Some very recent investigators assert that Browning unduly exaggerated the character of Andrea’s wife, in Andrea del Sarto. However, no less an authority than W. M. Rossetti insists that he was essentially true to the facts in representing her. Others insist that he was somewhat unfair in the general impression which he gives of Andrea. At least he has not changed the facts materially in this particular case; and if any liberty has been taken, from a poetic standpoint it is well taken. There are several slight errors in Fra Lippo Lippi. For example, Guidi (Masaccio) is now known to have been the master, not the pupil of Lippi, and the picture in Sant’ Ambrogio was probably not the expiation of a prank.
The few changes in the facts, however, are comparatively slight, all told. Allowing for mistaken authorities whom Browning followed, variations are much more trivial than might be expected. By the old well-worn charity cloak of poetic license it is customary to allow for considerable idealization. But Browning, the artist of things as they really exist, held to the truth as he saw it, even in his treatment of art. This he did in spite of the fact that his purpose was not to give art history, but to present personality as it existed in relation to art. With his deep insight into human nature, as well as art history, he took the characters which he found in the world of art, the good or bad, and gave them to us as examples of the striving, often unsuccessful soul.
CHAPTER VII
General Comparisons: Browning and the Fine Arts of Italy.
I. Poetic function and method.
Where Wordsworth would have chosen English natural scenery for purposes of illustration, and Shelley nature in Italy, Browning chose art. Fifteen poems with nature as the main theme, besides numerous others with references to nature, would not seem unusual; but a group of fifteen poems, all moderately long, based on the fine arts, besides a very large number of comparisons to the arts in other poems, seems an exceptional product for a nineteenth century English poet.
Browning’s art monologue is of two kinds—the monologue of the artist who is the chief character in the poem, and the monologue of the poet addressing the artist directly. Nor are these forms confined entirely to Italian art poems. My Last Duchess, The Bishop orders his Tomb, Pictor Ignotus, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Abt Vogler, are all in dramatic monologue, with either an artist or one interested in art, as the speaker. A Toccata of Galuppi’s, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha, and Old Pictures in Florence, represent the poet addressing the artist. Filippo Baldinucci is presented in the first person, in monologue form. In The Guardian Angel the poet directly addressed the angel of the picture. One Word More and A Face, in which the art element is strong, are written in the first person, the former addressed directly to Mrs. Browning with the poet speaking, and the second addressed to no particular person. This review establishes the fact that the monologue is Browning’s favorite form for poems about art, since the list just quoted includes all important poems of that kind. In every case he made some personality prominent, and in all serious poems on art, that personality is either speaking or spoken to, the very finest poems being of the former type.
II. Amount of material used from each of the fine arts.
Architecture is the art of a concrete bodily form, absolutely separated from any representation of humanity, unless one looks beyond it to the architect, or to the people for whom it is constructed. In contradistinction to the other fine arts discussed here, it is characterized by usefulness. While it should, and does, in its highest forms, surmount mere utility, and give an impression of harmony, beauty, and grandeur, it never directly portrays the finest feelings of which humanity is capable and never inspires one directly with a feeling of achievement or struggle in character. Utility is the chief interest guiding Browning’s treatment of architecture—not architectural utility, but the service to the poet in fixing the setting of his poems. Such service is clear in nearly every instance in all of the twenty-five poems in which some Italian building is mentioned, and in the case of nearly all the fifty-eight edifices named. The description of St. Peter’s in Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day is practically the only exception, and there, as has already been stated, the poet passed from the grandeur of the structure itself to the builders. Lack of personality in architecture is, then, the reason for its very slight introduction as an actual art in Browning’s verse.