26  Andrea del Sarto

(called “The Faultless Painter”)

Text and publication

First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 1863², 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1855.

Composition and date

B. seems to have known about Andrea del Sarto’s work from an early age; Oxford notes that there were two Holy Families by Andrea in Dulwich Picture Gallery, and in 1834 B. wrote a comic poem ‘On Andrea del Sarto’s “Jupiter and Leda” ’ as part of his Cockney Anthology (I 94–5). Several pictures by Andrea were on display in the gallery of the Palazzo Pitti during B.’s time, including one in the ‘Stanza di Giove’ [ Jove Room] listed in Fantozzi as ‘Ritratto di Andrea del Sarto e sua moglie, di esso Andrea’ [Portrait of Andrea del Sarto and his wife, by Andrea himself ] (634). (The picture is not now thought to be by Andrea; see S. J. Freedberg, Andrea del Sarto: Catalogue Raisonné [Cambridge, MA 1963], p. 223; and Thomas i 21.) The poem seems to have originated in a request made by the Brownings’ friend John Kenyon in March 1853 for a copy of this picture of the painter and his wife. B. replied on 17 Mar. 1853:

Now of the ‘Andrea’ you would have copied—I have made the proper enquiries. I know the picture well and esteem it just as you do. It should be well copied. The business of copying is carried on with remarkable rascality here. Such an one, for instance, is in vogue: do you order a picture of him? It is, nine-tenths of it, painted by one of his dozen assistants—& the final touch put in by himself—which, as that touch is like to be an inventive one, might better be wanting. I think I find a man as fit as any who will do the whole conscientiously & well—a Roman & able to draw. But I think he asks too much—for he considers two heads as two pictures, and wants 100 dollars for them.

  (MS at Wellesley College)

See also Julia Markus, SBC i.2 [Fall 1973], 52–3; and cp. Old Pictures (p. 404). According to several accounts, B. was unable to get a satisfactory copy made at an acceptable price, and so sent Kenyon the poem instead (Mrs Andrew Crosse, ‘John Kenyon and his Friends’, Temple Bar lxxxviii [1890] 489; Griffin and Minchin 200; Trumpeter 40). B. later confirmed (in a letter to an unidentified correspondent of 11 Feb. 1878) that this picture was his principal source of inspiration for the poem: ‘The poem to which you refer is in accordance with the account of the relations of Andrea and his wife as given in the Life of the former by Vasari: there is a dissent from the judgment of Vasari in the Life by Baldinucci. But my best warrant for what I wrote is in the wonderful portraits of Andrea and his wife—half-lengths in one picture, still on the walls of the Pitti Palace’ (MS at ABL).

Julia Markus speculates that Andrea and his wife may have been modelled on the American artist William Page and his second wife Sarah Dougherty Page; she points out some similarities between Andrea’s theories of painting and those of Page, and adds that Mrs Page, who was uninterested in her husband’s work, eventually left him for another man after having been notoriously unfaithful during their marriage (see BIS ii [1974] 1–24). B. clearly knew about Sarah Dougherty’s conduct (see l. 221n.) Another resemblance, not noted by Markus, is the fact that Andrea refers to a passage in Revelation from which Page derived his theories about the proportions of the human body; see ll. 260–1n., and cp. Cleon 55–6n. (p. 619).

In comparison with other poems of the same length and importance in M & W, this poem was lightly revised both at the proof stage and in subsequent printed eds.

Sources and influences

Andrea del Sarto was born in Florence on 16 July 1486. He was the son of a tailor (hence ‘del Sarto’) called Agnolo di Francesco, but his real surname is not known for certain; Vasari suggests Vannucchi, but a recent scholar has argued that it may have been Lanfranchi (John Shearman, Andrea del Sarto [Oxford 1965] 2). In 1517 he married a widow, Lucrezia del Fede, who had a daughter from her previous marriage to Carlo Recanati. At some point during 1518–19 he accepted an invitation to work for François I (1494–1547), the King of France; Andrea seems to have stayed at Fontainebleau for about a year before returning to Florence. Soon after his return he visited Rome in connection with a commission to decorate the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. Giorgio Vasari, who later wrote the Lives of the Painters, was briefly apprenticed to Andrea around 1525. In May 1527 the ruling Medici family was expelled from Florence, leading to three years of warfare and great hardship for the people of the city. The capitulation of the Republic in 1530 was followed by an outbreak of plague which claimed the life of Andrea in September of that year. The poem is probably set during 1525 (see l. 104n.).

Interest in Andrea del Sarto’s work was stimulated in the early nineteenth century by his status as one of the leading painters of the Florentine Renaissance, and also by his association with François I, the great French monarch and patron of the arts. The idea of the Renaissance as an important cultural and historical event emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century, principally in the work of French scholars; Burckhardt’s The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) represents the most complete exposition of the idea. This Renaissance was characterized by the rediscovery of the art of classical antiquity, the development of secular forms of art patronage, and an emphasis on the original genius of the greatest artists of the period. In B.’s poem Andrea measures himself against the generally recognized triumvirate of great Renaissance artists—Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael). The development of the idea of the Renaissance was connected with the cult of François I, since François had acted as patron to a number of important Florentine painters during this period, most notably Leonardo da Vinci, and amassed a collection of their work. This collection was moved to the Louvre in 1793, and two paintings by Andrea were on view there as early as 1804. ‘By the early 1820s,’ according to Janet

Cox-Rearick, ‘François was enjoying a great vogue in Paris, with a street, a square, and an entire quartier named after him’ (‘Imagining the Renaissance: The nineteenth-century cult of François I as patron of art’, Renaissance Quarterly i [1997] 207–50). The revival of interest in François generated many early-nineteenth century paintings, with the subject of the king’s relations with the various Italian artists he invited to Fontainebleau a favourite theme; the apocryphal story that Leonardo da Vinci died in the king’s arms was regularly depicted, and Benvenuto Cellini, the artist whose atelier the king is supposed to have visited, was the subject of an opera by Berlioz.

