1.
The morn when first it thunders in March,The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.As I leaned and looked over the aloed archOf the villa-gate this warm March day,No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolledIn the valley beneath where, white and wideAnd washed by the morning water-gold,Florence lay out on the mountain-side.
— St. 1. washed by the morning water-gold: the water of the Arno, gilded by the morning sun;
“I can but muse in hope, upon this shoreOf golden Arno, as it shoots awayThrough Florence’ heart beneath her bridges four.”—Casa Guidi Windows.
2.
River and bridge and street and squareLay mine, as much at my beck and call,Through the live translucent bath of air,As the sights in a magic crystal-ball.And of all I saw and of all I praised,The most to praise and the best to seeWas the startling bell-tower Giotto raised:But why did it more than startle me?
— St. 2. the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: the Campanile of the Cathedral, or Duomo, of Florence (La Cattedrale di S. Maria del Fiore), begun in 1334.
“The characteristics of Power and Beauty occur more of less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building of the world, the Campanile of Giotto.”—Ruskin. But why did it more than startle me?: There’s a rumor “that a certain precious little tablet which Buonarotti eyed like a lover” has been discovered by somebody. If this rumor is true, the speaker feels that Giotto, whom he has so loved, has played him false, in not favoring him with the precious find. See St. 30. “The opinion which his contemporaries entertained of Giotto, as the greatest genius in the arts which Italy in that age possessed, has been perpetuated by Dante in the lines in which the illuminator, Oderigi, says:—
“‘In painting Cimabue fain had thoughtTo lord the field; now Giotto has the cry,So that the other’s fame in shade is brought’(Dante, ‘Purg.’ xi. 93).
“Giotto di Bondone was born at Del Colle, a village in the commune of Vespignano near Florence, according to Vasari, A.D. 1276, but more probably A.D. 1266. He went through his apprenticeship under Cimabue, and practised as a painter and architect not only in Florence, but in various parts of Italy, in free cities as well as in the courts of princes… On April 12, 1334, Giotto was appointed by the civic authorities of Florence, chief master of the Cathedral works, the city fortifications, and all public architectural undertakings, in an instrument of which the wording constitutes the most affectionate homage to the ‘great and dear master’. Giotto died January 8, 1337.” —Woltmann and Woermann’s History of Painting.
For a good account of the Campanile, see Susan and Joanna Horner’s ‘Walks in Florence’, v. I, pp. 62–66; Art. in ‘Macmillan’s Mag.’, April, 1877, by Sidney Colvin,—‘Giotto’s Gospel of Labor’.
3.
Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,Could you play me false who loved you so?Some slights if a certain heart enduresYet it feels, I would have your fellows know!I’ faith, I perceive not why I should careTo break a silence that suits them best,But the thing grows somewhat hard to bearWhen I find a Giotto join the rest.
4.
On the arch where olives overheadPrint the blue sky with twig and leaf(That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed),‘Twixt the aloes, I used to learn in chief,And mark through the winter afternoons,By a gift God grants me now and then,In the mild decline of those suns like moons,Who walked in Florence, besides her men.
—St. 4. By a gift God grants me now and then: the gift ofspiritual vision.
5.
They might chirp and chaffer, come and goFor pleasure or profit, her men alive—My business was hardly with them, I trow,But with empty cells of the human hive;—With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,The church’s apsis, aisle or nave,Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,Its face set full for the sun to shave.
6.
Wherever a fresco peels and drops,Wherever an outline weakens and wanesTill the latest life in the painting stops,Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,—A lion who dies of an ass’s kick,The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.
— St. 6. “He sees the ghosts of the early Christian masters, whose work has never been duly appreciated, standing sadly by each mouldering Italian Fresco.”—Dowden.
7.
For oh, this world and the wrong it does!They are safe in heaven with their backs to it,The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzzRound the works of, you of the little wit!Do their eyes contract to the earth’s old scope,Now that they see God face to face,And have all attained to be poets, I hope?’Tis their holiday now, in any case.
8.
Much they reck of your praise and you!But the wronged great souls—can they be quitOf a world where their work is all to do,Where you style them, you of the little wit,Old Master This and Early the Other,Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows:A younger succeeds to an elder brother,Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.
— St. 8. Much they reck of your praise and you!: the Michaels and Rafaels. Leonardo da Vinci (b. at Vinci, in the Val d’Arno, below Florence, 1452); “in him the two lines of artistic descent, tracing from classic Rome and Christian Byzantium, meet.”—Heaton’s ‘History of Painting’. Dello di Niccolo Delli, painter and sculptor, fl. first half 15th cent.
9.
