31  Fra Lippo Lippi

Text and publication

First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 1863², 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1855. In common with most of the long poems in M & W, the text was only lightly revised in subsequent eds.

Composition and date

In a letter of May 1850, EBB. states that the drawing room at Casa Guidi contains ‘specimens of Gaddi, Lippi .. [and] the like’ which B. had managed to buy cheaply thanks to his extensive knowledge of early Italian art (EBB to Arabella i 314; see also headnote to Andrea, p. 385). These picture-buying expeditions form the background to Andrea and Old Pictures (pp. 404–5), both of which can probably be dated to early 1853. It is, then, plausible to suggest that Fra Lippo also belongs to this period. Sharp, on the other hand, dates the poem to the winter of 1853–54 in Rome, a suggestion supported by an unpublished letter from B. to Edward Sartoris (for whom, and his wife Adelaide, see headnote to Two in the Campagna, p. 556) of 24 Aug. 1854: ‘Are you repenting by this time your first commission to me? The Carrier only makes a transit once a week, he says—& then, I was delayed by somebody’s promise of getting me a one-volume with good print to boot: but after all, Le Monnier’s in three portable tomes seems to suit your requirement best, I think, and you will receive it tomorrow accordingly. I send too Mrs Sartoris’ orris-root & the books wh. I hoped to bring myself—but there is no visit to your Bagni for us, I am sorry to say: both of you must come & see Florence and us, and make us the best amends’ (ABL MS). The requests by Mr and Mrs Sartoris, for Le Monnier (possibly his ed. of Vasari) and ‘orris-root’ respectively, might plausibly have been prompted by the sight of B.’s poem; see Sources and l. 351n.

Sources

B. clearly had some first-hand knowledge of the work of Filippo Lippi (c. 1406–1469), but most of the information in the poem derives from the following printed sources: (i) Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ Più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architetti. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, 1846–57, vol. iv (1848), pp. 114–30 [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. i, pp. 556–64 [Baldinucci]; (iii) Johan Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’Artisti dei Secoli XIV, XV, XVI (Florence 1839–40), 3 vols. [Gaye]; (iv) Mrs Jameson, Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters and of the Progress of Painting in Italy (1845), vol. i [Jameson]; (v) W. S. Landor, ‘Fra Lippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth’ (1846) in The Works of Walter Savage Landor. London 1853, vol. 2, pp. 81–90; (vi) John Ruskin, Modern Painters (vols. i–ii, 1843–46) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53).

(i) Le Monnier

B. was reading Vasari soon after his arrival in Pisa (see headnote to Andrea, p. 385), and the poem is largely based on the portrait of Lippi that emerges from Vasari’s account. A long letter to John Ruskin (15 Dec. 1879; MS at Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) indicates the precise extent of B.’s indebtedness to Vasari in this poem (editorial comment and translations in square brackets):

19 Warwick Crescent, W.

Dec. 15.’79.

My dear Mr Ruskin,

I have to beg your pardon for some delay in fulfilling my promise concerning certain points in the life & character of Lippo Lippi: it came of my being unable to get at my books. But I find that, out of Vasari alone, I can produce the authority you require. I shall abridge, annotate and transcribe the various passages to save you the trouble of reference.

1. Fra Filippo di Tommaso Lippi, per la morte di suo padre restò povero fanciullino d’anni due senza alcuna custodia, essendosi ancora morta la madre non molto dopo averlo partorito. Rimaso dunque costui in governo d’una Mona Lapaccia sua zia, poiché l’ebbe allevato con suo agio [for disagio] grandissimo, quando non potette più sostenerlo [for sostentarlo], essendo egli già di ott’anni, lo fece frate nel convento del Carmine,’ (at the back of which, in the ‘Canto alla Cuculia della contrada detta Ardiglione,’ he was born—probably in 1412.) [Fra Filippo di Tommaso Lippi was made a poor orphan with no one to look after him at the age of two thanks to the death of his father, his mother having died soon after giving birth to him. He was placed therefore under the guardianship of his aunt ‘Mona Lapaccia’ who after bringing him up with great difficulty, made him a friar at the Carmine convent at the age of eight when she could no longer support him.]

2. Animosamente si cavò l’abito d’età d’anni diciasette’. [He boldly threw off the monk’s habit at the age of seventeen.] (This is a mistake: in the Picture for Sant’Ambrogio, painted in 1447,—he retains not only ‘l’abito’ but the shaved head: and there is other evidence that he called himself a monk all his life.)

3. Dicesi ch’era tanto venereo che, vedendo donne che gli piacessero, se le poteva avere, ogni sua facoltà donato le arebbe. Ed era tanto perduto dietro a questo appetito, che all’opre prese da lui, quando era in questo umore, poco o nulla attendeva. Onde una volta, fra l’altre, Cosimo de’Medici, facendogli fare un’opera in casa sua, lo rinchiuse, perchè a perder tempo non andasse. Ma egli, statoci già due giorni, spinto da furore amoroso, anzi bestiale, una sera, con un paio di forbici fece alcune liste de’lenzuoli del letto, e da una finestra calatosi, attese per molti giorni a’suoi piaceri’. (Two pictures from the Medici Palace (now Riccardi) are now in our own Gallery: one (The Annunciation) contains the device of Cosimo and Lorenzo,—Three feathers within a Ring.) [He is said to have been so lustful that, when he saw a woman he liked, he would have given all his possessions to have her. And he was given up to this craving to such an extent that little or nothing was expected of the works undertaken by him when he was in this mood. On one of these occasions Cosimo de’ Medici, who had ordered him to undertake some work, confined him in his house in order to prevent him from wasting time in this way. But Lippo one evening, having already been there two days, and prompted by lustful, almost bestial desires, cut the bed sheets into strips with a pair of scissors and descended from a window, freeing himself to pursue his pleasures for several days.]

4. Essendogli poi dalle Monache di Sta Margherita (in Prato) data a fare la tavola dell’altar maggiore, gli venne veduta una figliuola di Francesco Buti la quale o in serbanza o per monaca era quivi condotta. Filippo, dato d’occhio alla Lucrezia, tanto operò che ottenne di farne un ritratto per metterlo in una figura di Nostra Donna: e fece poi tanto che egli sviò la Lucrezia dalle monache, e la menò via’. (In a letter by Giovanni de’Medici to Bartolommeo Serragli, May, 1458, he says ‘we laughed a bit at the prank of Brother Philip’.) Di che le monache molto per tal caso furono svergonate [for “svergognate”], e suo padre non fu mai più allegro, e fece ogni opera per riaverla, ma ella non volle mai ritornare, anzi starsi con Filippo, il quale n’ebbe un figliuol maschio,— Filippino’. [Having been commissioned to paint a picture for the High Altar by the nuns of Santa Margherita in Prato, he happened to see one of the daughters of Francesco Buti, who had been brought there either as a ward or as a novice. Filippo, seeing Lucrezia, managed to obtain permission to do a drawing of her to put in a picture of Our Lady: and then managed to spirit her away from the nuns. … The nuns were ashamed at this, and Lucrezia’s father was never happy again, and did everything he could to get her back, but she never wanted to return, and stayed with Filippo, with whom she had a son, Filippino.]

5. Fu tanto per le sue buone qualità stimato, che molte cose, che di biasimo erano alla vita sua, furono ricoperte mediante il grado di tanta virtù. Fu Fra Filippo molto amico delle persone allegre, e sempre lietamente visse. Delle fatiche sue visse onoratamente: e straordinariamente spese nelle cose d’amore, delle quali del continuo, mentre che visse, fino alla morte si dilettò. Perciocchè dicono che, essendo egli tanto inclinato a questi suoi beati amori, alcuni parenti della donna da lui amata lo fecero avvelenare. (October 8, 1469) (i.e. ‘the lady he was then attached to,’ not necessarily Lucrezia.) Dolse la morte sua a molti amici, e particolarmente a Cosimo de’Medici ed a Papa Eugenio, il quale in vita sua volle dispensarlo che potesse avere per sua donna legittima la Lucrezia di F. Buti; la quale, per potere far di sé e dell’appetito suo come gli paresse, non si volse curare di avere’. (Both these were dead—the Pope five years before Fra Filippo: the story may be true no less.) [He was admired so much for his good qualities that many of the blameworthy things in his life were covered over by his good qualities. Fra Filippo was very friendly with lively people, and always lived joyously. He lived honourably on the fruits of his own labour, and spent extraordinary amounts of money on his amorous affairs, in which he delighted right up to the time of his death. For which reason some say that some relatives of the woman he loved poisoned him … His death grieved many friends, especially Cosimo de’ Medici and Pope Eugenius, who had wanted during his lifetime to grant him a dispensation from the monastic life so that he could make Lucrezia his legitimate wife. But Lippo, in order to remain free to do as he liked, did not bother with this.]

There, Dear Mr Ruskin, you have, I hope, my justification for what my little poem alleges of Brother Philip,—who, in the midst of his irregularities, was decorous enough in his picture preachments. In the convent of St. Domenic, in Prato, Saint Vincent is painted reading from the book he holds— ‘Timete Deum, quia venit hora judicii ejus!’ [‘Fear God … for the hour of his judgment is come’ (Revelation xiv 7); the painting, Nativity with St George and St Vincent Ferrer, is now in the Galleria Communale di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato] From a passage, however in Vasari, I conclude he was the first on record to treat sacred subjects indecorously: for, having painted a picture of the Coronation of the Virgin for a church in Arezzo, “dal messer Carlo Marsuppino (who had ordered the work) gli fu detto, ‘che egli avvertisse alle mani che dipingeva, perchè molto le sue cose erano biasimate:’ per il che Fra Filippo, nel dipingere da indi innanzi, la maggior parte o con panni o con altra invenzione ricoperse, per fuggire il predetto biasimo.” [It was said to him by Mr Carlo Marsuppino, ‘that he was warned to take care what he painted, because many of his productions were censured’; for which reason Fra Filippo covered most of his figures with draperies or other devices from that time onwards in order to escape this censure.]