B. seems to have consulted the following sources in developing his portrait of Andrea: (i) Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ Più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architetti. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, vol. viii (1852), pp. 250–307 [Le Monnier]; (ii) Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in quà. Ed. Giuseppe Piacenza. 1728; rpt, Torino: Nella Stamperia Reale, 1770, vol. ii, pp. 419–41 [Baldinucci]; (iii) Anna Jameson, Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters, and of the Progress of Painting in Italy (1845), vol. ii, pp. 73–81 [ Jameson]; (iv) Alfred de Musset, André del Sarto (1833; acted in Nov. 1848 and in 1850) [Musset].

B. also owned a copy of Luigi Biadi’s Notizie Inedite della Vita d’Andrea del Sarto (Firenze 1829) but this is unlikely to have been a source as it is inscribed ‘[to] Robert Browning, with best wishes for this day and all days, from J. Dykes Campbell’: Campbell was secretary of the Browning Society, and this gift presumably dates from the 1880s. It is, however, mentioned by Mrs Foster in a footnote to her translation of the Life of Andrea: ‘There is much discord among the authorities as to the period of Andrea’s birth; Della Valle and most of the later writers give it as above [i.e. 1488]; Biadi only, Notizie Inedite della Vita d’Andrea del Sarto, Florence, 1829, is of a different opinion, and will have it to have taken place ten years earlier’ (Foster iii 180n.). Foster is itself also a possible source; some of the readings from the first ed. of Vasari’s ‘Life’ of Andrea are reprinted in her translation, which appeared a year before the relevant volume of Le Monnier.

(i) Le Monnier

The Brownings moved into ‘an ancient college built by Vasari’ on their arrival in Pisa in 1846, and by Feb. 1847 were (in EBB.’s words) ‘ploughing through’ Vasari. EBB. thought the Lives ‘a dull book’, but B. seems to have found it more stimulating; in a letter of 13 Apr. 1853 to Julia Martin EBB. says that B. is ‘as fond of digging at Vasari as I am at the Mystics, & goes to and from him as constantly, making him a “betwixt and between” to other writers’ (MS at Wellesley College). Although Collections lists three editions of Vasari, it is overwhelmingly likely that the edition used by the Brownings was the 13-volume edition published between 1846 and 1857 in Florence by Felice Le Monnier (see head-note to Fra Lippo, pp. 477–80). Volume viii of Le Monnier, which includes the chapter on Andrea, was first published in 1852. It incorporates material from the first edition of the Life (1550) which Vasari later suppressed, probably due to the fact that it severely criticizes Andrea’s widow Lucrezia who was still alive at the time of its publication:

[Lo] eccellentissimo pittore Andrea del Sarto fiorentino, il quale obbligatissimo alla natura per uno ingegno raro nella pittura, se avesse atteso a una vita più civile e onorata, e non trascurato sè e i suoi prossimi, per lo appetito d’una sua donna che lo tenne sempre et povero et basso, sarebbe stato del continuo in Francia, dove egli fu chiamato da quel Re, che adorava l’opere sue et stimavalo assai; et lo arebbe rimunerato grandemente; dove per satisfare al desiderio de l’appetito di lei et di lui, tornò et visse sempre bassamente; et non fu delle fatiche sue mai, se non poveramente, sovvenuto; et da lei, ch’altro di ben non vedeva, nella fine vicino alla morte fu abandonato.

(Le Monnier viii 250n.)

[If the most excellent Florentine painter Andrea del Sarto, who had nature to thank for having given him a rare gift in the art of painting, had achieved a more civilized and honourable way of life, and not neglected himself and his family for the desire of a wife who always kept him poor and in a low social condition, he would have stayed in France, where he had been summoned by that king who loved his work and held him in great esteem, and who would have rewarded him handsomely; whereas to satisfy both of their cravings, he returned and lived in a state of poverty; and was never properly rewarded for his labours; and was abandoned by her in whom he could see nothing but good when close to his death.]

Vasari describes Andrea as a ‘timid soul’ with a ‘humble and simple nature’ (Le Monnier viii 251), and accuses Lucrezia of mistreating his pupils (including Vasari himself ) and of using his infatuation with her to alienate his affections from his own family: ‘datogli il tossico delle amorose lusinghe, egli ne più qua ne più la faceva, ch’essa voleva; et abbandonato del tutto que’ miseri e poveri vecchi, tolse ad aiutare le sorelle et il padre di lei in cambio di quegli’ (Le Monnier viii 262). [Having received the poison of her amorous enticements, he no longer did anything but her bidding, and having completely abandoned his own poor and unfortunate parents took it upon himself to support her sisters and her father instead.] This task of supporting his wife and her family eventually wears him down, and friends advise him to leave his wife ‘in qualche luogo sicuro’ [in some safe place] in order to develop his artistic career. He goes to France to work at the court of François I and wins the favour of the king, but receives letters from his wife imploring him to come home. François gives Andrea money to buy ‘pictures and sculptures of great value’ (Foster iii 206), but despite swearing on the Bible that he will return to France he never does, spending the money on the construction of his house and on enjoyment, and working slavishly to support Lucrezia and her family.