And here where your praise might yield returns,And a handsome word or two give help,Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns,And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.What, not a word for Stefano there,Of brow once prominent and starry,Called Nature’s Ape and the world’s despairFor his peerless painting? (see Vasari.)
— St. 9. “Stefano is extolled by Vasari as having left Giotto himself far behind, but it is very difficult to ascertain what were really his works.”—Heaton. “Stefano appears from Landinio’s Commentary on Dante to have been called ‘scimia della natura’, the ape of nature, which seems to refer to the strong realistic tendencies common to the school.”—Woltmann and Woermann’s History of Painting. Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter of Arezzo, b. 1512, d. 1574; author of ‘Vite de’ piu excellenti pittori scultori ed architettori’. Florence, 1550.
10.
There stands the Master. Study, my friends,What a man’s work comes to! So he plans it,Performs it, perfects it, makes amendsFor the toiling and moiling, and then, ‘sic transit’!Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor,With upturned eye while the hand is busy,Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbor!’Tis looking downward makes one dizzy.
11.
“If you knew their work you would deal your dole.”May I take upon me to instruct you?When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,Thus much had the world to boast ‘in fructu’—The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken,Which the actual generations garble,Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken)And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.
— St. 11. “If you knew their work”, etc.: The speaker imputes this remark to some one; the meaning is, if you really knew these old Christian painters, you would deal them your mite of praise, damn them, perhaps, with faint praise, and no more. The poet then proceeds to instruct this person.
12.
So, you saw yourself as you wished you were,As you might have been, as you cannot be;Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there:And grew content in your poor degreeWith your little power, by those statues’ godhead,And your little scope, by their eyes’ full sway,And your little grace, by their grace embodied,And your little date, by their forms that stay.
13.
You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.You would prove a model? The Son of PriamHas yet the advantage in arms’ and knees’ use.You’re wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo?You’re grieved—still Niobe’s the grander!You live—there’s the Racers’ frieze to follow:You die—there’s the dying Alexander.
— St. 13. Theseus: a reclining statue from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, now in the British Museum. The Son of Priam: probably the Paris of the Aeginetan Sculptures (now in the Glyptothek at Munich), which is kneeling and drawing the bow.
Apollo: “A word on the line about Apollo the snake-slayer, which my friend Professor Colvin condemns, believing that the God of the Belvedere grasps no bow, but the Aegis, as described in the 15th Iliad. Surely the text represents that portentous object (qou^rin, deinh/n, a’mfida/seian, a’riprepe/’—marmare/hn) as ‘shaken violently’ or ‘held immovably’ by both hands, not a single one, and that the left hand:—
a’lla\ su/ g’ e’n xei/ressi la/b’ ai’gi/da qusano/essan th\n ma/l’ e’pi/ssei/wn fobe/ein h‘/rwas ‘Axaiou/s.
and so on, th\n a’/r’ o‘/ g’ e’n xei/ressin e’/xwn— xersi\n e’/x’ a’tre/ma, k.t.l. Moreover, while he shook it he ‘shouted enormously’, sei^s’, e’pi\ d’ au’to\s au’/se ma/la me/ga, which the statue does not. Presently when Teukros, on the other side, plies the bow, it is to/j‘on e’/xwn e’n xeiri\ pali/ntonon. Besides, by the act of discharging an arrow, the right arm and hand are thrown back as we see,—a quite gratuitous and theatrical display in the case supposed. The conjecture of Flaxman that the statue was suggested by the bronze Apollo Alexikakos of Kalamis, mentioned by Pausanias, remains probable; though the ‘hardness’ which Cicero considers to distinguish the artist’s workmanship from that of Muron is not by any means apparent in our marble copy, if it be one.—Feb. 16, 1880.”—The Poet’s Note.
Niobe: group of ancient sculpture, in the gallery of the Uffizi Palace, in Florence, representing Niobe mourning the death of her children. the Racers’ frieze: the frieze of the Parthenon is perhaps meant, the reference being to the FULNESS OF LIFE exhibited by the men and horses.
The dying Alexander: “‘The Dying Alexander’, at Florence. This well-known, beautiful, and deeply affecting head, which bears a strong resemblance to the Alexander Helios of the Capitol —especially in the treatment of the hair—has been called by Ottfried Mueller a riddle of archaeology. It is no doubt a Greek original, and one of the most interesting remains of ancient art, but we cannot take it for granted that it is intended for Alexander, and still less that it is the work of Lysippus. It is difficult to imagine that the favored and devoted artist of the mighty conqueror would choose to portray his great master in a painful and impotent struggle with disease and death. This consideration makes it extremely improbable that it was executed during the lifetime of Alexander, and the whole character of the work, in which free pathos is the prevailing element, and its close resemblance in style to the heads on coins of the period of the Diadochi, point to a later age than that of Lysippus.” —‘Greek and Roman Sculpture’ by Walter Copland Perry. London, 1882. p. 484.
