Use of Art and Painting in Andrea and Lippo

Use of art and painting in ‘Andrea del Sarto’ and 'Fra
Lippo'
‘Andrea del Sarto’ and 'Fra Lippo Lippi' are two major
dramatic monologues of Browning where he uses art and
painting to deal with diverse aspects of aesthetic
representation and his own poetic engagement with it.
Incidentally he drew the basic narrative material for both
the poems from Giorgio Vasari’s 'Lives of the Artists'.
‘Andrea del Sarto’ has a subtitle:“The Faultless Painter.”
Browning derived the idea from Vasari and elaborated it
through Andrea's monologue to raise his favourite issue of
whether faultless skill in portraying things exactly as they
are is a fetter for creativity: “Ah, but a man’s reach should
exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a heaven for?”
Though the poem’s foremost focus is the issue of aesthetic

failure, it begins with details surrounding a different kind of
failure—the ruined romance between Andrea and Lucrezia.
Browning uses Lucrezia's image as a metaphor for
Andrea's art: technically perfect but empty of inspiration,
energy, and religious vision. If Lucrezia had “but brought a
mind” strong in proportion to her good looks, Andrea
wistfully reasons, they “might have risen to Rafael”
together. In Andrea’s view, his own part in producing
masterpieces is to supply the artistic skill; it is for Lucrezia
to provide him with “soul” or passion.
Andrea asks Lucrezia to “bear with [him] for once,” and sit
hand-in-hand “by the window” with him, to give the
necessary impetus to work—to paint, by which he promises
to supply more money for her lover, euphemistically called
‘Cousin’, to gamble with.
Andrea boasts that producing flawless paintings is “easy”

for him and he needs no “sketches first, no studies” to work
from, but paints “perfectly” without preparation. At the
same time he acknowledges his limitations that su8ch
perfection entails. “Well, less is more, Lucrezia,” he states
matter-of-factly, meaning that other artists’ inferior
technical endowments have not stood in the way of their
grand ambitions. Comparing himself to those artists that
“reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,” Andrea
indirectly reveals that his shortcomings are in fact willed,
that his failure is, to an extent, selfimposed. Ignoring his
rivals and his wife alike, Andrea claims to paint “from
[himself] and to [himself].” Rather than striving to
transcend personal limitations, Andrea accepts them, thus
assuring himself that he will experience neither the pain of
artistic failure nor the glory of genuine artistic success. He
declares that “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp”—that
the best artists push themselves beyond what they think
they can do. Andrea, however, prefers not to engage in
such agonizing pursuits: “All is silver grey/Placid and
perfect in my art: the worse!” In effect, Andrea trades the
chance for greatness for the certainty of mediocrity,
preferring the safety of low expectations to the risk of a
rampant ambition.
In ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ Browning uses art and painting to
projects his own ideas of his role as a poet. This he does
through Lippo's defense of a sensuous, particular, and
social art against an art that is purist or idealized. Art must
engage with ‘the shapes of things, their colours, lights and
shades’, and also, implicitly, with ‘the value and
significance of flesh’. Art must address the world as it is –
beautiful, tragic, sensuous, ugly – not attempt, as it were, to
go over its head.
Weary with painting “saints and saints/And saints again,”

Lippi joins ranks with a roving pleasure party, letting
himself down with a makeshift “ladder” he creates out of
materials in his studio. Lippi’s rationale, like his ladder,
develops out of what is close at hand, and he excuses his
lustful pursuits by noting his own physicality: “Come, what
am I a beast for?” he asks, suggesting that it is unnatural to
ignore completely the body’s longings.
It is really appetite that led Lippi into an otherwise unlikely

life as a monk. He briefly relates the hardships he lived
with early in life, when, parentless, he was forced to live on
''Refuse and rubbish.'' On the brink of death, he was
brought by an aunt “to the convent” where he ate his “first
bread that month”. Lippi resolved not to part with “the
mouthful of bread”. He became a monk by default, by
following an instinct for self-preservation rather than a
spiritual calling.
Lippi’s difficult past informs his art. His early instict for
“watching folks’ faces to know who will fling” him food
developed into the close observation of manner and
character that stood him in good stead as an artist. Under
such circumstances, “soul and sense . . . grow sharp alike”
and Lippi “learns the look of things.” The lessons of his
past follow him in his studies at the convent, where his
artistic impulse overrides his academic one, as he fills
“copy-books” with images of “men’s faces” drawn from his
experience. Lippi’s rebellious spirit pays off as the Prior
chooses to keep him and turn his creative abilities to good
use, employing him to decorate the chapel.
Lippi’s debut as a painter stands in sharp contrast to notions