There are substantial similarities between Vasari’s first edition text and B.’s poem, but there are also significant differences between them. Like B., Vasari emphasizes the ‘faultless’ quality of Andrea’s pictures, both in the Preface to Part 3 of the Lives and in the Life of Andrea itself. He also, however, somewhat inconsistently claims that Andrea ‘continually improved in everything’ connected with his art, adding: ‘had he lived longer, his art would have continued to improve in the same way’. The poem follows Vasari in describing Andrea as ‘jealous’ of Lucrezia, but goes beyond the source in its explicit suggestion of infidelity; her crime for Vasari is exploitation of Andrea’s talent in the interests of herself and her family.

(ii) Baldinucci

In the letter of 1878 cited above (Composition and date) B. states that there is a ‘dissent’ from Vasari’s judgment in Filippo Baldinucci’s Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in quà. There is, however, substantial agreement between Le Monnier and Baldinucci on several matters; Baldinucci in fact uses the first edition of the Lives as his primary source. Baldinucci notes, for example, that Andrea was a ‘very timid person with little spirit’ who charged little or nothing for his pictures, and berates him for returning from France: ‘sarebbe … arrivato a gradi onoratissimi, e ricchissimo diventato, s’egli fosse stato più uomo di quel, ch’e fu.’ [he would have been greatly honoured and become very rich if he had been more of a man than he was.] Like Le Monnier, Baldinucci emphasizes the ‘faultlessness’ of Andrea’s work: ‘si può dire … che nell’infinite opere, che e’ fece, non sia che sappia trovare un errore’. [It might be said that, in all the great number of works he produced, it would be impossible to find an error.] Baldinucci’s editor Piacenza adds: ‘Inoltre nel disegno fu cosi corretto, che venne commune-mente chiamato Andrea senza errori’ (ii 441n.) [Moreover in his drawing he was so correct that he came to be commonly called ‘Andrea without mistakes’.]

(iii) Jameson

Anna Jameson was a personal friend of the Brownings and B. certainly read her account of Andrea’s life in her Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters (1845). Mrs Jameson repeats the idea that Andrea ‘was called in his own time “Andrea senza errori,” that is, Andrea the Faultless’ (ii 73); note that B. uses the same term to translate ‘senza errori’ in the poem. Following Vasari, she describes Andrea as ‘miserable, unfortunate, and contemned’ thanks to his marriage to a woman ‘of infamous character’, after which ‘he never had a quiet heart, or home, or conscience’ (ii 73–4). The idea of Lucrezia’s infidelity may originate with Mrs Jameson: Lucrezia’s ‘avarice and infidelity’ are said to have blighted Andrea’s life (ii 79). Mrs Jameson criticizes Andrea’s work for its ‘want of any real elevation of sentiment and expression’, and amplifies Vasari’s suggestion that he routinely used his wife as a model:

In general his Madonnas are not pleasing; they have, with great beauty, a certain vulgarity of expression, and in his groups he almost always places the Virgin on the ground, either kneeling or sitting. His only model for all his females was his wife; and even when he did not paint from her, she so possessed his thoughts that unconsciously he repeated the same features in every face he drew, whether Virgin, or saint, or goddess.

(Jameson ii 80)

(iv) Musset

Alfred de Musset’s play André del Sarto was first published in the Revue des Deux Mondes of 1 Apr. 1833; it was not originally intended for performance, but was eventually staged (without success) at the Comédie Française on 21 Nov. 1848. It was then revived, in a much shortened and slightly bowdlerized version, at the Odéon on 21 Oct. 1851 (not 1850 as has previously been thought; see Simon Jeune, De Musset: Théâtre Complet [Paris 1990] 871) and this time enjoyed a run of thirty-seven performances. The Brownings lived in Paris from Sept. 1851 to June 1852, so it is possible that they might have seen the play during this time. The original version of Musset’s play opens with Cordiani, a pupil of Andrea’s, descending from Lucrezia’s balcony at four o’clock in the morning, and this sets the tone for the melodrama to follow. Lucrezia agonizes over her infidelity, Cordiani inadvertently kills an innocent man, and the play ends with the death of Andrea and the flight of Lucrezia and Cordiani to start a new life together. (In the 1851 version, Cordiani also dies in order to prevent the triumph of vice.) There are a number of parallels between the play and the poem, some of which are noted in Melchiori 199–204. Both, for example, stress Lucrezia’s infidelity, something hinted at (but not overtly stated) in Vasari and Baldinucci. Again, Musset’s Andrea, like B.’s, is a world-weary and disappointed figure, conscious of his own belatedness, as he makes clear in the opening scene of Act I:

La nature veut toujours être nouvelle, c’est vrai; mais elle reste toujours la même. Es-tu de ceux qui souhaiteraient qu’elle changeât la couleur de sa robe, et que les bois se colorassent en bleu ou en rouge? Ce n’est pas ainsi qu’elle entend; à côté d’une fleur fanée naît une fleur tout semblable … Que les arts tâchent de faire comme elle, puisqu’ils ne sont rien qu’en l’imitant. [Nature desires perpetual novelty, it is true, but is always the same. Are you one of those who would like her to change the colour of her dress, or to colour the woods red or blue? She does not work like that; beside a faded flower grows another one exactly the same … Let the arts try to do the same as her, because they are worthless unless they imitate her.]