I may have tired you—but the tiresomeness of referring to Vasari, Baldinucci and the rest is spared perhaps: and I gladly seize the occasion of saying how happy I was to see you again, the other day, after an absence too prolonged by far.

Ever truly yours,

Robert Browning.

For Ruskin’s reply to this letter, see below, Criticism. Although we do not have Ruskin’s list of questions, it is reasonably obvious which parts of the poem B. is referring to in each section: (1) explains the account of Lippi’s childhood in ll. 81–91; (2) deals with the general question of whether or not Lippi ever formally abandoned the monastic life; (3) highlights Lippi’s unmonastic love life; ll. 15–18 and 61–6 indicate that the action of the poem takes place during the nocturnal escape from Cosimo de’ Medici’s house described in Vasari’s anecdote (although B., or possibly Lippi himself, exaggerates the length of time Lippi was shut up in Cosimo’s house; see l. 47n.); (4) and (5) both refer to details of Lippi’s life after the time described in the poem; the lines in (5) referring to Lippi’s profligacy are echoed in the poem (e.g. ll. 27–31).

B.’s corrections of Vasari in (2) and (5) are taken from the notes to Le Monnier. B.’s dependence on the authority of this edition led to scholarly controversy when he decided to adopt its suggestion that Masaccio (‘Hulking Tom’) was the pupil and not the teacher of Lippi (see ll. 273–80). He might also have been encouraged in this belief by the fact that many of the frescoes in the Brancacci chapel of the Carmine were painted by Masaccio and by Filippino, Lippi’s son; see Fantozzi 706, and ll. 266–7n. In a letter to Edward Dowden of 13 Oct. 1866 B. slightly misquotes one of the scholarly footnotes from Le Monnier to justify his version, and calls Vasari’s Life of Lippi ‘a tissue of errors’ (see Johnstone Parr, ‘Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi, Baldinucci, and the Milanesi edition of Vasari’, ELN iii [1966], 197–201). He also defends his position by referring to ‘the competent authority of the editor of the last Florentine edition of Vasari’ in the first of two letters to the Pall Mall Gazette on the subject prompted by an adverse notice in the Revue des Deux Mondes; see Pall Mall Gazette 6 Feb. and 16 Mar. 1870. More recent scholarship has established the date of Masaccio’s death as 1428, making it impossible for him to have been Lippi’s pupil. Lippi’s description of the altarpiece he intends to paint for Sant’ Ambrogio in Florence bears strong similarities to the description of the painting in the footnotes to Le Monnier (iv 117); see ll. 347–77n.

Many of the notes from Le Monnier edition were incorporated into Mrs Foster’s English translation of Vasari (1851), and it is possible that B. might also have used this text. She too, for instance, rejects Vasari’s assertion about Lippi’s ecclesiastical status, citing Masselli: ‘If Filippo, as Della Valle affirms, left his convent after a few months of noviciate, without being professed, how does it happen that he is always called Fra Filippo through his whole life? He painted his own portrait with the tonsure, and his death is registered in the necrology of the Carmelites as that of a member, under the name Frater Philippus. From all these things it is to be supposed that he was certainly professed, if not in full orders’ (Foster ii 75n.). See also section iii below.

(ii) Baldinucci

In the letter to Dowden cited above B. states: ‘I suppose Lippo to have been born—as Baldinucci says—about 1400’. Filippo Baldinucci’s account of Lippi’s life is substantially based on that of Vasari but he too accuses the earlier writer of ‘notibile errori’ [notable errors], esp. in connection with Lippi’s date of birth. After examining the evidence Baldinucci concludes ‘che [Lippi] fosse contemporaneo in tutto, e per tutto del … Masaccio, che egli imparasse l’arte da lui, e che fosse il suo natale circa all’anno 1400’ [that (Lippi) was contemporary in every way with … Masaccio, that he learned his art from him, and that his birth took place around the year 1400] (i 557; also cited DeVane Handbook 217). Baldinucci does not, then, argue that Lippi was Masaccio’s teacher, as B. does in his poem; throughout his account he refers to Lippi as ‘della scuola di Masaccio’, and reports that ‘egli prese tanto la maniera di Masaccio, che, dopo la morte di lui, dicevasi comunemente per ischerzo, lo spirito di Masaccio esser entrato in Fra Filippo’ [He adopted the manner of Masaccio to such an extent that, after Masaccio’s death, it was commonly said as a joke that his spirit had entered into Fra Filippo] (i 559). Johnstone Parr has argued (ELN iii (1966) 197–201) that Baldinucci was not a source for the poem on the grounds that B. did not acquire any information from Baldinucci that he could not have obtained elsewhere, but there seems no good reason to dispute B.’s own assertion that he read Baldinucci as well as Vasari.

(iii) Gaye

In the second of his letters to the Pall Mall Gazette (see above, section i) B. refers in support of his opinion to ‘the whole result of modern criticism, from Gaye and Rumohr downwards’. Rumohr would appear to be Carl Friedrich Ludwig von Rumohr, a German art critic of the early nineteenth century. None of his works is translated into English, but he indirectly affected British thinkers of the time through his influence on A. F. Rio’s De la poésie chrétienne, which B. certainly knew (see headnote to Old Pictures, p. 314). Gaye can plausibly be identified as Johan Gaye, author of Carteggio inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI (1326–1672), published in Florence in 1839–40. (Neither Rumohr nor Gaye makes an appearance in Collections.) Gaye’s book (also not translated into English) consists of transcriptions of previously unpublished letters written by various Florentine artists of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first volume (1839) contains two letters by Lippo to members of the Medici family, complaining about lack of payment for work done. The first of these letters, dating from 1439, supports B.’s assertion that Lippi remained a monk into adult life; he describes himself as ‘uno de piu poveri Frati, che sia in Firenze’ (i 141) [one of the poorest monks in the whole of Florence]. Gaye argues that the letters contradict, or at least throw into doubt, Vasari’s unflattering portrait of Lippo’s character: ‘Il rozzo si, ma sincero modo di esprimersi del pittore, non mostra punto quella leggerezza di carattere, di cui lo taccia il Vasari. Lo troviamo carico di famiglia, oppresso da domestiche angustie’ [The painter’s rough but honest way of expressing himself does not exhibit in the least that lightness of character with which Vasari taxes him. We see him burdened by his family, oppressed by domestic anxieties]. There is nothing in the poem that can be attributed to the influence of Gaye alone. Both Gaye and Rumohr are cited as authorities on a number of occasions in Foster; B.’s comment in the fourth section of his letter to Ruskin (see Le Monnier) is taken from Gaye, as cited by Mrs Foster: ‘It is supposed that the carrying off of Lucrezia is the event to which Giovanni de’ Medici refers, where, in a letter to Bartolommeo Serragli, written from Florence, on the 27th of May, 1458, he uses the following words: “And so we laughed a good while at the error of Fra Filippo”’ (Foster ii 80n.). Gaye also features as an authority in Fantozzi (e.g. p. 706).

(iv) Jameson

Anna Jameson was a close friend of the Brownings (see headnotes to Andrea del Sarto, p. 389, and Pretty Woman, III 20), so B. would have been aware of her chapter on Lippi in Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters. Lippi and Angelico da Fiesole (‘Fra Angelico’) are said to be ‘the very antipodes of each other’ and are seen as responsible for ‘the very opposite impulses … prevailing through the rest of the century at Florence and elsewhere’ (i 110). Adopting the language of German art criticism, Mrs Jameson calls Lippi a ‘Naturalist … intent on studying and imitating the various effects of nature in colour and in light and shade, without any other aspiration than the representation of beauty for its own sake’ (i 110), while Angelico is characterized as one of the ‘Idealists or Mystics’ for whom ‘the cultivation of art [is] a sacred vocation—the representation of beauty a means, not an end’ (i 111). She follows Vasari (and the prevailing tradition) in making Lippi a pupil of Masaccio, and ends by stating that Lippi’s ‘talent was degraded by [his] immorality’ (i 113); he was the first ‘who desecrated [sacred] subjects by introducing the portraits of women who happened to be the objects of his preference at the moment’ (i 114). The possible influence of Mrs Jameson’s chapter on B.’s poem has been noted in general terms by Johnstone Parr (for whom see above, Le Monnier) in ELN v (1967–68) 277–83. The main point of similarity is the suggestion that Lippi exemplifies the new ‘naturalist’ current in painting; the contrast with Fra Angelico also appears in the poem (see ll. 233–7).

(v) Landor

Given B.’s esteem for and personal acquaintance with Landor (see Variation on Lines of Landor, III 704), it is overwhelmingly likely that he read Landor’s imaginary dialogue between Lippi and Pope Eugenius IV. Landor follows Vasari (and disagrees with B.) in having Lippi give up his religious vocation: Pope Eugenius IV says to him ‘I am informed by my son Cosimo de’ Medici … of thy throwing off the habit of a friar’ (p. 81). Landor’s Pope is a lecherous, prying buffoon, anxious for details of Lippi’s sexual conquests while pretending to condemn them; after hearing Lippi say that his sins are of an ‘amorous’ nature, the Pope continues: ‘Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that leads unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and then? Prythee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to cleanse thee’. Landor dwells at length on the episode, briefly mentioned in Vasari and ignored by B., of Lippi’s capture and enslavement by Turkish pirates.