14.
So, testing your weakness by their strength,Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,Measured by Art in your breadth and length,You learned—to submit is a mortal’s duty.—When I say “you”, ’tis the common soul,The collective, I mean: the race of ManThat receives life in parts to live in a whole,And grow here according to God’s clear plan.
— St. 14. common: general.
15.
Growth came when, looking your last on them all,You turned your eyes inwardly one fine dayAnd cried with a start—What if we so smallBe greater and grander the while than they?Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?In both, of such lower types are wePrecisely because of our wider nature;For time, theirs—ours, for eternity.
16.
To-day’s brief passion limits their range;It seethes with the morrow for us and more.They are perfect—how else? they shall never change:We are faulty—why not? we have time in store.The Artificer’s hand is not arrestedWith us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished.They stand for our copy, and, once investedWith all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.
17.
’Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven—The better! What’s come to perfection perishes.Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven:Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish,Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) “O!”Thy great Campanile is still to finish.
— St. 15–17. “Greek art had ITS lesson to teach, and it taught it. It reasserted the dignity of the human form. It re-stated THE TRUTH of the soul which informs the body, and the body which expresses it. Men saw in its creations their own qualities carried to perfection, and were content to know that such perfection was possible and to renounce the hope of attaining it. In this experience the first stage was progress, the second was stagnation. Progress began again when men looked on these images of themselves and said: ‘we are not inferior to these. We are greater than they. For what has come to perfection perishes, and we are imperfect because eternity is before us; because we were made to GROW.’”—Mrs. Orr’s Handbook to the Works of R. B.
St. 17. “O!”: Boniface VIII. (not Benedict IX., as Vasari has it), wishing to employ Giotto, sent a courtier to obtain some proof of his skill. The latter requesting a drawing to send to his Holiness, Giotto took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in red color; then resting his elbow on his side, to form a compass, with one turn of his hand he drew a circle so perfect and exact, that it was a marvel to behold. This done, he turned to the courtier, saying, “Here is your drawing.” The courtier seems to have thought that Giotto was fooling him; but the pope was easily convinced, by the roundness of the O, of the greatness of Giotto’s skill. This incident gave rise to the proverb, “Tu sei piu tondo che l’ O di Giotto”, the point of which lies in the word ‘tondo’, signifying slowness of intellect, as well as a circle. —Adapted from Vasari and Heaton.
18.
Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,But what and where depend on life’s minute?Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughterOur first step out of the gulf or in it?Shall Man, such step within his endeavor,Man’s face, have no more play and actionThan joy which is crystallized forever,Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?
—St. 18. life’s minute: life’s short span.
19.
On which I conclude, that the early painters,To cries of “Greek Art and what more wish you?”—Replied, “To become now self-acquainters,And paint man, man, whatever the issue!Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:To bring the invisible full into play,Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?”
20.
Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and gloryFor daring so much, before they well did it.The first of the new, in our race’s story,Beats the last of the old; ’tis no idle quiddit.The worthies began a revolution,Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge,Why, honor them now! (ends my allocution)Nor confer your degree when the folks leave college.
21.
There’s a fancy some lean to and others hate—That, when this life is ended, beginsNew work for the soul in another state,Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:Where the strong and the weak, this world’s congeries,Repeat in large what they practised in small,Through life after life in unlimited series;Only the scale’s to be changed, that’s all.
22.
Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seenBy the means of Evil that Good is best,And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven’s serene,—When our faith in the same has stood the test,—Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,The uses of labor are surely done;There remaineth a rest for the people of God:And I have had troubles enough, for one.
23.
But at any rate I have loved the seasonOf Art’s spring-birth so dim and dewy;My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,My painter—who but Cimabue?Nor even was man of them all indeed,From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo,Could say that he missed my critic-meed.So, now to my special grievance—heigh-ho!
— St. 23. Nicolo the Pisan: Nicolo Pisano, architect and sculptor, b. ab. 1207, d. 1278; the church and monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Florence, and the church of San Antonio, at Padua, are esteemed his best architectural works, and his bas-reliefs in the Cathedral of Sienna, his best sculptural.
Cimabue: Giovanni Cimabue, 1240–1302, “ends the long Byzantine succession in Italy… In him ‘the spirit of the years to come’ is decidedly manifest; but he never entirely succeeded in casting off the hereditary Byzantine asceticism.”—Heaton. Giotto was his pupil. Ghiberti: Lorenzo Ghiberti, the great Florentine sculptor, 1381–1455; his famous masterpiece, the eastern doors of the Florentine Baptistery, of San Giovanni, of which Michael Angelo said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise.
