17. Master—a Cosimo of the Medici. Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) was a rich Florentine banker and statesman. He was a magnificent patron of art and literature. The old Medici palace (l. 17), now known as Palazzo Riccardi, is on the corner of the Via Cavour and the Via Gori. The church of San Lorenzo (the "Saint Laurence" of l. 67) is a short distance farther west on the Via Gori.
22. Pick up a manner. The painter protests against the rough usage to which he has been subjected.
23. Zooks. An interjection formerly written "gadzooks." Pilchards are a common cheap fish of the Mediterranean and are taken in seines.
28. Quarter-florin. The florin was a gold coin of Florence. It was first struck off in the twelfth century and was called a florin because it had a flower stamped on one side.
31. I'd like his face. The painter cannot look upon the crowd of men about him without seeing faces he would like to draw. One man would do as a model for Judas. Another would do well in a picture Fra Lippo's imagination quickly conjures up of a slave holding the head of John the Baptist by the hair. In Fra Lippo's real picture of the beheading of John the Baptist the head is brought in by Salome, the daughter of Herodias, on a great platter.
46. Carnival. The days preceding Lent. A period marked by much gaiety, street revelry, masking, etc.
53. Flower o' the broom. These flower songs, called stornelli, are improvised by the peasants at their work. "The stornelli consists of three lines. The first line usually contains the name of a flower which sets the rhyme and is five syllables long. Then the love theme is told in two lines of eleven syllables each, agreeing by rhyme, assonance, or repetition with the first." (Porter and Clarke note in Camberwell Edition.) Browning does not follow the model strictly.
73. Jerome. St. Jerome was one of the Fathers of the Christian Church. During a part of his early life he was given up to worldly pleasures, and for this he did penance by living for a number of years in a cave in a desert region. The penitent St. Jerome was a popular devotional subject in early Christian art. "The scene is generally a wild rocky solitude; St. Jerome, half-naked, emaciated, with matted hair and beard, is seen on his knees before a crucifix, beating his breast with a stone." (Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, i, 308.)
80. What am I a beast for? If you had happened, says Fra Lippo, to catch Cosimo in a frolic like this, of course you would have said nothing; but you think a monk is a beast if he indulges in these nocturnal pleasures. Yet why should the fact that I break monastic rules make you consider me a beast? Just let me tell you how I happened to become a monk.
83. I starved there. Note the vivid picture of the life of a street gamin here and in lines 112-126.