(vi) Ruskin

For B.’s citing of evidence concerning Lippi’s life to Ruskin, see above. John Ruskin was a major influence on the British conception of the history of art in the 1850s, and an important aspect of his polemic was recommendation of early Renaissance painting, in particular Giotto, Fra Angelico and Lorenzo (all mentioned in the poem). His ranking of Italian artists in Modern Painters was as follows:

Thus, Angelico, intensely loving all spiritual beauty, will be of the highest rank; and Paul Veronese and Correggio, intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank; and Albert Dürer, Rubens, and in general the Northern artists, apparently insensible to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether shapely or not, of the third rank; and Teniers and Salvator, Caravaggio, and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank, or as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss.

(Works v 56).

In The Stones of Venice ii (1853), however, the first two categories are inverted, moving ‘Naturalists’ above ‘Purists’, a viewpoint corresponding to Lippi’s in B.’s poem. Ruskin and B. were good friends during this period, and the Brownings read Ruskin’s work avidly (see headnote to Guardian Angel, III 14).

Contexts

Fra Lippo is another product of B.’s profound interest in and knowledge of medieval and early Renaissance art (on which see headnote to Old Pictures, pp. 404–8). There are, moreover, contemporary resonances to some of Lippi’s arguments. His plea for freedom of expression in art—a plea reinforced by some of the poem’s bawdier moments—parallels the Victorian debate on the limits of propriety in literary and artistic representation. In his Preface to Pendennis (1850), Thackeray complains that since ‘the author of “Tom Jones” was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art.’ The Brownings saw a good deal of Thackeray and his family during their period of residence in Rome. Such ‘draping’ was even more obligatory in the visual arts; The Times for 8 May 1854 reports details of a protest against the exhibition of naked classical statuary at the Crystal Palace which prompted the directors to order ‘plaster foliage’ to cover up the offending parts. Lippi’s experiences as an orphan in the Carmelite monastery implicitly invoke some of the debates on the treatment of the poor and destitute in Victorian Britain; see (e.g.) Carlyle’s Past and Present (1843), in which the charitable arrangements of a medieval monastery are favourably compared to the social provisions of Victorian England.

Parallels in B.

Fra Lippo takes its place as one of B’s ‘painter’ poems on the subject of art and artists (cp. in this volume, Pictor Ignotus, p. 226; Andrea, p. 385, and Old Pictures, p. 404). Each of these poems is based on an understanding of the history of art as a development from stylized medieval hagiography (‘saints and saints / And saints again’, as Lippi puts it in ll. 48–9) to the imitation of real life, although the value of this movement is assessed differently in each case. This narrative, which underpins the emerging concept of the Renaissance, is articulated most clearly in Old Pictures (see pp. 415–21). The Quattrocento Italian spoken by Lippi is rendered in the poem as Elizabethan or Shakespearean English (‘Zooks’, ‘By your leave’); cp. My Last Duchess (p. 197) and The Tomb at St. Praxed’s (p. 232). The use of Shakespearean English also invokes the familiar context of Shakespeare’s Italy, with its animation and physicality.

In Johannes Agricola (p. 74) B. attempts to give an insight into the mind of the religious fanatic who despises this world and longs for the next. Fra Lippo, with its emphasis on the importance of attending to this world rather than the next, can be seen as the inverse of this poem. These contrasting outlooks are, moreover, linked to Protestantism and Roman Catholicism respectively in B.’s poetry; B.’s Catholic clergy are almost invariably venal, self-serving, and seething with poorly repressed human passion: cp. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister (p. 201) and Tomb at St. Praxed’s (p. 232), and see ll. 8–11n.

Criticism

On 16 Dec. 1879 Ruskin replied to the letter from B. which we quote above (Sources) in terms which dissent from B.’s view of Lippi in the poem (unpublished MS at Eton College):

Dear Browning,

It is wonderfully pretty and good of you to write all that out for me: but truly, it is for cause: for this question is a most vital and central one with me. That very picture of St Vincent and St Michael at the Nativity, at Prato—I am going to put a copy of in my Sheffield Museum—as the very Morning Star and queen of all Italian sacred painting.—and it will be … full of Lucifer and Vashti with a vengeance, if Vasari and you are right—I simply mean it to be physically impossible—as it would be for a coal chimneysweep to bring me a bagfull of pure snow—for a man such as you read him to have painted any one thing he ever did—I hold the Madonnas of Angelico to be mere dainty grisettes, and Raphael’s, household muses—compared to the solemn purity of Lippi’s; and I would rather have painted Lippi’s Annunciation than Giotto’s—so you see what a pretty quarrel we have on hand! …

Ever affectionately and gratefully yrs,

   J Ruskin

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!

You need not clap your torches to my face.

Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk!

What, it’s past midnight, and you go the rounds,

5  And here you catch me at an alley’s end

Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar.

The Carmine’s my cloister: hunt it up,

Do,—harry out, if you must show your zeal,

Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,

10  And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,

Weke, weke, that’s crept to keep him company!

Aha, you know your betters? Then, you’ll take

Your hand away that’s fiddling on my throat,

And please to know me likewise. Who am I?

15  Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend

Three streets off—he’s a certain … how d’ye call?

Master—a … Cosimo of the Medici,

In the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!

Remember and tell me, the day you’re hanged,

20  How you affected such a gullet’s-gripe!

But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves

Pick up a manner nor discredit you.

Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets

And count fair prize what comes into their net?

25  He’s Judas to a tittle, that man is!

Just such a face! why, sir, you make amends.

Lord, I’m not angry! Bid your hangdogs go

Drink out this quarter-florin to the health

Of the munificent House that harbours me

30  (And many more beside, lads! more beside!)

And all’s come square again. I’d like his face—

His, elbowing on his comrade in the door

With the pike and lantern,—for the slave that holds

John Baptist’s head a-dangle by the hair

35  With one hand (“look you, now,” as who should say)

And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!

It’s not your chance to have a bit of chalk,

A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!

Yes, I’m the painter, since you style me so.

40  What, brother Lippo’s doings, up and down,

You know them and they take you? like enough!

I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—

’Tell you I liked your looks at very first.

Let’s sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.

45  Here’s spring come, and the nights one makes up bands

To roam the town and sing out carnival,

And I’ve been three weeks shut within my mew,

A-painting for the great man, saints and saints

And saints again. I could not paint all night—

50  Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.

There came a hurry of feet and little feet,

A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song,—

Flower o’ the broom,

Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!

55  Flower o’ the quince,

I let Lisa go, and what good’s in life since?

Flower o’ the thyme—and so on. Round they went.

Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter,

Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three slim shapes—

60  And a face that looked up … zooks, sir, flesh and blood,

That’s all I’m made of! Into shreds it went,

Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,

All the bed furniture—a dozen knots,

There was a ladder! down I let myself,

65  Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,

And after them. I came up with the fun

Hard by St. Laurence, hail fellow, well met,—

Flower o’ the rose,

If I’ve been merry, what matter who knows?

70  And so as I was stealing back again

To get to bed and have a bit of sleep

Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work

On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast

With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,

75  You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!

Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—

Mine’s shaved,—a monk, you say—the sting’s in that!

If Master Cosimo announced himself,

Mum’s the word naturally; but a monk!

80  Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!

I was a baby when my mother died

And father died and left me in the street.

I starved there, God knows how, a year or two

On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,

85  Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day

My stomach being empty as your hat,

The wind doubled me up and down I went.

Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,

(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)

90  And so along the wall, over the bridge,

By the straight cut to the convent. Six words, there,

While I stood munching my first bread that month:

“So, boy, you’re minded,” quoth the good fat father

Wiping his own mouth,’twas refection-time,—

95  “To quit this very miserable world?

Will you renounce” … The mouthful of bread? thought I;

By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;

I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,

Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,

100  Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici

Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.

Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,

’Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful,

The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,

105  And day-long blessed idleness beside!

“Let’s see what the urchin’s fit for”—that came next.

Not overmuch their way, I must confess.

Such a to-do! they tried me with their books.

Lord, they’d have taught me Latin in pure waste!

110  Flower o’ the clove,

All the Latin I construe is, “amo” I love!

But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets

Eight years together, as my fortune was,

Watching folk’s faces to know who will fling

115  The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,

And who will curse or kick him for his pains—

Which gentleman processional and fine,

Holding a candle to the Sacrament

Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch

120  The droppings of the wax to sell again,

Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,—

How say I?—nay, which dog bites, which lets drop

His bone from the heap of offal in the street! —

The soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,

125  He learns the look of things, and none the less

For admonitions from the hunger-pinch.

I had a store of such remarks, be sure,

Which, after I found leisure, turned to use:

I drew men’s faces on my copy-books,

130  Scrawled them within the antiphonary’s marge,

Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,

Found nose and eyes and chin for A.s and B.s,

And made a string of pictures of the world

Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,

135  On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.

“Nay,” quoth the Prior, “turn him out, d’ye say?

In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.

What if at last we get our man of parts,

We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese

140  And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine

And put the front on it that ought to be!”

And hereupon they bade me daub away.

Thank you! my head being crammed, their walls a blank,

Never was such prompt disemburdening.

145  First, every sort of monk, the black and white,

I drew them, fat and lean: then, folks at church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess

Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,—

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,

150  Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there

With the little children round him in a row

Of admiration, half for his beard and half

For that white anger of his victim’s son

Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,

155  Signing himself with the other because of Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this

After the passion of a thousand years)

Till some poor girl, her apron o’er her head

Which the intense eyes looked through, came at eve

160  On tip-toe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,

Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers

The brute took growling, prayed, and then was gone.

I painted all, then cried, “ ’tis ask and have—

Choose, for more’s ready!”—laid the ladder flat,

165  And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.

The monks closed in a circle and praised loud

Till checked, (taught what to see and not to see,

Being simple bodies) “that’s the very man!

Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!

170  That woman’s like the Prior’s niece who comes

To care about his asthma: it’s the life!”

But there my triumph’s straw-fire flared and funked—

Their betters took their turn to see and say:

The Prior and the learned pulled a face

175  And stopped all that in no time. “How? what’s here?

Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!

Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true

As much as pea and pea! it’s devil’s-game!

