145 et seq. The realistic painter, who disdains nothing, is shown here.
189. Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337): a pupil of Cimabue, and regarded as the principal reviver of art in Italy. He was a personal friend of Dante. See note under ‘Old Pictures in Florence’, St. 2.
223. I’m grown a man no doubt, I’ve broken bounds: all the editions are so punctuated; but it seems the comma should be after “man”, connecting “no doubt” with “I’ve broken bounds”.
235. “Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as Fra Angelico (1387-1455). Angelico was incomparably the greatest of the distinctively mediaeval school, whose ‘dicta’ the Prior in the poem has all at his tongue’s end. To ‘paint the souls of men’, to ‘make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh’, was the end of his art. And, side by side with Angelico, Masaccio painted. His short life taught him a different lesson—‘the value and significance of flesh’. He would paint by preference the BODIES of men, and would give us NO MORE OF SOUL than the body can reveal. So he ‘laboured’, saith the chronicler, ‘in nakeds’, and his frescoes mark an epoch in art.”—Ernest Bradford (B. S. Illustrations).
“One artist in the seclusion of his cloister, remained true to the traditions and mode of expression of the middle ages, into which, nevertheless, the incomparable beauty and feeling of his nature breathed fresh life. Fra Giovanni Angelico, called da Fiesole from the place of his birth, occupies an entirely exceptional position. He is the late-blooming flower of an almost by-gone time amid the pulsations of a new life. Never, in the whole range of pictorial art, have the inspired fervor of Christian feeling, the angelic beauty and purity of which the soul is capable, been so gloriously interpreted as in his works. The exquisite atmosphere of an almost supernaturally ideal life surrounds his pictures, irradiates the rosy features of his youthful faces, or greets us, like the peace of God, in the dignified figures of his devout old men. His prevailing themes are the humility of soul of those who have joyfully accepted the will of God, and the tranquil Sabbath calm of those who are lovingly consecrated to the service of the Highest. The movement and the changing course of life, the energy of passion and action concern him not.”—‘Outlines of the History of Art’. By Dr. Wilh. Luebke.
236. Lorenzo Monaco: a monk of the order of Camaldoli; a conservative artist of the time, who adhered to the manner of Taddeo Gaddi and his disciples, but Fra Angelico appears likewise to have influenced him.
238. Flower o’ the pine, etc.: this snatch of song applies to what he has just been talking about: you have your own notions of art, and I have mine.
276. Tommaso Guidi (1401-1428), better known as Masaccio, i.e., Tommasaccio, Slovenly or Hulking Tom. “From his time, and forward,” says Mr. Ernest Radford (B. S. Illustrations), “religious painting in the old sense was at an end. Painters no longer attempted to transcend nature, but to copy her, and to copy her in her loveliest aspects. The breach between the old order and the new was complete.” The poet makes him learn of Lippi, not, as Vasari states, Lippi of him.
“When Browning wrote this poem, he knew that the mastership or pupilship of Fra Lippo to Masaccio (called ‘Guidi’ in the poem), and vice versa, was a moot point; but in making Fra Lippi the master, he followed the best authority he had access to, the last edition of Vasari, as he stated in a Letter to the ‘Pall Mall’ at the time, in answer to M. Etienne {a writer in the ‘Revue des deux Mondes’.} Since then, he finds that the latest enquirer into the subject, Morelli, believes the fact is the other way, and that Fra Lippo was the pupil.”—B. Soc. Papers, Pt. II, p. 160.
The letter to the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ I have not seen. M. Etienne’s Article is in Tome 85, pp. 704-735, of the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’, 1870, and the letter probably appeared soon after its publication. What edition of Vasari is referred to, in the above note, as the last, is uncertain; but in Vasari’s own editions of 1550 and 1568, and in Mrs. Foster’s translation, 1855, Lippi is made the pupil, and not the master, of Masaccio.