Another similarity between the play and B.’s poem is Andrea’s tendency to blame himself for what others might see as his wife’s shortcomings. In Act I, scene ii, reflecting on the ignominious end to his year in France, he blames himself and exonerates his wife: ‘Ah! voilà ce que c’est que de manquer de caractère! Que faisait-elle de mal en me demandant ce qui lui plaisait? Et moi je le lui donnais, parcequ’elle le demandait, rien de plus: faiblesse maudite! pas une réflexion’ [Ah! That’s what it means to lack character! What did she do wrong in asking me to do what pleased her? And I did it for her, because she asked for it, that’s all. Cursed weakness! Without thinking]. Andrea’s confession to the French envoy Montjoie that he has stolen the money entrusted to him by François I for the purchase of paintings, which is echoed at l. 145, was, however, cut from the acting version.

Parallels in B.

Andrea’s justification of the technical defects of his great contemporaries—‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a Heaven for?’ (ll. 96–7)— represents B.’s best known formulation of the idea of the aesthetic superiority of imperfection. This notion is often linked with the contrast between Christian and Pagan art forms in the early nineteenth century; see, for example, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Poetry (1809; transl. 1846) 27: ‘The Grecian executed what it proposed in the utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of imperfection, is in greater danger of not being duly appreciated’; and cp. Old Pictures, esp. ll. 83–160n. (p. 415). Andrea’s commitment to technical perfection makes him a version of the ‘objective’ or mimetic poet; see the explanation of the difference between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ poets in Shelley 11–112 (Appendix A, pp. 621–5), and the contrast between Sordello and Eglamor in bk. ii of Sordello. The relations between artist, model, patron and artefact are dealt with in a number of B.’s poems, most notably My Last Duchess (p. 197), Pictor Ignotus (p. 226), A Likeness (p. 642), and Beatrice Signorini (Asolando, 1889). Andrea’s situation has similarities to that of Jules the sculptor in Pippa ii. Like Andrea, Jules sees marriage as an impediment to the achievement of his artistic ambitions (ii 18–24; pp. 123–4). Jules, though, makes a conscious decision to idealize the object of his affections, while Andrea finds himself tied to Lucrezia in spite of his knowledge of her failings. Unhappy marriages and infidelity are frequent topics in B.’s poetry from the time of M & W onwards: see for example Woman’s Last Word (III 273), Any Wife to Any Husband (III 647), The Statue and the Bust (III 342) and A Forgiveness (Pacchiarotto, 1876). Ring also centres on the story of a possibly adulterous relationship between Pompilia Franceschini and Giuseppe Caponsacchi. François I also features in The Glove (II 360) and Fontainebleau is the setting for Cristina and Monaldeschi ( Jocoseria, 1883).

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?

5  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 hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

10  Oh, I’ll content him,—but to-morrow, Love!

I often am much wearier than you think,

This evening more than usual, and it seems

As if—forgive now—should you let me sit

Here by the window with your hand in mine

15  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 work

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.

20  To-morrow how you shall be glad for this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,

And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside.

Don’t count the time lost, either; you must serve

For each of the five pictures we require—

25  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,

30  Which everybody looks on and calls his,

And, 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.

There’s what we painters call our harmony!

35  A common greyness silvers everything,—

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 down

40  To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.

There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;

That length of convent-wall across the way

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease

45  And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape

As if I saw alike my work and self

And all that I was born to be and do,

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand.

50  How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead!

So 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 understand

55  Nor 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.

60  I can do with my pencil what I know,

What I see, what at bottom of my heart

I wish for, if I ever wish so deep—

Do easily, too—when I say perfectly

I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge

65  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

70  —Dream? strive to do, and agonise to do,

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,

Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared

75  Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,

Yet do much less, so much less, some one 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,

80  In their vexed, beating, stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt

This 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,

85  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.

90  I, painting from myself and to myself,

Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks

Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,

His hue mistaken—what of that? or else,

95  Rightly traced and well ordered—what of that?

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a Heaven for? all is silver-grey

Placid and perfect with my art—the worse!

I know both what I want and what might gain—

100  And 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 youth

The Urbinate who died five years ago.

105  (’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;

110  That 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.

115  But aIl 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—

120  More 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 bird

The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare—

125  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 Angelo—

130  Rafael 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?

135  What wife had Rafael, or has Angelo?

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,

140  God, 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,

145  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!

150  I 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 curl

Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile,

155  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

160  Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,—

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,

This in the back-ground, waiting on my work,

To crown the issue with a last reward!

A good time, was it not, my kingly days?

165  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 grey—

And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.

170  How 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 if

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?

Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold,

175  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

180  Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows

My better fortune, I resolve to think.

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,

Said one day Angelo, his very self,

To Rafael … I have known it all these years …

185  (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,

Too lifted up in heart because of it)

“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub

Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,

190  Who, were he set to plan and execute

As 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,

195  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 Michael Angelo?

Do you forget already words like those?)

200  If 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 night

205  I 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 shew the wall,

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.

210  Come from the window, Love,—come in, at last,

Inside the melancholy little house

We built to be so gay with. God is just.