Your business is not to catch men with show,

180  With homage to the perishable clay,

But lift them over it, ignore it all,

Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh.

Your business is to paint the souls of men—

Man’s soul, and it’s a fire, smoke . . no it’s not . .

185  It’s vapour done up like a new-born babe—

(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)

It’s . . well, what matters talking, it’s the soul!

Give us no more of body than shows soul.

Here’s Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God!

190  That sets you praising,—why not stop with him?

Why put all thoughts of praise out of our heads

With wonder at lines, colours, and what not?

Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!

Rub all out, try at it a second time.

195  Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,

She’s just my niece … Herodias, I would say,—

Who went and danced and got men’s heads cut off—

Have it all out!” Now, is this sense, I ask?

A fine way to paint soul, by painting body

200  So ill, the eye can’t stop there, must go further

And can’t fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white

When what you put for yellow’s simply black,

And any sort of meaning looks intense

When all beside itself means and looks nought.

205  Why can’t a painter lift each foot in turn,

Left foot and right foot, go a double step,

Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,

Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,

The Prior’s niece … patron-saint—is it so pretty

210  You can’t discover if it means hope, fear,

Sorrow or joy? won’t beauty go with these?

Suppose I’ve made her eyes all right and blue,

Can’t I take breath and try to add life’s flash,

And then add soul and heighten them threefold?

215  Or say there’s beauty with no soul at all—

(I never saw it—put the case the same—)

If you get simple beauty and nought else,

You get about the best thing God invents,—

That’s somewhat. And you’ll find the soul you have missed,

220  Within yourself when you return Him thanks!

“Rub all out!” well, well, there’s my life, in short,

And so the thing has gone on ever since.

I’m grown a man no doubt, I’ve broken bounds—

You should not take a fellow eight years old

225  And make him swear to never kiss the girls—

I’m my own master, paint now as I please—

Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!

Lord, it’s fast holding by the rings in front—

Those great rings serve more purposes than just

230  To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse!

And yet the old schooling sticks—the old grave eyes

Are peeping o’er my shoulder as I work,

The heads shake still—“It’s Art’s decline, my son!

You’re not of the true painters, great and old:

235  Brother Angelico’s the man, you’ll find:

Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer.

Fag on at flesh, you’ll never make the third!”

Flower o’ the pine,

You keep your mistr … manners, and I’ll stick to mine!

240  I’m not the third, then: bless us, they must know!

Don’t you think they’re the likeliest to know,

They, with their Latin? so I swallow my rage,

Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint

To please them—sometimes do, and sometimes don’t,

245  For, doing most, there’s pretty sure to come

A turn—some warm eve finds me at my saints—

A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—

(Flower o’ the peach,

Death for us all, and his own life for each!)

250  And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs o’er,

The world and life’s too big to pass for a dream,

And I do these wild things in sheer despite,

And play the fooleries you catch me at,

In pure rage! the old mill-horse, out at grass

255  After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,

Although the miller does not preach to him

The only good of grass is to make chaff.

What would men have? Do they like grass or no—

May they or mayn’t they? all I want’s the thing

260  Settled for ever one way: as it is,

You tell too many lies and hurt yourself.

You don’t like what you only like too much,

You do like what, if given you at your word,

You find abundantly detestable.

265  For me, I think I speak as I was taught—

I always see the Garden and God there

A-making man’s wife—and, my lesson learned,

The value and significance of flesh,

I can’t unlearn ten minutes afterward.

270     You understand me: I’m a beast, I know.

But see, now—why, I see as certainly

As that the morning-star’s about to shine,

What will hap some day. We’ve a youngster here

Comes to our convent, studies what I do,

275  Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop—

His name is Guidi—he’ll not mind the monks—

They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—

He picks my practice up—he’ll paint apace,

I hope so—though I never live so long,

280  I know what’s sure to follow. You be judge!

You speak no Latin more than I, belike—

However, you’re my man, you’ve seen the world

—The beauty and the wonder and the power,

The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,

285  Changes, surprises,—and God made it all!

—For what? do you feel thankful, ay or no,

For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line,

The mountain round it and the sky above,

Much more the figures of man, woman, child,

290  These are the frame to? What’s it all about?

To be passed o’er, despised? or dwelt upon,

Wondered at? oh, this last of course, you say.

But why not do as well as say,—paint these

Just as they are, careless what comes of it?

295  God’s works—paint anyone, and count it crime

To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works

Are here already—nature is complete:

Suppose you reproduce her—(which you can’t)

There’s no advantage! you must beat her, then.”

300  For, don’t you mark, we’re made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed

Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;

And so they are better, painted—better to us,

Which is the same thing. Art was given for that—

305  God uses us to help each other so,

Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,

Your cullion’s hanging face? A bit of chalk,

And trust me but you should, though! How much more,

If I drew higher things with the same truth!

310  That were to take the Prior’s pulpit-place,

Interpret God to all of you! oh, oh,

It makes me mad to see what men shall do

And we in our graves! This world’s no blot for us,

Nor blank—it means intensely, and means good:

315  To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

“Ay, but you don’t so instigate to prayer”

Strikes in the Prior! “when your meaning’s plain

It does not say to folks—remember matins—

Or, mind you fast next Friday.” Why, for this

320  What need of art at all? A skull and bones,

Two bits of stick nailed cross-wise, or, what’s best,

A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.

I painted a St. Laurence six months since

At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style.

325  “How looks my painting, now the scaffold’s down?”

I ask a brother: “Hugely,” he returns—

“Already not one phiz of your three slaves

That turn the Deacon off his toasted side,

But’s scratched and prodded to our heart’s content,

330  The pious people have so eased their own

When coming to say prayers there in a rage.

We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.

Expect another job this time next year,

For pity and religion grow i’ the crowd—

335  Your painting serves its purpose!” Hang the fools!

   —That is—you’ll not mistake an idle word

Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,

Tasting the air this spicy night which turns

The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!

340  Oh, the church knows! don’t misreport me, now!

It’s natural a poor monk out of bounds

Should have his apt word to excuse himself:

And hearken how I plot to make amends.

I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece

345  … There’s for you! Give me six months, then go, see

Something in Sant’ Ambrogio’s … (bless the nuns!

They want a cast of my office) I shall paint

God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,

Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,

350  Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet

As puff on puff of grated orris-root

When ladies crowd to church at midsummer.

And then in the front, of course a saint or two—

Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,

355  Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white

The convent’s friends and gives them a long day.

And Job, I must have him there past mistake,

The man of Uz, (and Us without the z,

Painters who need his patience.) Well, all these

360  Secured at their devotions, up shall come

Out of a corner when you least expect,

As one by a dark stair into a great light,

Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—

Mazed, motionless and moon-struck—I’m the man!

365  Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?

I, caught up with my monk’s things by mistake,

My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,

I, in this presence, this pure company!

Where’s a hole, where’s a corner for escape?

370  Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing

Forward, puts out a soft palm—“Not so fast!”

—Addresses the celestial presence, “nay—

He made you and devised you, after all,

Though he’s none of you! Could Saint John there, draw—

375  His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?

We come to brother Lippo for all that,

Iste perfecit opus!” So, all smile—

I shuffle sideways with my blushing face

Under the cover of a hundred wings

380  Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you’re gay

And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,

Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops

The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off

To some safe bench behind, not letting go

385  The palm of her, the little lily thing

That spoke the good word for me in the nick,

Like the Prior’s niece … Saint Lucy, I would say.

And so all’s saved for me, and for the church

A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!

390  Your hand, sir, and good bye: no lights, no lights!

The street’s hushed, and I know my own way back—

Don’t fear me! There’s the grey beginning. Zooks!@@

1–2. Lippi has been stopped by the city watch; he first addresses the men who are physically holding him, and then (at l. 12) their officer, to whom he speaks the remainder of his monologue.

1. by your leave! used as an apology for taking a liberty, in Shakespeare often a kiss (e.g. Merchant of Venice III ii 139), but also used more aggressively, as when Bassianus seizes hold of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus I i 276: ‘Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine’. The tinge of archaism in the phrase is confirmed by OED’s citation of Dickens’s historical novel, Barnaby Rudge, set in the 18th century: ‘The solitary passenger was startled by the chairmen’s cry of “By your leave there!” as two came trotting past him’ (ch. xvi).

2. clap: thrust (into).

3. Zooks: contraction of ‘gadzooks’, from ‘God’s hooks’ (= the nails of the cross); ‘An exclamation or minced oath, expressing vexation, surprise, or other emotion’ (OED).

6. sportive ladies: sportive: ‘gay; merry; frolick; wanton; playful; ludicrous’ (J.); here the phrase is a euphemism for prostitutes.

7. Carmine: the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence; see letter to Ruskin (headnote, Sources) for B.’s source in Vasari. The Carmelite Order of monks was founded around 1200; they are a mendicant and contemplative order.

8–11. Lippi suggests that the watch would be better employed at the monastery looking for each ‘softling’—‘effeminate or viciously nice person’ (J.) —who has crept into the ‘wrong hole’; with this possible suggestion of homosexual practices in the Catholic Church cp. Holy-Cross Day 20n., 21–2n. (p. 546).

11. Cp. Titus Andronicus IV ii 146–7: ‘Weeke weeke! / So cries a pig prepared to the spit’.

12–18. The watchmen acknowledge the arrival of their officer, and Lippi implies that he is of equivalent social rank; the officer then asks him who he is, and Lippi reveals that he has a powerful patron, whereupon the man holding him lets him go.

17. Cosimo of the Medici: the first Cosimo de’ Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio [Cosimo the Elder] (1389–1464); see headnote, Sources for B.’s letter to Ruskin detailing the incident in Vasari. As Oxford notes, Vasari states that the altarpiece of Sant’ Ambrogio projected by Lippi towards the end of the poem (ll. 344–77) was the piece that first brought Lippi to Cosimo de’ Medici’s attention: ‘lavorò alle Donne di S. Ambruogio all’altare maggiore una bellissima tavola, la quale molto grato lo fece a Cosimo de’ Medici, che per questa cagione divenne suo amicissimo’ [‘he made for the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio a most beautiful altarpiece for the high altar, which greatly pleased Cosimo de’ Medici, who for this reason became his [Lippi’s] great friend’].