of religious art pervasive at the time. He paints as he sees—
not the ideal of a group of solemn penitents on their way to
confession, but instead a circle of “good old gossips
waiting” to tell their petty wrongs. Though the other monks
respond favorably, the Prior—whose name emphasizes the
older, “prior” standards according to which he judges Lippi
—condemns the work precisely for its accuracy - the
“devil’s-game”, as he names it. As opposed to Lippi’s
appreciation for the human form and its true dispositions,
the prior argues for the ethereal and the ideal: “Give us no
more of body than shows soul!”
Lippi stands at the beginning of a new movement in art,

and his reflections on the Prior’s views amount to a critique
of style. He contends that body and soul need not detract
from one another, but instead can work in concert when
rendered skillfully: the more realistic the body, the clearer
the soul becomes.
Lippo’s defense of pictorial realism is a fight for the

independence of art from a premature determination of its
meaning. For him the created world is already rife with
significance: “it means intensely, and means good.” To
bypass the physical would be to risk meddling with
meaning itself. By contrast, Lippi would maximize
meaning’s intensity, advocating a strict adherence to the
real, and would have his successors paint things “just as
they are,” without bias. The physical, for Lippi, becomes
the very criterion of meaningfulness. In spite of his strong
opinions, Lippi cannot practice what he preaches for fear of
losing business. Lippi plans to oblige his superiors by
composing his next work in strict accordance with their
preferences. A sense of irony pervades the account of the
projected work, which will include a “bowery flowery
angel-brood” and “of course, a saint or two.”
The projected painting, otherwise the very embodiment of

the prevailing views of religious art, will also include,
preposterously, the figure of Lippi himself, “mazed,
motionless and moonstruck” in the “pure company” of
saints and angels. The justification for painting himself into
the picture Lippi puts in the mouth of a “sweet angelic” girl
of his own creation: “brother Lippo” too has his value, as
he is, after all, the creator of the work he inhabits. The
“celestial presence” of the girl could represent the muse,
while the “hot-head husband” that “pops” in suddenly
might figure a prior artist, someone opposed to Lippi’s new
aesthetic of the real.
Lippo must anticipate the tendency of past works suddenly

to reappear in works of the present, claim a husband’s
rights, and assert control over works that have aspired to be
modern. By fastening the door against tradition and
ignoring it, an artist only hastens its return to govern his
work in some “wholly unexpected” way that he is
powerless to change. When he dismisses the police by
saying, “I know my own way back,” he means that his own
way forward, towards the beginning of a new art, lies
through a continuing engagement with the art of the past.
Fra Lippo’s surest augury of success in this engagement
comes with a vision of his successors: “Oh, oh, / It makes
me mad to see what men shall do / And we in our
graves!”He asserts his place in a living tradition by
anticipating his future status as a past master, a “hothead
husband” of the muse in his own right.
Thus in both the poems Browning uses art and painting self
reflexively: he recreates the Renaissance site of artistic
creation in vivid physical details; probes into the
psychology of the creative mind from different perspectives
of two different artists; and above all he looks deep into his
own role as a poet and his engagement with the art of
representation.

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Use of art and painting in ‘Andrea del Sarto’ and 'Fra

Though the poem’s foremost focus is the issue of aesthetic

Andrea boasts that producing flawless paintings is “easy”

Weary with painting “saints and saints/And saints again,”

It is really appetite that led Lippi into an otherwise unlikely

Lippi’s debut as a painter stands in sharp contrast to notions

Lippi stands at the beginning of a new movement in art,

Lippo’s defense of pictorial realism is a fight for the

The projected painting, otherwise the very embodiment of

Lippo must anticipate the tendency of past works suddenly

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