King Francis may forgive me. Oft at nights

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,

215  The walls become illumined, brick from brick

Distinct, 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?

220 Must 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 heart

Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth?

225  I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit

The grey remainder of the evening out,

ldle, you call it, and muse perfectly

How I could paint were I but back in France,

One picture, just one more—the Virgin’s face,

230  Not your’s this time! I want you at my side

To hear them—that is, Michael Angelo—

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.

Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.

I take the subjects for his corridor,

235  Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there,

And throw him in another thing or two

If he demurs; the whole should prove enough

To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside,

What’s better and what’s all I care about,

240  Get 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.

245  Since there my past life lies, why alter it?

The very wrong to Francis! it is true

I 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.

250  Well, had I riches of my own? you see

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:

And I have laboured somewhat in my time

And not been paid profusely. Some good son

255  Paint 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—

260  Four great walls in the New Jerusalem

Meted on each side by the angel’s reed

For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me

To cover—the three first without a wife,

While I have mine! So—still they overcome

265  Because there’s still Lucrezia,—as I choose.

Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love.

Title. del Sarto: son of a tailor; see headnote. Andrea’s lack of manliness associates him with the proverbial ‘nine tailors make one man’; see Buckingham et al., The Rehearsal (1672), Act 3, scene i: ‘But pr’ythee, Tom Thimble, why wilt thou needs marry? If nine Taylors make but one man; and one woman cannot be satisfi’d with nine men: what work art thou cutting out here for thy self, trow we?’ Subtitle.] The “Faultless.” (H proof, but not H proof ²).

2. Lucrezia: Le Monnier gives her full name as Lucrezia di Baccio del Fede. For accounts of her character and behaviour as Andrea’s wife, see headnote.

5. friend’s friend: obviously the person to whom Lucrezia’s ‘Cousin’ is indebted: see l. 233n. Andrea’s willingness to work for little or no financial reward is emphasized by Vasari, who notes how Fra Mariano dal Canto alla Macine persuaded him to paint scenes from the life of St Filippo Benizzi in the cloisters of SS. Annunziata for a nominal fee. Details of these frescoes are given in Fantozzi, 407–8.

10. Love!] love! (1868). Variants unique to 1868 are rare; this one is not accidental, since it is repeated at ll. 58 and 119. See also ll. 210, 266.

15. Fiesole: a hilltop town north-east of Florence, frequently mentioned by the Brownings in their correspondence and relished by them for its historical associations, as in EBB.’s letter of 22–23 Dec. 1847 to her sister Arabella: ‘ “But what is there to see?” asked Capt. Reynolds—Milton’s Fiesole, the Fiesole of the Romans, the Fiesole of the Etruscans, and “what to see”?’ (Correspondence xiv 352). On ‘Milton’s Fiesole’ see PL i 289. In another letter to Arabella (c. 7 Feb. 1848, ibid. xv 9) EBB. says that B. has decided that port is good for her, and ‘one might as well talk to the mountain above Fiesole as talk to him about my leaving it off ’, an expression she uses on several other occasions. The metre would suggest a trisyllabic pronunciation (Fi-so-le) in line with Milton’s spelling (‘Fesole’).

16. as married people use: ‘as married people are accustomed to do’.

23–5. Don’t count … model: Vasari attributes Andrea’s use of his wife as a model to infatuation rather than the desire to save money; see Melchiori 205–6, and cp. Jameson (headnote, Sources).

23. lost, either] lost, neither (1865–88).

26. serpentining: associating Lucrezia with Eve, the archetype of female weakness; her golden hair (see l. 174) recalls Milton’s Eve, although in PL Eve’s ‘unadorned golden tresses’ are ‘dishevelled’ and ‘in wanton ringlets waved’ (iv 305–6); Lucrezia’s elaborate hairdo is that of a fashionable Florentine beauty. Real serpents are associated with hair in depictions of Bacchus’s followers, the Maenads: cp., e.g., Christopher Smart’s transl. of Horace (Odes II xix 19–20): ‘You … bind in serpentine knot unhurt your handmaid’s hair’; this volume was in B.’s library (Collections A2147). ‘Serpentining’ is usually a topographical term (denoting the course of a path, stream, etc.); B.’s more ‘sensational’ usage appears in Christmas-Eve 428 (III 64) and Aristophanes’ Apology (1875) 5595 (the ‘serpentining blood’ of the murdered Agamemnon).

29–32. Cp. the moon imagery in One Word More 144 ff. (pp. 611–15), also associated with Florence and with the private and public ‘faces’ of a beloved woman. Cp. also My Last Duchess 23–4 (p. 199). Oxford notes a parallel in Ventidius’s words to Antony in Dryden’s All for Love IV i 300–1: ‘Your Cleopatra; / Dolabella’s Cleopatra; every man’s Cleopatra’.

32. While she looks: ‘while she seems’ (changing the sense of ‘looks’ from active to passive).

34. harmony: as Oxford points out, this word is used by Mrs Foster in her translation of Vasari (Foster iii 192, 236).

36–8. Andrea sees both himself and Lucrezia as ‘twilight’ figures, but in opposed senses. Twilight can refer either to the period before dawn or nightfall; Andrea juxtaposes a fantasy of Lucrezia in the early days of her love for him with his own actual condition, steeped in the melancholy ‘greyness’ of evening.

39. my hope] my hopes (H proof, but not H proof ²).