Ghirlandajo: Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandajo, or the garland-maker, celebrated painter, b. in Florence, 1449, d. 1494; “in treatment, drawing, and modelling, G. excels any fresco-painter since Masaccio; shares with the two Lippis, father and son, a fondness for introducing subordinate groups which was unknown to Massaccio.”—Woltmann and Woermann’s History of Painting.
24.
Their ghosts still stand, as I said before,Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o’er:—No getting again what the Church has grasped!The works on the wall must take their chance;“Works never conceded to England’s thick clime!”(I hope they prefer their inheritanceOf a bucketful of Italian quicklime.)
25.
When they go at length, with such a shakingOf heads o’er the old delusion, sadlyEach master his way through the black streets taking,Where many a lost work breathes though badly—Why don’t they bethink them of who has merited?Why not reveal, while their pictures dreeSuch doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted?Why is it they never remember me?
— St. 25. dree: endure (A. S. “dreo’gan”).
26.
Not that I expect the great Bigordi,Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word ISay of a scrap of Fra Angelico’s:But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,To grant me a taste of your intonaco,Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
— St. 26. Bigordi: Ghirlandajo; see above. {note to St. 23.} Sandro: Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli (1437–1515), “belonged in feeling, to the older Christian school, tho’ his religious sentiment was not quite strong enough to resist entirely the paganizing influence of the time” (Heaton); became a disciple of Savonarola.
Lippino: Filippino Lippi, son of Fra Filippo (1460–1505), “added to his father’s bold naturalism a dramatic talent in composition, which places his works above the mere realisms of Fra Filippo, and renders him worthy to be placed next to Masaccio in the line of progress.”—Heaton.
Fra Angelico: see under the Monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi. Taddeo Gaddi: “foremost amongst these (‘The Giotteschi’) stands the name of T. G. (1300, living in 1366), the son of Gaddo Gaddi, and godson of Giotto; was an architect as well as painter, and was on the council of Works of S. Maria del Fiore, after Giotto’s death, and carried out his design for the bell-tower.”—Heaton. intonaco: rough-casting.
Lorenzo Monaco: see under the Monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi.
27.
Could not the ghost with the close red cap,My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,Save me a sample, give me the hapOf a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?No Virgin by him the somewhat petty,Of finical touch and tempera crumbly—Could not Alesso BaldovinettiContribute so much, I ask him humbly?
— St. 27. Pollajolo: “Antonio Pollajuolo (ab. 1430–1498) was a sculptor and goldsmith, more than a painter; …his master-work in pictorial art is the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, in the Nat. Gal., painted for the Pucci Chapel in the Church of San Sebastiano de’ Servi, at Florence. ‘This painting’, says Vasari, ‘has been more extolled than any other ever executed by Antonio’. It is, however, unpleasantly hard and obtrusively anatomical. Pollajuolo is said to have been the first artist who studied anatomy by means of dissection, and his sole aim in this picture seems to have been to display his knowledge of muscular action. He was an engraver as well as goldsmith, sculptor, and painter.”—Heaton.
Tempera: see Webster, s. vv. “tempera” and “distemper”. {paint types} Alesso Baldovinetti: Florentine painter, b. 1422, or later, d. 1499; worked in mosaic, particularly as a restorer of old mosaics, besides painting; he made many experiments in both branches of art, and attempted to work fresco ‘al secco’, and varnish it so as to make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished for extreme minuteness of detail. “In the church of the Annunziata in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco, but finished ‘a secco’, wherein he represented the Nativity of Christ, painted with such minuteness of care, that each separate straw in the roof of a cabin, figured therein, may be counted, and every knot in these straws distinguished.”—Vasari. His remaining works are much injured by scaling or the abrasion of the colors.
28.
Margheritone of Arezzo,With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,Where in the foreground kneels the donor?If such remain, as is my conviction,The hoarding it does you but little honor.
— St. 28. Margheritone: Margaritone; painter, sculptor, and architect, of Arezzo (1236–1313); the most important of his remaining pictures is a Madonna, in the London National Gallery, from Church of St. Margaret, at Arezzo, “said to be a characteristic work, and mentioned by Vasari, who praises its small figures, which he says are executed ‘with more grace and finished with greater delicacy’ than the larger ones. Nothing, however, can be more unlike nature, than the grim Madonna and the weird starved Child in her arms (see ‘Wornum’s Catal. Nat. Gal.’, for a description of this painting). Margaritone’s favorite subject was the figure of St. Francis, his style being well suited to depict the chief ascetic saint. Crucifixions were also much to his taste, and he represented them in all their repulsive details. Vasari relates that he died at the age of 77, afflicted and disgusted at having lived to see the changes that had taken place in art, and the honors bestowed on the new artists.”—Heaton.