18. In the house] I’ the house (1870–88). the house that caps the corner: the verb ‘to cap’ is defined by J. as ‘to cover on the top’; hence a ref. to the imposing size of the Medici Palace, situated at the corner of what is now Via Cavour and Via de’ Gori. Boh! An Italian exclamation of disdain or disgust. you were best! ‘you’d better!’

20. affected: ‘liked, enjoyed’; since the watchman enjoys gripping people round the neck [‘a gullet’s gripe’], it would be poetic justice for him to be hanged.

21–2. ‘It is of importance to you, as an officer and a man of rank, that your subordinates learn to behave properly and do not discredit you.’

21. your knaves: combining the sense of ‘servant’ or ‘subordinate’ with that of ‘petty rascal, scoundrel’; the first sense was already obsolete in J.

23–4. The watch are rounding people up for unimportant offences, like fishermen using a net with small meshes, so that even a pilchard cannot escape; Lippi implies that they should be catching bigger prey. The metaphor derives from one of Aesop’s fables, ‘The Fisherman and the Large and Small Fish’ (Complete Fables, transl. Olivia and Robert Temple, Penguin 1998, p. 22).

25. He’s Judas to a tittle! ‘he would make an excellent model for Judas in one of my paintings’, with the implication that the man’s character suits his appearance. There is in fact no image of Judas in Lippi’s extant work. The traditional subjects of paintings in which Judas features were the Last Supper and the Betrayal (or Arrest) of Christ; Lippi is not known to have painted either subject. Cp. B.’s remarks to Richard Hengist Horne about his poetic drama Judas Iscariot: a Miracle Play, published in a volume with other poems in 1848: ‘Yes, I saw your “Judas” advertised, and reviewed in the Athenæum,—one of the best subjects, it strikes me, possible for poet—the one extract I read was admirable,—and the plot & purpose admirable. I shall have a great read of it, whenever the lucky day comes. I wish I could have referred you to a pamphlet of the last century called something like “Remarks on the life <or character?> of Judas,”—with striking things, as I seem to remember them’ (3 Dec. 1848, Correspondence xv 168).

26. you make amends: Lippi is responding to a conciliatory gesture on the part of the officer.

27. Bid your hangdogs] Have your hangdogs (H proof, but not H proof²). A hang-dog is ‘[a] despicable or degraded fellow fit only to hang a dog, or to be hanged like a dog’ (OED).

28. quarter-florin: A florin is the English name for the gold coins issued in Florence.

29. munificent House] munificent house (H proof, but not H proof²).

30. many more besides: Lippi informs the watch that Cosimo’s house harbours many more people besides him, and thereby reminds them of his patron’s power. Alternatively, he is hinting at possible future ‘quarter-florins’.

31–6. I’d like … unwiped! the story of the beheading of John the Baptist at the behest of Herodias’s daughter is told in Mark vi 17–29. See ll. 196–7n. Lippi painted frescoes on the theme of the Feast of Herod in the Duomo [Cathedral] at Prato, near Florence, including a ‘Decapitation of John the Baptist’ in the chancel of the same church. In this fresco a servant is depicted in exactly the pose described by Lippi, with John’s head held by the hair in one hand and his unwiped sword in the other; see Thomas 97, 99.

31. all’s come square: ‘all’s come right, everything’s settled satisfactorily’, with the implication that money has changed hands, since to ‘square’ someone meant to buy them off (Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang, ed. E. Partridge).

38. wood-coal: a piece of charcoal. or you should] and you should (H proof, but not H proof²).

39. since you style me so: ‘since you are kind enough to call me by that name’ (Lippi is affecting modesty at his being recognized).

40. brother Lippo’s doings] works about the city (H proof).

41. they take you: ‘they catch your fancy’ (OED 10, citing Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman I i 86–7: ‘such sweet neglect more taketh me / Than all th’adulteries of art’).

43. ’Tell: the apostrophe indicates the omission of the pronoun; see An Epistle 101n. (p. 517).

44. hip to haunch: ‘side by side’, ‘close together’; cp. Holy-Cross Day 25: ‘Aaron’s asleep—shove hip to haunch’ (p. 546).

45–6. Carnival is the traditional period of revelry permitted in Roman Catholic countries before the austerities of Lent; see headnote to Toccata (p. 368).

46. sing out carnival] sing at carnival (H proof, but not H proof²).

47. three weeks: according to the source in Vasari mentioned by B. in his letter to Ruskin (see headnote, Sources), Lippi escaped from Cosimo’s house after two days; Lippi may be exaggerating in order to gain the sympathy of the officer and his men. mew: ‘a cage; an inclosure; a place where any thing is confined’ (J.). Cp. Childe Roland 135 (p. 362).

48–9. saints and saints / And saints again: the picture is convincingly identified in Thomas as ‘Seven Saints, Sacred Conversation’, which belonged to the picture-dealer Metzger in the Borgo Ognissanti in Florence until it was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1861 (pp. 425–6; For B.’s knowledge of art-dealers in Florence, see headnote to Old Pictures, pp. 404–5). B. mentions this fact in one of his annotations to Vasari in his letter to Ruskin (see headnote, Sources), and in a letter to Furnivall he remarks: ‘By the bye, that picture of Lippi’s, mentioned by Mr. Radford,—with the saints in a row—has,—either that or its companion, “the Annunciation”, also in the National Gallery,—the Arms of the Medici above the figures,—and in all likelihood both pictures were painted during Lippi’s stay, enforced or otherwise, in the Medici Palace’ (9 Jan. 1883; Trumpeter 63). Contrast the painter in Pictor Ignotus 57–62, who although painting the same tedious series of religious subjects is not doing so for a patron (p. 231).

51. feet and little feet: i.e. male and female revellers. cp. Paracelsus v 186 (I 280): ‘I am come back … to love you, and to kiss your little feet, / Soft as an ermine’s winter coat!’

52. lute-strings: the lute is the traditional instrument for Renaissance love-songs and serenades; cp. Serenade 20n. (III 488). whifts: ‘a whiff or slight blast of wind’ (OED); the application to song seems to be B.’s invention.

53–7. The first of several imitations in the poem of the ‘Stornello’ [‘Starling’], a traditional and popular Italian verse form of two or three lines (with regional variations) ‘generally amorous or satirical in nature … [and normally including] the invocation of a flower’ (Salvatore Battaglia, Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, 1961). See also ll. 68–9; 238–9; 248–9. Francesco Dall’Ongaro (1808–73), the poet and patriot who translated EBB.’s A Court Lady into Italian and later became her ‘great friend’ (EBB to Arabella ii 487), attempted to incorporate forms of this kind into his work, and issued a volume of Stornelli which achieved popularity during the Risorgimento; Garibaldi is reputed to have chanted one on leaving Montevideo to return to Italy. His poems have little formal resemblance to Lippi’s, however, and are political or satirical in nature.

56. what good’s in life] what good in life (1868–88).

61–6. Into shreds … after them: One of the incidents derived directly from Vasari; see letter to Ruskin (headnote, Sources).

66. I came up with the fun: ‘I caught up with the revellers’.

67. St. Laurence] Saint Laurence (1863–88, except 1872 which has ‘Saint Lawrence’). The church of San Lorenzo was closely connected with the Medici family and was rebuilt by Brunelleschi during the period in question; see also 323n. hail fellow, well met: used here adverbially to describe Lippi’s easy, over-familiar demeanour on approaching the group; cp. Lydia Melford’s description of the Pump-Room in Bath, in Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker (1771): ‘You see the highest quality and the lowest trades-folk jostling each other, without ceremony, hail-fellow well met’ (ch. iv, letter 1); and Leigh Hunt, Men, Women, & Books (1847), vol. i., p. 91: ‘Palavering rascals, who come, hail-fellow-well-met’.

68–9. Another ‘stornello’; see ll. 53–7n.

73–4. St Jerome (c.345–420), one of the most important figures in the early Church, translated and wrote commentaries on the Bible and was celebrated for his asceticism. Cosimo de’ Medici founded a monastery and church for the order of ‘Hieronymites’ near the Villa Medici at Fiesole. Lippi painted at least five St Jeromes, but the picture in question must be the small one of Jerome in penance which (according to Vasari) he painted for Cosimo de’ Medici; the editors of Le Monnier claim to have found this painting, wrongly attributed to Masolino da Panicale, in the Galleria delle Belle Arti in Florence (p. 118). Cp. Old Pictures 207n. (p. 425).

75. snap: ‘catch’, with the implication of a predator ‘snapping up’ its prey.

77. Mine’s shaved: i.e. Lippi has the monk’s tonsure, whereby the crown of the head is shaved; see headnote, Sources for the debate over whether Lippi was in fact still a monk at this period.

79. Mum’s the word: ‘say nothing’; cp. 2 Henry VI, I ii 89: ‘Seal up your lips and give no word but mum’.

80. what am I a beast for? a number of senses are possible: ‘why do I behave like a beast?’; ‘why do you see me as a beast?’ (given the fact that Lippi is defending himself against the suggestion that his behaviour is all the worse because he is a monk); or possibly ‘why was I made a beast if not to behave like this?’ Cp. Easter Day 33 (III 101) and Bishop Blougram 349 (p. 303).

81–91. This account of Lippi’s origins is very closely based on Vasari; see letter to Ruskin in headnote, Sources.

84. shucks: husks or shells.

88. trussed: ‘To tie in a bundle, or stow away closely in a receptacle; to bundle, pack’ (OED).