41–5. Contrast the much more positive image of the convent near Casa Guidi in Ring i 484–7: ‘Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones / Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights— / I know not what particular praise of God, / It always came and went with June’. Thomas suggests that the convent in question is that of the Servites adjoining the Church of the Santissima Annunziata in which Andrea is buried (Thomas 23).

45. autumn in everything: There is a corresponding feeling of belatedness in Alfred de Musset’s André del Sarto, act II, scene i (see headnote, Sources): ‘Rome et Venise sont encore florissantes. Notre patrie n’est plus rien. Je lutte en vain contre les ténèbres, le flambeau sacré s’éteint dans ma main.’ [Rome and Venice are still flourishing. Our country (i.e. Florence) is now finished. I fight in vain against the shadows; the sacred flame dies in my hands.]

49. a twilight-piece: this is, as Oxford notes, similar to the expression ‘night-piece’, commonly used for a ‘picture representing a scene or landscape at night’ (OED). ‘Twilight’ is a traditional image for life’s decline: cp. Shakespeare, Sonnets lxxiii 5–6: ‘In me thou seest the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west’. Contrast the sense of ‘twilight’ as the approach of day in How They Brought the Good News: ‘the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear’ (l. 14, p. 222); cp. also the last line of Fra Lippo: ‘There’s the grey beginning’ (p. 506).

49–52. we are in God’s hand … let it lie! cp. Ecclesiastes ix 1: ‘For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.’ Trust in God’s providence turns, in Andrea’s formulation, to passive fatalism and a denial of free will.

54. All that’s behind us: i.e. all the pictures in the ‘chamber’, Andrea’s studio. This could also refer obliquely to all the evidence of their life together.

57. cartoon: ‘a drawing on stout paper, made as a design for a painting of the same size’ (OED). None of Andrea’s cartoons for his frescoes survives (Shearman, Andrea, p. 151).

58. the thing, Love!] the thing, love! (1868).

59. Behold Madonna,] Behold Madonna!—(1868–88). For Andrea’s reputation as a religious painter, esp. of the Virgin, see headnote; cp. also ll. 176–8. Note also though Mrs Jameson’s denial that his pictures conveyed any ‘devotional feeling’ ( Jameson ii 73).

65. Referring presumably to a Papal Legate, that is to say, a diplomatic representative of the Pope in his capacity as temporal ruler of the Papal states; cp. Ogniben in A Soul’s Tragedy (II 180), and see also headnote to Bishop Blougram (p. 279).

66. in France: for Andrea’s career in France, see headnote, Sources; his passing allusion here is developed in ll. 148–71.

68. No sketches first, no studies: Vasari stresses the fact that Andrea used ‘sketches’ in an unorthodox way: ‘Quando egli disegnava le cose di naturale per metterle in opera, faceva certi schizzi cosi abbozzati, bastandogli vedere quello che faceva il naturale; quando poi gli metteva in opera, gli conduceva a perfezione: onde i disegni gli servivano piu per memoria di quello che aveva visto, che per copiare a punto da quelli le sue pitture’ (Le Monnier viii 294). [When he drew things from life in order to put them in one of his works, he made some hasty ill-formed sketches, it being enough for him to see what the original was doing. When he then set about his work he perfected it; the drawings therefore served more as an aide-mémoire than as something from which he could then copy his pictures.] 72. On twice your fingers: this might suggest that Lucrezia is innumerate (or illiterate), or at least has little education.

76–7. For the identity of the ‘some one’, see ll. 182–92.

76. some one says] Someone says (1863, but not 1863², which agrees with 1855; 1868–88); Some one says (1865).

78. less is more] it is more (H proof ).

83–6. themselves, I know … shut to me: cp. Lazarus in An Epistle, esp. ll. 178–210 (pp. 521–2).

93. Morello’s outline: the mountain of Morello to the north of Florence. Cp. Aurora Leigh vii 520.

95^96.] Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? (1863–88). A rare example of a whole line added after 1855; for another example see Bishop Blougram 978^979 (p. 337).

96–7. Ah … Heaven for? this famous dictum encapsulates the ‘doctrine of the imperfect’: see headnote, Parallels.

97. a Heaven] a heaven (1868–88).

104. the Urbinate: Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael), 1483–1520 (named at l. 118) who came from Urbino in Tuscany; his career was principally in Rome, and he is referred to as ‘the Roman’ in l. 177. The editors of Le Monnier argue in a footnote that Vasari’s reference to Raphael’s ‘disciples’ implies that Raphael was dead by the time Andrea went to Rome to see his works and those of Michelangelo (viii 293n.). This would date the monologue to 1525, the year in which Andrea painted the ‘Madonna del Sacco’ praised by Mrs Jameson.

105. In his ‘Life’ of Andrea, Giorgio [‘George’] Vasari mentions that, as a young artist in the employment of Ottaviano de’ Medici, he saw Andrea carrying out Ottaviano’s order to copy Raphael’s painting Leo X with Two Cardinals; Le Monnier viii 282. As Markus notes (see headnote, Composition), there is no suggestion in the poem that Andrea himself has copied Raphael’s work.

106–7. Andrea refers again to the ‘popes and kings’ who were Raphael’s patrons at l. 191.