His monument to Pope Gregory X. in the Cathedral of Arezzo, is ranked among his best works. “Browning possesses the ‘Crucifixion’ by M. to which he alludes, as also the pictures of Alesso Baldovinetti, and Taddeo Gaddi, and Pollajuolo described in the poem.” —Browning Soc. Papers, Pt. II., p. 169.
29.
They pass; for them the panels may thrill,The tempera grow alive and tinglish;Their pictures are left to the mercies stillOf dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,Who, seeing mere money’s worth in their prize,Will sell it to somebody calm as ZenoAt naked High Art, and in ecstasiesBefore some clay-cold vile Carlino!
— St. 29. tempera: see Webster, s.v. {a type of paint} tinglish: sharp? Zeno: founder of the Stoic philosophy. Carlino: some expressionless picture by Carlo, or Carlino, Dolci. His works show an extreme finish, often with no end beyond itself; some being, to use Ruskin’s words, “polished into inanity”.
30.
No matter for these! But Giotto, you,Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it—Oh, never! it shall not be counted true—That a certain precious little tabletWhich Buonarroti eyed like a lover,Was buried so long in oblivion’s wombAnd, left for another than I to discover,Turns up at last! and to whom?—to whom?
— St. 30. a certain precious little tablet: “The ‘little tablet’ was a famous ‘Last Supper’, mentioned by Vasari, and gone astray long ago from the Church of S. Spirito: it turned up, according to report, in some obscure corner, while I was in Florence, and was at once acquired by a stranger. I saw it, genuine or no, a work of great beauty.”—From Poet’s Letter to the Editor.
Buonarotti: Michael Angelo (more correctly, Michel Agnolo) Buonarotti, b. 6th of March, 1475, at Castel Caprese, near Florence; d. at Rome, 18th of Feb., 1564.
and to whom?—to whom?: a contemptuous repetition.
31.
I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,(Or was it rather the Ognissanti?)Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti!My Koh-i-noor—or (if that’s a platitude)Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi’s eye;So, in anticipative gratitude,What if I take up my hope and prophesy?
— St. 31. San Spirito: a church of the 14th century, in Florence. Ognissanti: i.e., “All Saints”, in Florence.
I shall have it yet!: I shall make a happy find yet. Detur amanti!: let it be given to the loving one.
Koh-i-noor: “Mountain of Light”, a celebrated diamond, “the diamond of the great Mogul”, presented to Queen Victoria, in 1850. See Art. on the Diamond, ‘N. Brit. Rev.’ Vol. 18, p. 186, and Art., Diamond, ‘Encycl. Brit.’; used here, by metonymy, for a great treasure.
Jewel of Giamschid: the ‘Deria-i-noor’, or ‘the Sea of Light’, one of the largest of known diamonds, belonging to the king of Persia, is probably referred to. See ‘N. Brit. Rev.’, Vol. 18, p. 217.
32.
When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotardIs pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing,To the worse side of the Mont St. Gothard,We shall begin by way of rejoicing;None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,Hunting Radetzky’s soul like a partridgeOver Morello with squib and cracker.
— St. 32. a certain dotard: Joseph Wenzel Radetzky, b. Nov. 2, 1766, d. Jan. 5, 1858, in his 92d year; governed the Austrian possessions in Italy to Feb. 28, 1857.
Morello: Monte Morello, the highest of the spurs of the Apennines, to the north of Florence.
33.
This time we’ll shoot better game and bag ’em hot:No mere display at the stone of Dante,But a kind of sober Witanagemot(Ex: “Casa Guidi”, ‘quod videas ante’)Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,How Art may return that departed with her.Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine’s,And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!
—St. 33. the stone of Dante: see ‘Casa Guidi Windows’, Pt. I,Sect. XIV., XV.
Witanagemot: A. S. ‘witena gemo^t’: an assembly of wise men, a parliament.
Casa Guidi: Mrs. Browning’s ‘Casa Guidi Windows’, a poem named from the house in Florence in which she lived, and giving her impressions of events in Tuscany at the time.
the Loraine’s: the “hated house” included the Cardinals of Guise, or Lorraine, and the Dukes of Guise, a younger branch of the house of Lorraine.
Orgagna: Andrea di Cione (surnamed Orcagna, or Arcagnolo, approximate dates of b. and d. 1315–1376), one of the most noted successors of Giotto, and allied to him in genius; though he owed much to Giotto, he showed great independence of spirit in his style.
34.
How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate,Utter fit things upon art and history,Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,Make of the want of the age no mystery;Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,Show—monarchy ever its uncouth cub licksOut of the bear’s shape into Chimaera’s,While Pure Art’s birth is still the republic’s!