89. Its fellow was a stinger: her other hand was capable of inflicting a sharp slap.

90–1. And so … convent: Santa Maria del Carmine is south of the Arno (‘Oltrarno’); these lines suggest that Mona Lapaccia dragged Lippi to it across one of the city’s bridges, probably the Ponte alla Carraia. Santa Maria del Carmine is very close to Casa Guidi, so B. would have been familiar with the geography of this area.

91. Six words: B. often uses ‘six’ for a small quantity; cp. (e.g.) The Statue and the Bust 219: ‘Six steps out of the chapel yonder’ (III 357).

94. refection-time: mealtime in the monastery.

95–6. To quit … renounce: cp. the rite of Infant Baptism in The Book of Common Prayer: ‘Dost thou … renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh[?]’

100–1.] Trash, such poor devils as these Medici / Give their hearts to—and all at eight years old. (H proof).

103. ’Twas not for nothing: i.e. the renunciation of ‘the world’ had brought some compensation in the form of adequate nourishment.

104. serge: the monk’s habit of coarse woollen cloth girdled by a rope. The type of clothing to be worn by each Order was dictated by ecclesiastical law; the Carmelites adopted a white cloak in 1287, and so became known as the White Friars (see below l. 145n.).

105. The image of monastic life as an excuse for physical and mental laziness was a commonplace of anti-Catholic satire in B.’s time, although its roots go back before the Reformation in (e.g.) the tales of Chaucer and Boccaccio.

108. tried: both ‘attempted to interest’ and ‘annoyed’.

109.] Lord, Latin they’d have taught me in pure waste. (H proof; H proof² has the verbal variant but does not record the punctuation variant).

110–11. Another of the ‘stornelli’; see ll. 53–7n.

111. construe: pronounced with the stress on the first syllable: cónstrue.

115. he desires] that he eyes (H proof).

117–20. Candles are usually carried in Roman Catholic religious processions; cp. Up at a Villa 51–2 (III 148–9). In this procession the ‘Sacrament’ (the communion host), housed in a tabernacle, is accompanied by prominent citizens of the town holding large wax tapers; Lippi is imagining one of these ‘processional’ gentlemen allowing him to collect and resell his used candle wax. The association of Catholicism and thrift here may owe something to lines from one of Donne’s satires which are cited below, l. 148n.

117. processional] processioning (H proof).

121. the Eight: the magistrates of Florence.

124–6. Lippi suggests that his artistic talent for the representation of human emotion derives from his early experiences, and in particular the harsh lesson of the ‘hunger-pinch’ he felt when he misread people’s feelings and characters. B. makes no mention of his having received any artistic training (of the kind he offers to his own pupil at ll. 273–80), sacrificing verisimilitude in order to emphasize Lippi’s natural gift, honed by his experiences in the streets of Florence.

124. —The soul] Why, soul (1863–88).

125. and none the less] minds none the less (1863²). Verbal variants unique to 1863² are rare; another example close by, at l. 131, suggests that B. may have been glancing over the proofs and made a couple of changes which he later forgot.

126. For admonitions] For admonition (1868–88).

127. remarks: perceptions, observations.

128. Which, after] Which, now that (H proof).

129–41. ‘Questo putto … essendo tenuto con gli altri in noviziato e sotto la disciplina del maestro della grammatica, pur per vedere quello che sapesse fare; in cambio di studiare, non faceva mai altro che imbrattare con fantocci i libri suoi e degli altri: onde il priore si risolvette a dargli ogni comodità ed agio d’imparare a dipignere’ (Le Monnier 115) [This boy … being a novice like the others and like them subject to the discipline of the master of grammar, if only to see what he was capable of doing, instead of studying never did anything but cover his books and those of the other boys with caricatures. The Prior therefore resolved to give him every opportunity to learn how to paint].

130. Scrawled them within] Scrawled them on (H proof, but not H proof²). antiphonary’s marge: antiphons are ‘short melodies sung before and after a psalm’; W. M. Johnston (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Monasticism (Chicago 2000) i 10. An anti-phonary is a book containing a number of antiphons.

131. the long music-notes: i.e. probably breves and semi-breves, which indicate a note held over a long interval, although there may be a pun on a ‘long’, an even longer note not used in modern notation; B.’s knowledge of Renaissance scoring may be a little inaccurate, however, since breves and semi-breves were the standard notation, and Lippi would not have distinguished them as ‘long music-notes’. long] square (1863²). The ‘long’ was written as a ‘square’.

132. Oxford points out that ‘[since] chant notation is black, not hollow, the “A’s and B’s” … are not musical notes, but letters of the alphabet’; cp. l. 134. nose and eyes] eyes and nose (H proof).

135. The monks looked black] The monks were mazed (H proof).

137. Lose a crow and catch a lark: this looks proverbial, but we have not been able to discover any sources. The sense is obviously something like, ‘it’s a stroke of luck to lose something ordinary and get something valuable in its place’; the Prior is saying that although Lippi may not turn out to be a run-of-the-mill monk, he will be worth keeping.

138. parts: talents.

139–40. Camaldolese / And Preaching Friars: the Camaldolese Order, a strongly ascetic Benedictine Order, was founded in the early eleventh century by St Romuald; the Dominicans were known as the ‘preaching friars’ as this activity was central to their ministry. See also ll. 235–6n.

140. to do our church] shall do our church (H proof).

141. The primary meaning is that the façade of the order’s church will at last be given the ornamentation it deserves (although as Thomas points out, the façade of Santa Maria del Carmine, the Carmelite church, remains unfinished [p. 106]); cp. the ‘Moorish front’ which Luria designs for the Cathedral in Florence (Luria i 124–5, II 385). ‘Front’ also suggests the church’s self-presentation, its prestige in the wider world.

142. they bade me] he bade me (1868–88).

143. being crammed] was crammed (H proof).

145. black and white: Dominicans (‘Black Friars’) and Carmelites (‘White Friars’).

146. fat and lean] good and bad (H proof). folks at church] folk at church (1888).

147. gossips: a ‘gossip’ is ‘A person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, esp. one who delights in idle talk; a newsmonger, a tattler’ (OED); cp. Ring ii 513.

148. cribs: ‘trivial thefts’ (of minute quantities of wine or food, etc.). Oxford (with acknowledgement to Michael Meredith) points out the resemblance to Donne’s ‘Satire II’: ‘For as a thrifty wench scrapes kitchen-stuff, / And barrelling the droppings and the snuff / Of wasting candles, which in thirty year / (Relic-like kept) perchance buys wedding gear’ (ll. 81–4). See also above, ll. 117–20n. B.’s great admiration for Donne, unusual in the mid-nineteenth century, makes this connection even more likely.

149–62. The murderer in Lippi’s imaginary drama has claimed the right of sanctuary by entering the church, and cannot be arrested or harmed. The tradition that the church represented a place of ‘sanctuary’ within which those suspected of crimes could take refuge dates from the early church (it was recognized under the Code of Theodosius in 399) and continued in Catholic countries until the eighteenth century.

151. in a row] in a ring (H proof).

153. white anger: pallor is associated with extreme anger or hatred in B.; cp. Light Woman 25 (III 610).

155. Signing himself … because of Christ: making the sign of the cross out of superstitious fear, because there is a statue or painting of the crucified cross above the altar. Bishop Blougram ridicules the supposed incongruity of religious faith with brutal criminality (ll. 688–92, p. 323).

156. only this] only that (H proof).

157. passion: suffering (Latin patior, to suffer or endure); another name for the Crucifixion was the Passion of Christ.

158. poor girl: possibly a euphemism for prostitute; cp. Pippas iii 225^226, p. 153), and see l. 162n. her apron o’er her head: as she is bringing food to the murderer, the ‘poor girl’ is anxious to conceal her identity.

160. dropped in a loaf] threw in a loaf (H proof).

162.] (The brute took growling) and so was gone. (1868–88, except that 1888 has a comma after the closing bracket). Oxford suggests that the ‘brute’ is ‘the priest taking Confession’, but this cannot be right; it refers to the murderer in the anecdote taking food during his period of refuge in the church. The scene transplants to Florence a stereotype of Victorian popular fiction, the devotion of a prostitute to her abusive lover and pimp, of which the most famous example is the relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy in Oliver Twist.

163. I painted all, then cried] I got all ready, cried (H proof).

164. more’s ready] my head’s full (H proof).

167. checked, (taught] checked, taught (H proof, 1868–88); checked—taught (1863²); checked,—taught (1863–65). B. evidently had trouble getting the punctuation of this line to his satisfaction; see also next line.

168. simple bodies)] bodies: (H proof); bodies,—(1863–88).

170–1. the Prior’s niece … asthma: as Turner points out, this is a euphemism for the Prior’s mistress. His sexual licence resembles that of the Bishop of St Praxed’s (p. 232) and the Bishop in Holy-Cross Day (pp. 545–7).

172. straw-fire flared and funked: ‘blazed and then went out’; a ‘straw fire’ was proverbial, although for smokiness rather than brevity. Cp. Tennyson, Morte d’Arthur 273–4: ‘our last light, that long / Had winked and threatened darkness, flared and fell’.

173.] Their betters had to see and say instead: (H proof).

176. the mark of painting: ‘the correct standard of painting’.

179. to catch men] to maze men (H proof, but not H proof²).

180. With homage] Mere homage (H proof). perishable clay: a biblical metaphor for the human body: see e.g. Isaiah lxiv 8: ‘But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.’ Cp. Rabbi Ben Ezra 150 ff. (p. 660).

184–7. Lippi satirizes the proliferation and confusion of medieval theories about the soul, which extends back to antiquity; cp. An Epistle 1–12 (pp. 511–12), and Cleon 57–9 (p. 570).

184. it’s a fire, smoke] it’s a vapour (H proof).

186.] In that shape when they die it leaves their mouth, (H proof).