119. Nay, Love] Nay, love (1868).

121–2. perfect brow … perfect eyes … perfect mouth: cp. Tennyson, Maud i 80–3: ‘Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault? / All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) / Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, / Dead perfection, no more’. The poem was published on 28 July 1855, almost certainly too late to have influenced B.’s phrasing; Tennyson read the poem to B., EBB., Arabella Barrett and Dante Gabriel Rossetti on Thursday 27 Sept. 1855, an event commemorated by Rossetti in a sketch. According to Tennyson both B. and EBB. were ‘great admirers of poor little “Maud” ’ (EBB to Arabella ii 175–6n.).

123. the low voice: this phrase is also associated with illicit passion in B.’s play A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (1843) ii 266–8: Mildred is described as having no equal in the history of the Treshams: ‘no loosener / O’ the lattice, practised in the stealthy tread, / The low voice and the noiseless come-and-go!’

123–4. as a bird … snare: ‘my soul is entranced by your voice as a bird is by the pipe of the bird-catcher (fowler) who lures it into a snare’.

129. with Angelo—] with Agnolo! (1868–88). The spelling ‘Michelagnolo’ is used by Mrs Foster in her 1852 tr. of Vasari’s Lives (Foster iv pp. 227–370), and by

B. in a letter to John Kenyon of 17 Mar. 1853 (see Old Pictures, p. 405). Michelangelo is often bracketed with Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci as joint archetypes of the great painter: see headnote.

135. or has Angelo?] or has Agnolo? (1868–88). Raphael did eventually marry, but Michelangelo never did.

139–43. One of a number of reflections on the relation between worldly success and heavenly reward in B.; see e.g. Old Pictures 161–76 (p. 422).

142–3. Vasari’s comments (see headnote) would seem to imply that Andrea’s contemporaries ‘despised’ him for not making the most of his talent either personally or financially.

145. the Paris lords: Andrea’s fear of the ‘Paris lords’ is prompted by his failure to keep his promise to return to France with pictures and statues for which the king had provided him with money; in the original version of Musset’s André del Sarto (see headnote, Sources) Andrea is accosted by a ‘Paris lord’ called Montjoie and openly admits to him that he has stolen the king’s money: ‘J’ai volé votre maitre, Monsieur. L’argent qu’il m’a confié est dissipé’ [I have robbed your master, Sir. The money he gave to me has been frittered away] (III ii). This scene was omitted from the version staged in Paris during 1851–2.

148. That Francis: François I; for the cult of François I as patron of the arts see headnote.

149. Fontainebleau: as Cox-Rearick (see headnote, Sources) notes: ‘[Beginning] in 1528 the king [François I] enlarged an old royal hunting lodge at Fontainebleau. It then became the privileged centre from which his patronage of art radiated, thereby changing the course of French culture.’ Melchiori compares Musset’s André del Sarto II i, in which Andrea describes his year at Fontainebleau as ‘une année de richesse et de bonheur’ [a year of riches and of happiness].

153. twisted curl: of his moustache.

154. mouth’s good mark: the sense is clear enough although the wording is hard to follow: Francis’s mouth is a ‘good mark’, i.e. a pleasing feature of his face, either made so by his smile or one which habitually made itself pleasant by smiling.

155. my shoulder… my neck] your shoulder … your neck (H proof ).

156. my ear] your ear (H proof ).

157. I painting] emended in agreement with 1863–88 from ‘You painting’ in H proof and 1855. H proof ² has a note: ‘This should have been printed “I.” It was evidently overlooked when the other changes were made. L. S. L.’ (i.e. the book dealer Luther S. Livingston: see Appendix C, III 742). The correction is made in the list of ‘Errata’ B. sent to his American publisher James T. Fields (B to Fields 192). See also l. 165.

161–2. this, this, this face beyond … in the back-ground: perhaps pointing to the multiple portraits of Lucrezia in the studio (see note to ll. 23–5 above); Lucrezia had remained in Florence during Andrea’s trip to France.

164. kingly: a pun: both ‘days spent with the king’ and ‘days of my glory’.

165. had you not grown restless: a reference to Lucrezia’s letters urging Andrea to return to Florence; see also l. 171 below and headnote. had you not] had I not (corrected by B. in H proof, the only such correction for this poem; H proof ² underlines ‘you’ and has a note at the bottom of the page which has been erased and is too faint to read; it might be something like ‘is this misprinted?’). See also l. 157.

172.] The triumph was to reach and stay there; since (1888). H proof has ‘if then’ for ‘then if ’.

177. The Roman’s: i.e. Raphael’s; see l. 104n.

183–92. ‘Narra il Bocchi, nelle Bellezze di Firenze, che Michelangelo ragionando con Raffaello sul valore de’ rari artefici, gli dicesse: “Egli ha in Firenze un omacetto (volendo significare Andrea) il quale se in grandi affari, come in te avviene, fosse adoperato, ti farebbe sudar la fronte’ (Le Monnier viii 293n; also cited by Allan C. Dooley, MP lxxxi [1983–4] 41). B.’s words, esp. in l. 192 with its reference to sweat, are closer to the Italian original than to Mrs Foster’s translation: ‘The estimation in which the powers of Andrea were held by Michael Angelo likewise, may be inferred from a remark of that master to Raphael, which we find cited in Bocchi, Bellezze di Firenze. “There is a bit of a mannikin in Florence,” observes Michael Angelo, “who, if he had chanced to be employed in great undertakings as you have happened to be, would compel you to look well about you” ’ (Foster ii 232).

183. one day Angelo] one day Agnolo (1868–88).

191. As you are pricked on] As you, pricked forward (H proof ); As you are, pricked on (1863–88), making it clear that ‘As you are’ refers to ‘set to plan and execute’ in l. 190.