35.
Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan,Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an “issimo”),To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan,And turn the bell-tower’s ALT to ALTISSIMO;And, fine as the beak of a young beccaccia,The Campanile, the Duomo’s fit ally,Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia,Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.
— St. 35. an “issimo”: any adjective in the superlative degree. to end: complete.
our half-told tale of Cambuscan: by metonymy for the unfinished Campanile of Giotto;
“Or call up him that left half-toldThe story of Cambuscan bold.”—Milton’s ‘Il Penseroso’.
An allusion to Chaucer, who left the ‘Squire’s Tale’ in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ unfinished. The poet follows Milton’s accentuation of the word “Cambuscan”, on the penult; it’s properly accented on the ultimate.
beccaccia: woodcock.
the Duomo’s fit ally: “There is, as far as I know, only one Gothic building in Europe, the Duomo of Florence, in which the ornament is so exquisitely finished as to enable us to imagine what might have been the effect of the perfect workmanship of the Renaissance, coming out of the hands of men like Verocchio and Ghiberti, had it been employed on the magnificent framework of Gothic structure.”—Ruskin in ‘Stones of Venice’.
36.
Shall I be alive that morning the scaffoldIs broken away, and the long-pent fire,Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffledSprings from its sleep, and up goes the spire,While, “God and the People” plain for its motto,Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky?At least to foresee that glory of GiottoAnd Florence together, the first am I!
— St. 36. and up goes the spire: Giotto’s plan included a spire of 100 feet, but the project was abandoned by Taddeo Gaddi, who carried on the work after the death of Giotto in 1336.
“The mountains from withoutIn silence listen for the word said next.What word will men say,—here where Giotto plantedHis Campanile like an unperplexedFine question heaven-ward, touching the things grantedA noble people, who, being greatly vexedIn act, in aspiration keep undaunted?”—Mrs. Browning’s ‘Casa Guidi Windows’,Pt. I., vv. 66–72.
Pictor Ignotus.
{Florence, 15—.}
I could have painted pictures like that youth’sYe praise so. How my soul springs up! No barStayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!—Never did fate forbid me, star by star,To outburst on your night, with all my giftOf fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunkFrom seconding my soul, with eyes upliftAnd wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunkTo the centre, of an instant; or aroundTurned calmly and inquisitive, to scan 10The license and the limit, space and bound,Allowed to truth made visible in man.And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,Over the canvas could my hand have flung,Each face obedient to its passion’s law,Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue:Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her broodPull down the nesting dove’s heart to its place; 20Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved,—O human faces! hath it spilt, my cup?What did ye give me that I have not saved?Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)Of going—I, in each new picture,—forth,As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,Bound for the calmly satisfied great State,Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, 30Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,Through old streets named afresh from the event,Till it reached home, where learned age should greetMy face, and youth, the star not yet distinctAbove his hair, lie learning at my feet!—Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linkedWith love about, and praise, till life should end,And then not go to heaven, but linger here,Here on my earth, earth’s every man my friend,The thought grew frightful, ’twas so wildly dear! 40But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sightsHave scared me, like the revels through a doorOf some strange house of idols at its rites!This world seemed not the world it was, before:Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped… Who summoned those cold faces that begunTo press on me and judge me? Though I stoopedShrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,They drew me forth, and spite of me…enough!These buy and sell our pictures, take and give, 50Count them for garniture and household-stuff,And where they live needs must our pictures liveAnd see their faces, listen to their prate,Partakers of their daily pettiness,Discussed of,—“This I love, or this I hate,This likes me more, and this affects me less!”Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whilesMy heart sinks, as monotonous I paintThese endless cloisters and eternal aislesWith the same series, Virgin, Babe, and Saint, 60With the same cold calm beautiful regard,—At least no merchant traffics in my heart;The sanctuary’s gloom at least shall wardVain tongues from where my pictures stand apart:Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrineWhile, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,They moulder on the damp wall’s travertine,‘Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!O youth, men praise so,—holds their praise its worth? 70Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth? — 3. ah, thought which saddens while it soothes: the thought saddens him that he has not realized his capabilities, and soothes him that he has resisted the temptations to earthly fame, and been true to his soul.
14–22. he could have expressed Hope, Rapture, Confidence, and all other passions, in the human face, each clear proclaimed without a tongue.
23. hath it spilt, my cup?: the cup of his memory.
24. What did ye give me that I have not saved?: he has retained all the impressions he has received from human faces.
25 et seq.: Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well I have dreamed!) of going forth in each new picture, as it went to Pope or Kaiser, etc., making new hearts beat and bosoms swell.
34. the star not yet distinct above his hair: his fame not having yet shone brightly out; “his” refers to “youth”.
