More than completion, matches the immense,—
Then Michael Angelo against the world.”
With Charles Avison, Cenciaja, and With Christopher Smart contain comparisons similar to those noted above.
Eleven poems in all deal with Italian painters or painting as the principal theme. They are: Pictor Ignotus, Old Pictures in Florence, The Guardian Angel, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, One Word More, A Face, Pacchiarotto, Filippo Baldinucci, With Francis Furini, and Beatrice Signorini. Eight of these center around the work, personality, or history of a single artist. Of the eight, Pictor Ignotus, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Lippo Lippi, and With Francis Furini, are serious poetic efforts, having as the theme a painter’s endeavor, and dealing in each case with some shortcoming or lack of acknowledged success. Each of the first three, as poetry, is excellent in conception and execution. With Francis Furini, however, is rather didactic and heavy, lacking in lyricism and beauty.
The failure of Pictor Ignotus was due to his high conception of art—so high that he could not bear to submit pictures of real worth to the world. With his extremely sensitive disposition he could not endure the thought of ignorant criticism by people who had no comprehension of the aim or purpose of the artist. Lippi failed to gain approbation because he would not sacrifice his conception of painting things as God made them to the misguided saintliness of the monks. Furini, according to Browning’s estimate, failed in part, because of his attitude toward the nude. Andrea del Sarto, the greatest failure in all Browning, possessed a masterly technique, but failed through his weakness of character.
Of the later art poems, published after 1855, With Francis Furini is the most serious effort. It contains an extended defense of the nude in art, the substance of which is summed up in the following quotations:
“No gift but in the very plentitude
Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued,
By wickedness or weakness: still some few
Have grace to see thy purpose, strength to mar