198. What he? In response to an unrecorded question from Lucrezia, suggesting that she is not really paying attention to Andrea’s impassioned apology. Michael Angelo] Michel Agnolo (1868–88); see l.129n.

199^200.] B. added a line in a copy of vol. v of his 6-vol. Poetical Works, now at the Pierpont Morgan Library. The volume is dated 1872 (a reissue of 1870, itself a corrected reprint of 1868: see Abbreviations, p. xxvii, and Editorial Note to vol. II, p. vii). The line reads: ‘Yes, all I care for if he spoke the truth,’; it was not adopted either in 1875 (a second corrected reprint of 1868) or 1888.

205–6. Lucrezia’s avarice is insisted on by Vasari; see headnote.

206. I mean that I] Lucrezia—I (H proof ).

208. watch-lights: this may mean either ‘lights carried by watchmen’ or ‘lamps lit at regular intervals along the city walls’; OED cites this line in support of the former, but has no other examples.

209. cue-owls: ‘a name applied to the Scops-owl (Scops Giu), common on the shores of the Mediterannean’ (OED). Its song is described as ‘a clear metallic ringing ki-ou—whence the Italian names chiù, ciù’. Cp. Aurora Leigh viii 32.

210. window, Love] window, love (1863², 1868–88). In previous instances (ll. 10, 58, 119) only 1868 had this variant; see also l. 266, where the pattern is different again. This is also a rare example of 1863² agreeing neither with 1855 nor 1863.

211–12. According to Thomas, the ‘melancholy little house’ is the one Andrea built for himself and Lucrezia at 22 Via Gino Capponi with the money obtained from France (p. 29).

213–7. Vasari states that Andrea dreamt of obtaining Francis’s forgiveness for deserting him and for stealing his money: ‘Mentre le cose succedevano in questa maniera, ricordandosi alcuna volta Andrea delle cose di Francia, sospirava di cuore; e se avesse pensato trovar perdono del fallo commesso, non ha dubbio che egli vi sarebbe tornato’ (Le Monnier viii 277). [While things were going on in this way, Andrea sighed from his heart every now and then, remembering his time in France; and if he had been able to obtain forgiveness for the fault he had committed, there is no doubt that he would have gone back there.] Andrea imagines that the mortar of the house he has built with Francis’s money has been transformed into ‘fierce bright gold’.

218–21. Melchiori compares Musset’s André del Sarto I iii: ‘Réponds-moi, qui t’amène à cette heure? As-tu une querelle? faut-il te servir de second? As-tu perdu au jeu? Veux-tu ma bourse? Il lui prend la main.’ [Answer me, who brings you at this hour? Are you involved in a dispute? Must I serve as your second? Have you lost money gambling? Would you like my purse? He takes her hand.]

219. That Cousin: this detail is not in Vasari; in Musset’s play Lucrezia’s lover is one of Andrea’s pupils. ‘Cousin’ was ‘an understood Renaissance term for a married woman’s lover’ (W. F. McNeir, NQ cci [1956] 500).

221. more gaming debts to pay? Vasari repeatedly emphasizes Lucrezia’s use of Andrea’s money to assist her own family: see headnote. There may, as Markus (see head-note, Composition) points out, also be an allusion to Sarah Dougherty’s desertion of her husband William Page; B. wrote to the Storys on 27 Dec. 1854: ‘I fear Page is deeply involved in debts of her contracting’ (BIS ii 11).

230. Not your’s] Not yours (1863², 1888). The possessive form ‘your’s’ was allowable in the mid-19th century but is rare in B.

231. Michael Angelo] Michel Agnolo (1868–88).

233. your friend: perhaps the person to whom the cousin owes money; Andrea suggests that he will pay for the cousin’s ‘freak’ [escapade] with a number of pictures for the man’s corridor and a portrait of him.

240. scudi: the scudo was a silver coin, worth about four shillings; thirteen scudi would have been a considerable sum to spend on an item such as a ruff.

243–5. B. inscribed these lines on the fly-leaf of a presentation copy of Selections (dated 1882, a reprint of 1872) and wrote underneath: ‘From Lippo Lippi. Robert Browning. Dec. 20, ’84.’ The volume is now at ABL (Browning Collections, C550, E11). The two poems follow each other in Selections, but Fra Lippo comes first, so there is no possibility that B. was misled by the running title for the second poem coming on the same page as the closing passage of the first. In any case the misattribution is intriguing, given that Lippi and Andrea are so opposed in temperament.

249–52. For Andrea’s treatment of his parents, see headnote, p. 388.

255. my two hundred pictures: S. J. Freedberg’s Catalogue Raisonné of Andrea’s works (Andrea del Sarto, 2 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1963) lists ninety extant works, commenting that ‘a great many others have no doubt perished’; this estimate is accepted as authoritative by Antonio Natali, Andrea del Sarto (New York 1998).

260–1. Alluding to Revelation xxi 15–17: ‘And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.’ The last verse of this extract became the basis of William Page’s theory about the proportions of the human body which B. utilized in Cleon; see headnote to that poem, Composition (p. 612).

262. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519); for this triumvirate see headnote. Angelo and me] Agnolo and me (1868–88).

266. my Love] my love (1863², 1868). In previous instances (ll. 10, 58, 119) only 1868 had this variant; see also l. 210, where the pattern is different again.