188. than shows soul] than shows that (H proof).

189. For Giotto see headnote to Old Pictures (pp. 404 ff.). It seems unlikely that an allusion to any particular painting is intended. a-praising God!] a-praising there, (H proof); a-praising God, (1863–88).

190. sets you praising] sets us praising (1868–88). The revision emphasizes the contrast between Lippi’s naturalism and the conventionalism of his fellow monks; the original reading allows him to admire Giotto.

191. out of our heads] out of our head (1868–88).

195. white smallish female: in Lippi’s fresco of The Feast of Herod at Prato (see ll. 31–6n.), Salome is depicted in a luminous white dress against a predominantly dark background.

196–7. Herodias … cut off: it was not Herodias who danced for Herod, but her daughter Salome, who was instructed by Herodias to ask for the head of John the Baptist as her reward (Matthew xiv 3–11). As Turner (p. 319) points out, the slip may be intended to show the Prior’s ignorance (cp. Tomb at St. Praxed’s 95, p. 242), or may derive from Vasari, who refers to Lippi’s depiction of ‘la destrezza di Herodias’ [the dexterity of Herodias].

198. is this sense] is that sense (H proof, but not H proof²). The term comprises both ‘good sense’ and ‘sensuality’.

200–1. must go further / And can’t fare worse! inverting the proverbial expression: ‘You could go farther and fare worse’; see e.g. Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), ch. xvii: ‘“You will have to go farther.” “And to fare worse?” said Martin, pursuing the old adage.’

205–8. Lippi’s analogy is intended to suggest that soul and flesh are like the left foot and the right foot, which are both equally necessary: cp. Aurora Leigh i 1095–9: ‘Vincent Carrington, / Whom men judge hardly as bee-bonneted, / Because he holds that, paint a body well, / You paint a soul by implication, like / The grand first Master.’

209. Lippi’s hesitation here might be a deliberately playful stumbling over his words, or a sign of his anxiety lest his admiration for the Prior’s ‘niece’ be reported back to the monastery; see ll. 170–1n.

212–14. The ‘breath of life’ derives from Genesis ii 7: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ Genesis does not distinguish between the ‘flash’ which signifies ‘life’ (physical animation) and the ‘soul’. With the ‘threefold’ structure, cp. A Death 82–104 (pp. 729–30).

215–20. Lippi suggests that even beauty without soul has a spiritual dimension, since it produces a reflex of gratitude to God in the viewer.

216.] I never saw that—put the case, the same—(H proof).

219–20.] Is not that somewhat? And the soul you have missed, / Find in yourself when you return him thanks! (H proof; H proof² does not record the question mark in l. 219).

221–2. in short, / And so] in short: / That way (H proof).

227. a friend: Cosimo de’ Medici (see l. 17n.); Lippi may mean personal friendship with Cosimo (who is said by Vasari to have been one of Lippi’s ‘amici’: see head-note, p. 479), though ‘friend’ can also mean a ‘patron, or supporter’ (OED 5a).

you see, in the Corner-house!] you see—the Corner-house—(H proof). See l. 18n.

228–30. Lippi imagines himself holding on to the iron rings bolted to the front of the Medici palace as a metaphor for the protection he receives from his patron.

229. than just] than one, (H proof).

232. Are peeping] Still peeping (H proof, but not H proof²).

233. The heads shake still] The shaking heads (H proof).

235–6. Brother Angelico … Brother Lorenzo: Guido di Pietro, known as Fra Angelico (1387–1455) was a member of the ‘Observant’ branch of the Dominican Order based at the Monastery of San Marco in Florence; Piero di Giovanni, known as Lorenzo Monaco (‘Lawrence the Monk’) (c.1370–c.1422) was a member of the Camaldolese Order based in the Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Piazza Brunelleschi (see above ll. 139–40n.).

236. Brother Lorenzo stands] Brother Lorenzo, that’s (H proof, but not H proof²).

237. Fag on at flesh: ‘continue to devote your efforts to painting the human body’ (rather than, by implicit contrast with Angelico and Lorenzo, the soul). you’ll never make the third: cp. Andrea 258–64 (p. 403), in which the painter imagines himself as the fourth artist along with ‘Leonard, Rafael, [and] Angelo’; and Aristophanes’ Apology (1875) 5134–40, in which Aristophanes dismisses the possibility of a master of ‘tragicomic verse’ who will combine the genius of himself and Euripides (i.e. Shakespeare) as an ‘imaginary Third’.

238–9. Another ‘stornello’; see ll. 53–7n.

248–9. See ll. 53–7n.

250. the cup runs o’er] the cup runs over (H proof, 1863–88, except 1863² which agrees with 1855). See also l. 291. The phrase ‘my cup runneth over’ comes from Psalms xxiii 5, but refers there to pleasure, not frustration; cp. also Psalms lxxiii 10, referring to divine punishment: ‘waters of a full cup are wrung out to them’, and Matthew xxvi 39, the cup which Jesus prays to be spared in the garden of Gethsemane.

251. Denying one of the tenets (or, as Lippi sees it, clichés) of Christian contemptus mundi, as expressed by the Bishop in Tomb at St. Praxed’s: ‘And as she died so must we die ourselves, / And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream’ (ll. 8–9, p. 238). The specific image of life, or the world, as a dream is not biblical (the closest parallel is with Job xx 8, on the fate of the wicked: ‘He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found’), but the thought itself is close to many biblical texts on the brevity and ‘vanity’ of earthly existence, and on the need to reject the ‘world’, e.g., 1 John ii 15–17: ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. … For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’ B. may also have been influenced by literary instances, e.g. Prospero’s famous lines in The Tempest: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep’ (IV i 156–8), or Shelley’s Adonais: ‘He hath awakened from the dream of life’ (l. 344). Cp. also Longfellow’s ‘A Psalm of Life’, publ. 1839 and widely known: ‘Tell me not, in mournful numbers, / Life is but an empty dream! / For the soul is dead that slumbers / And things are not what they seem’ (ll. 1–4). B. may also have had in mind Calderon’s play Life is a Dream (1636).

254–7. the old mill-horse … make chaff: contrast the horse in Childe Roland 76–84 (pp. 358–9).

255. chaff: the refuse of winnowed grain; frequently used in the Bible (and therefore in the monks’ ‘preaching’) in connection with the wrath of God: see e.g. Isaiah v 24: ‘Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.’

261. too many] so many (H proof).

264. You find] Is found (H proof, but not H proof²).

266–7. I always see … man’s wife: Genesis ii 8–25. Thomas (p. 118) points out that the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine, Lippi’s monastery, contains two early fifteenth-century depictions of a naked Adam and Eve by Masolino and Masaccio respectively, although B.’s erroneous belief that Lippi was Masaccio’s master and not his pupil rules the latter out as a possible source for Lippi’s ‘lesson’ on ‘[the] value and significance of flesh’; cp. ll. 273–80n.

267.] A-making man his wife—my lesson learned, (H proof).

269^270.] All eds. have a line-space except 1863², which agrees with 1855.

270. I’m a beast: cp. l. 80n.

271. why, I see] why, I know (H proof).

273–80. We’ve a youngster … follow: for B.’s erroneous suggestion that Tommaso di Giovanni di Guidi, known as Masaccio (1401–28) was Lippi’s pupil rather than his teacher see headnote, Sources.

273. We’ve a youngster] There’s a youngster (H proof, but not H proof²).

277. Hulking Tom: B.’s attempted translation of ‘Masaccio’; the suffix ‘-accio’ in Italian means unpleasant or awkward.

282.] You’ve seen the world however, you’re my man. (H proof).

287–8. The river is the Arno; Florence is surrounded by hills. Cp. the ecstatic view of Florence in the opening lines of Old Pictures (pp. 409–10).

291. passed o’er] passed over (H proof, 1863–88, except 1863², which agrees with 1855). See also l. 250.

298. reproduce her] reproduced her (H proof, but not H proof²).

300–2. This argument is based on chapter 4 of Aristotle’s Poetics: ‘The instinct for imitation is inherent in man from his earliest days … Also inborn in all of us is the instinct to enjoy works of imitation. What happens in actual experience is evidence of this; for we enjoy looking at the most accurate representations of things which in themselves we find painful to see, such as the forms of the lowest animals and of corpses’ (transl. T. S. Dorsch, Harmondsworth 1988).

306. Lending our minds out: ‘allowing us to understand how the world looks to others’.

307. cullion’s: a cullion is ‘A base, despicable, or vile fellow; a rascal’ (OED); derived from an old French word for testicle. hanging face: the primary sense here is ‘the face of someone who will end up being hanged’; see ll. 19–20.

312. men shall do] men will do (H proof, but not H proof²).

313–14. blot … blank: cp. the Prologue to Jocoseria (1883): ‘Wanting is—what? / Summer redundant, / Blueness abundant, / —Where is the blot? / Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, / —Framework which waits for a picture to frame: / What of the leafage, what of the flower? / Roses embowering with naught they embower!’ (ll. 1–8)

313. no blot for us] no trap for us (H proof).

315. meat and drink: ‘a source of pleasure to me’; cp. As You Like It V i 10: ‘It is meat and drink to me to see a clown’.

318. matins: despite its etymological derivation from Matuta, the Roman Goddess of the dawn, this term signifies the ‘Night Office’ of the Roman Catholic liturgy, and consists of the chanting of a selection of Psalms and the reading of lessons.

319. fast next Friday: fasting on Fridays is enjoined on Catholics at certain periods of the year, most notably Lent and Advent.