35. lie learning: and should lie.
41. But a voice changed it: the voice of his secret soul.
67. travertine: coating of lime; properly a limestone. Lat., ‘lapis Tiburtinus’, found near Tibur, now Tivoli.
Andrea del Sarto.
{Called “The Faultless Painter”.}
But do not let us quarrel any more,No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once:Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear,Treat his own subject after his own way,Fix his own time, accept too his own price,And shut the money into this small handWhen next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?Oh, I’ll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! 10I often am much wearier than you think,This evening more than usual: and it seemsAs if—forgive now—should you let me sitHere by the window, with your hand in mine,And look a half hour forth on Fiesole,Both of one mind, as married people use,Quietly, quietly the evening through,I might get up to-morrow to my workCheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20Your soft hand is a woman of itself,And mine, the man’s bared breast she curls inside.Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serveFor each of the five pictures we require:It saves a model. So! keep looking so—My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!—How could you ever prick those perfect ears,Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet—My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon,Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,While she looks—no one’s: very dear, no less.You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made,That’s what we painters call our harmony!A common grayness silvers every thing,—All in a twilight, you and I alike—You, at the point of your first pride in me(That’s gone, you know)—but I, at every point;My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned downTo yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;That length of convent-wall across the wayHolds the trees safer, huddled more inside;The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,And autumn grows, autumn in every thing.Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape,As if I saw alike my work and selfAnd all that I was born to be and do,A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand.How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 50So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!This chamber, for example—turn your head—All that’s behind us! You don’t understandNor care to understand about my art,But you can hear at least when people speak:And that cartoon, the second from the door—It is the thing, Love! so such things should be:Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say.I can do with my pencil what I know, 60What I see, what at bottom of my heartI wish for, if I ever wish so deep—Do easily, too—when I say, perfectly,I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,Who listened to the Legate’s talk last week;And just as much they used to say in France.At any rate ’tis easy, all of it!No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past:I do what many dream of, all their lives,—Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70And fail in doing. I could count twenty suchOn twice your fingers, and not leave this town,Who strive—you don’t know how the others striveTo paint a little thing like that you smearedCarelessly passing with your robes afloat,—Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,(I know his name, no matter)—so much less!Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.There burns a truer light of God in them,In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to promptThis low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine.Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,Enter and take their place there sure enough,Though they come back and cannot tell the world.My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.The sudden blood of these men! at a word—Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.I, painting from myself and to myself, 90Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blameOr their praise either. Somebody remarksMorello’s outline there is wrongly traced,His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-gray,Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!I know both what I want and what might gain; 100And yet how profitless to know, to sigh“Had I been two, another and myself,Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt.Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youthThe Urbinate who died five years ago.[’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)Well, I can fancy how he did it all,Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,Above and through his art—for it gives way; 110That arm is wrongly put—and there again—A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,He means right—that, a child may understand.Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:But all the play, the insight and the stretch—Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,We might have risen to Rafael, I and you.Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think—120More than I merit, yes, by many times.But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow,And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,And the low voice my soul hears, as a birdThe fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare—Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged“God and the glory! never care for gain.The present by the future, what is that?Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 130Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!”I might have done it for you. So it seems:Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self;The rest avail not. Why do I need you?What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will’s somewhat—somewhat, too, the power—And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 140God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.’Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,That I am something underrated here,Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.The best is when they pass and look aside;But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! 150I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,Put on the glory, Rafael’s daily wear,In that humane great monarch’s golden look,—One finger in his beard or twisted curlOver his mouth’s good mark that made the smile,One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,I painting proudly with his breath on me,All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 160Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,—And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,This in the background, waiting on my work,To crown the issue with a last reward!A good time, was it not, my kingly days?And had you not grown restless…but I know—’Tis done and past; ’twas right, my instinct said;Too live the life grew, golden and not gray:And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should temptOut of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170How could it end in any other way?You called me, and I came home to your heart.The triumph was, to have ended there; then, ifI reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold,You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!“Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;The Roman’s is the better when you pray,But still the other’s Virgin was his wife”—Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 180Both pictures in your presence; clearer growsMy better fortune, I resolve to think.For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,Said one day Agnolo, his very self,To Rafael…I have known it all these years…(When the young man was flaming out his thoughtsUpon a palace-wall for Rome to see,Too lifted up in heart because of it)“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrubGoes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190Who, were he set to plan and executeAs you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!”To Rafael’s!—And indeed the arm is wrong.I hardly dare…yet, only you to see,Give the chalk here—quick, thus the line should go!Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out!Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?Do you forget already words like those?) 200If really there was such a chance so lost,—Is, whether you’re—not grateful—but more pleased.Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!This hour has been an hour! Another smile?If you would sit thus by me every nightI should work better, do you comprehend?I mean that I should earn more, give you more.See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star;Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall,The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 210Come from the window, love,—come in, at last,Inside the melancholy little houseWe built to be so gay with. God is just.King Francis may forgive me: oft at nightsWhen I look up from painting, eyes tired out,The walls become illumined, brick from brickDistinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,That gold of his I did cement them with!Let us but love each other. Must you go?That cousin here again? he waits outside? 220Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans?More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?While hand and eye and something of a heartAre left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth?I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sitThe gray remainder of the evening out,Idle, you call it, and muse perfectlyHow I could paint, were I but back in France,One picture, just one more—the Virgin’s face, 230Not your’s this time! I want you at my sideTo hear them—that is, Michel Agnolo—Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.I take the subjects for his corridor,Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there,And throw him in another thing or twoIf he demurs; the whole should prove enoughTo pay for this same cousin’s freak. Beside,What’s better and what’s all I care about, 240Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,The cousin! what does he to please you more? I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.I regret little, I would change still less.Since there my past life lies, why alter it?The very wrong to Francis!—it is trueI took his coin, was tempted and complied,And built this house and sinned, and all is said.My father and my mother died of want. 250Well, had I riches of my own? you seeHow one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:And I have labored somewhat in my timeAnd not been paid profusely. Some good sonPaint my two hundred pictures—let him try!No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. Yes,You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.This must suffice me here. What would one have?In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—260Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and meTo cover—the three first without a wife,While I have mine! So—still they overcomeBecause there’s still Lucrezia,—as I choose. Again the cousin’s whistle! Go, my love.
— 29. My face, my moon:
“Once, like the moon, I madeThe ever-shifting currents of the bloodAccording to my humor ebb and flow.”—Cleopatra, in Tennyson’s ‘A Dream of Fair Women’.
“You are the powerful moon of my blood’s sea,To make it ebb or flow into my faceAs your looks change.”—Ford and Decker’s ‘Witch of Edmonton’.
35. A common grayness: Andrea del Sarto was distinguished for his skill in chiaro-oscuro.
82. low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand: “Andrea del Sarto’s was, after all, but the ‘low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand’, and therefore his perfect art does not touch our hearts like that of Fra Bartolommeo, who occupies about the same position with regard to the great masters of the century as Andrea del Sarto. Fra Bartolommeo spoke from his heart. He was moved by the spirit, so to speak, to express his pure and holy thoughts in beautiful language, and the ideal that presented itself to his mind, and from which he, equally with Raphael, worked, approached almost as closely as Raphael’s to that abstract beauty after which they both longed. Andrea del Sarto had no such longing: he was content with the loveliness of earth. This he could understand and imitate in its fullest perfection, and therefore he troubled himself but little about the ‘wondrous paterne’ laid up in heaven. Many of his Madonnas have greater beauty, strictly speaking, than those of Bartolommeo, or even of Raphael; but we miss in them that mysterious spiritual loveliness that gives the latter their chief charm.” —Heaton’s History of Painting.
93. Morello: the highest of the spurs of the Apennines to the north of Florence.
96. Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?: it’s beyond their criticism.
105. The Urbinate: Raphael Santi, born 1483, in Urbino. Andrea sees in Raphael, whose technique was inferior to his own, his superior, as he reached above and through his art— for it gives way.
106. George Vasari: see note under St. 9 of ‘Old Pictures in Florence’.
120. Nay, Love, you did give all I asked: it must be understood that his wife has replied with pique, to what he said in the two preceding lines.
129. by the future: when placed by, in comparison with, the future.
130. Agnolo: Michael Angelo (more correctly, Agnolo) Buonarotti. See note under St. 30 of ‘Old Pictures in Florence’.
146. For fear of chancing on the Paris lords: by reason of his breaking the faith he had pledged to Francis I. of France, and using for his own purposes, or his wife’s, the money with which the king had entrusted him to purchase works of art in Italy.
149–165. That Francis, that first time: he thinks with regret of the king and of his honored and inspiring stay at his court.
161. by those hearts: along with, by the aid of.
173. The triumph was…there: i.e., in your heart.
174. ere the triumph: in France.
177. Rafael did this, …was his wife: a remark ascribed to some critic.
198. If he spoke the truth: i.e., about himself.
199. What he: do you ask?
202. all I care for…is whether you’re.
209. Morello’s gone: its outlines are lost in the dusk. See v. 93.
218. That gold of his: see note to v. 146.
220. That cousin here again?: one of Lucrezia’s gallants is referred to, to pay whose gaming debts, it appears, she has obtained money of her husband. It must be understood that this gallant whistles here. See last verse of the monologue.
263. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci.