice Signorini, and the first part of Filippo Baldinucci. Browning invented the last part of the latter, and makes his invention more real by Filippo’s declaration, “Plague o’ me if I record it in my book.”