323–4. Unlike Lippi’s Coronation of the Virgin (see ll. 344–77n.) this work is a fiction: B. almost certainly knew that Lippi never painted a ‘Martyrdom of St. Laurence’, the saint who was martyred in Rome during the persecution of Christians by the Emperor Valerian in 258 ad, traditionally by being roasted on a gridiron. Lippi’s only major treatment of St Laurence is a dignified image of him ‘Enthroned with Saints and Donors’ (the ‘Alessandri altarpiece’, placed in the church at Vincigliata near Fiesole and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). As Thomas points out (p. 121), B. would have seen a painting by Mario Balassi and Carlo Dolci of the martyrdom of St Laurence in the cathedral at Prato (which he and EBB. visited in 1853); he would also have seen Bronzino’s painting of this subject in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence (which Lippi mentions at l. 67). Both represent St. Laurence at the moment when, according to legend, he taunted the Prefect of Rome who had ordered his torture: ‘Turn me over, for this side is done’ (see below, l. 328). St. Laurence does appear, carrying his gridiron, in The Coronation of the Virgin, in the row of saints in the foreground, though he is not mentioned in Lippi’s description of this group (ll. 353–9).

323. a St Laurence] a Saint Laurence (1868–88).

327. phiz: a humorous term for the face derived from an abbreviation of ‘physiognomy’.

328. That turn] That turned (H proof); Who turn (1868–88). the Deacon: the rank below Bishop and priest; St Laurence was one of the seven deacons at Rome in the pontificate of Sixtus II (ad 257–8).

329–32. There are, as Thomas notes, similarities between this description and an incident associated with Andrea del Castagno’s Christ on the Column as described in Mrs Foster’s translation of Vasari: ‘The picture is, in fine, of such merit, that were it not for the carelessness which has permitted it to be scratched and injured by children and simple folks, who have maltreated the head, arms, and almost the entire persons of the Jews, as though they would thereby avenge the injuries inflicted on the Saviour, this work would, without doubt, be the most beautiful of all that Andrea executed’ (Thomas 428).

330. their own: i.e. their own hearts.

331. When coming] With coming (1868–88).

336–40. Lippi is suddenly anxious that his words will be reported to the church authorities and that he will be accused of heresy, a charge against which even his powerful Medici patron might find it difficult to protect him; cp. l. 209n.

343. And hearken] But hearken (H proof, but not H proof²).

344–77. The painting which Lippi projects here, The Coronation of the Virgin, is reproduced in vol. III of our edition (Plate 6); see l. 17n. Cp. the description given in the footnotes to Le Monnier (iv 117): ‘In essa, con certa novità d’invenzione, espresse Nostra Donna incoronata, con attorno in belle movenze molti Angeli leggiadramente vestiti e acconciati, e vari santi, tra’ quali San Giovan Batista, Sant’ Eustachio, San Martino e San Giobbe. A piè di essi, in mezze figure, è il ritratto del pittore di profilo, colla testa rasa, e dinanzi un Angioletto che sostiene una fascia dove è scritto: Is perfecit opus’ [In this picture, with a certain imaginative novelty, [Lippi] depicts the Coronation of Our Lady, placing around her several angels gracefully dressed and arranged in pleasing attitudes, and various saints, amongst whom are St John the Baptist, Saint Eustace, Saint Martin and Saint Job. At the foot of these, in the midst of the figures, is a portrait of the artist in profile, his head shaved, and in front of him an angel holding a plaque upon which is written: Is perfecit opus]. As Thomas points out, however, Lippi’s picture does not (and could not) contain the infant Jesus (p. 124). Vasari erroneously identifies Lippi’s self-portrait in the painting, an error which B. followed even though he probably knew it was an error: see ll. 360–4n.

345. There’s for you! ‘I’ve thought of it!’; or ‘here’s some more money!’

346. Sant’ Ambrogio’s … (bless] Saint Ambrogio’s: bless (H proof; H proof² only records the removal of the parenthesis); Sant’ Ambrogio’s! Bless (1863–88, except 1863 which agrees with H proof).

347. They want a cast of my office: ‘they want to see a specimen of my work’; Lippi clearly intends a bawdy pun (‘they want what I’ve got’); besides the allusion to popular stories of sexual misbehaviour between monks and nuns, there is the fact that Lippi’s mistress Lucrezia Buti was probably a novice when he seduced her (see headnote, Sources (i) Le Monnier). For the sense of ‘cast’ as a specimen or ‘taste’, see J. and OED sense 9. of my office)] of my office. (H proof, 1863–68); o’ my office. (1870–88).

351. orris-root: ‘The rhizome of three species of Iris (I. florentina, I. germanica, I. pallida), which has a fragrant odour like that of violets; it is used powdered as a perfume and in medicine’ (OED). Orris-root was used as a perfume for linen undergarments until personal hygiene became fashionable; hence the excessive use of it by the ‘ladies’ crowding to church at the hottest time of the year. Ruskin objected to the term, to B.’s surprise (see Appendix B, pp. 880, 882).

353. in the front] i’ the front (1870–88).

354. Saint John] St. John (1872). because he saves the Florentines: John the Baptist is one of the patron saints of Florence.

355–6. Alluding to the practice of making votive offerings to a church whose patron saint will then record the donors’ names in God’s ‘book of life’ (thus ensuring their salvation: see Revelation 20: 12), and also intercede for them to enjoy a long life on earth. St Ambrose (339–397), Bishop of Milan, was one of the most important Fathers of the Christian church: ‘he encouraged monasticism, recommending the Virgin Mary as the patron and model of nuns’ (Oxford Dictionary of Saints). Penguin suggests that Lippi may be confusing this Ambrose with the theologian and scholar Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439), but this seems very unlikely, not least because such a recently deceased person could not have been canonized; Traversari has in fact never been officially canonized.

355. Saint Ambrose] Sant’ Ambrose (H proof, but not H proof²); St. Ambrose (1872).

357–9. And Job … patience: ‘There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job’ (Job i 1). Job’s patience in adversity is proverbial.

357. I must have him there] I mean to set him there (H proof).

358. of Uz, (and Us] of Uz and Us (H proof).

359.] Who need his patience—I at least. Well, these (H proof).

360. at their devotions] at their devotion (1865–88), the only verbal rev. to this poem which originates in 1865. up shall come] up there comes (H proof).

360–4. up shall come … I’m the man! B., apparently following Vasari (see ll. 344–77n.), identifies the figure who emerges into the picture space in this way, in the right foreground facing the angel with the scroll, as Lippi’s self-portrait, whereas it represents the donor who commissioned the altarpiece, Francesco Maringhi. But in his letter to Ruskin B. specifically identifies Lippi in this painting as a tonsured monk (he ‘retains not only “l’abito” but the shaved head’; see headnote, Sources), and Maringhi, although balding, is not tonsured and is not wearing a monk’s habit (he was a Canon of San Lorenzo and Rector of Sant’ Ambrogio, but not a monk). The actual figure who represents Lippi is the younger of the two monks in the left foreground of the painting, leaning his chin on his hand; Job is looking directly at him (see ll. 357–9). It is likely that B. used poetic licence in repositioning Lippi in the painting, because he wanted the phrase ‘iste perfecit opus’ to apply to the artist, not the donor (see l. 377n.).

362. light,] emended in agreement with H proof and all other eds from ‘light’ in 1855, although the idea of Lippo emerging into an atmosphere of ‘light music’ has its charm. There is in fact no music in Lippi’s painting.

364. Mazed: to maze is ‘To bewilder, perplex, confuse’ (OED). moon-struck: ‘distracted or dazed as the result of some mental obsession, esp. a romantic infatuation’ (OED).

367. My old serge gown: on Lippi’s monastic clothing see l. 104n.

375. camel-hair: A punning reference, linking John the Baptist’s traditional garment (Matthew iii 1–4) with the material used to make artists’ brushes. The figure of John the Baptist in Lippi’s painting is wearing a rough shirt of a similar material.

377. Iste perfecit opus: ‘This very man made the work’ or ‘This very man caused the work to be done’; in the painting these words flatter the donor, not the artist (see ll. 360–4n.). In the painting the scroll reads ‘Is’ not ‘Iste’; B. may have thought the ‘te’ was concealed by the fold in the scroll. ‘Iste’ is a stronger, more emphatic designation than ‘is’, which simply means ‘he’.

380. spread of kirtles: ‘a skirt or outer petticoat’ (OED). gay: this word was associated with immorality, and more specifically prostitution, during the mid-nineteenth century; see OED senses 2a and 2b, and l. 381n.

381. hot cockles: a traditional game played by a group of people in a ring; one of the players kneels in front of the others with his or her head in somebody’s lap, then places a hand palm uppermost in the small of their back and cries out ‘hot cockles hot’. Another of the players then hits them on the hand, and attempts to sit down again before being detected. The phrase is used as a sexual euphemism in a number of Restoration plays; see e.g. Farquhar’s Sir Harry Wildair (1701), Act I: ‘I went to Sir Harry all the way to Rome; and where d’ye think I found him? … Why, in the middle of a Monastery amongst a Hundred and fifty Nuns, playing at Hot-cockles’.

383. husband! Thus] husband—So (H proof).

386. That spoke] That said (H proof, but not H proof²). in the nick] i’ the nick (H proof).

387. Saint Lucy: a virgin and martyr of the early church (c.283–303) who died rather than be forced into prostitution; Lippi’s comparison of the Prior’s ‘niece’ to Saint Lucy may be designed to counteract the suggestion that she is really the Prior’s mistress. Cp. the similar hesitation at l. 209.

392. the grey beginning: i.e. the first glimmers of dawn, with obvious symbolic resonance; see headnote, Parallels in B. B.’s edition of Chaucer has an epigraph in his hand, dated 5 July 1873, consisting of a passage of Greek from Aristophanes’ Birds which may be translated: ‘The dawn is at hand, the dawn is breaking, and this star is one of its precursors’; and a phrase in the introduction describing Chaucer as ‘Loadstarre of the English language’ is marked, possibly by him. Cp. also the vision of daybreak at the end of EBB.’s Aurora Leigh (ix 950–7).