Robert Browning
"Andrea del Sarto" [(1853) [1855]

OVERVIEW:

This portrait of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531) was derived from a biography written by his pupil, Giorgio, Vasari, author of The Lives of the Painters. Vasari's account seeks to explain why his Floretine master, one of the most skillful painters of the Renaissance, never altogether fulfilled the promise he had shown early in his career and why he had never arrived (in Vasari's opinion) at the level of such artists as Raphael. Vasari noted that Andrea suffered from "a certain timidity of mind . . . which rendered it impossible that those evidences of ardor and animation, which are proper to the more exalted character, should ever appear in him."

Browning also follows Vasari's account of Andrea's marriage to a beautiful widow, Lucrezia, "an artful woman who made him do as she pleased in all things." Vasari reports that Andrea's "immoderate love for her soon caused him to neglect the studies demanded by his art," and that this infatuation had "more influence over him than the glory and honor towards which he had begun to make such hopeful advances."

Browning's poem has often been praised for its exposition of a paradoxical theory of success and failure, but it has other qualities as well. Its slow-paced, enervated blank verse, its setting of a quiet evening in autumn, its comparative lack of the movement and noise that we expect in Browning's energetic verse create a unity of impression that is unobtrusive yet effective.

DETAIL:
Formerly titled "Old Picture in Florence"
- sets scene in Florence	-Browning narrator
- invokes Giotto		- sees "wronged soul
			of an ancient master"
I. Greek art - perfection
	A. Giotto left tower unfinished
	B. Italy will be free from the Austrians
		& Tower will be finished
II. Technical mastery

III. Greek art -platonic
	*giving the perfect rendering of objects
IV. Greek art achieving perfection in the human world
	- growth came - started thinking differently
	- we so small - humans
	- they - abstractions
V. Giotto invited to submit for a commission
	- drew a perfect circle for the Pope
	- what comes to perfection perishes
		O! -- Greek art
	- defense of imperfections and aspiration
VI. Praise of Italian medieval painting
	- the invisible into play
	- the case for medieval art
		Fra Lippo Lippi: medieval not expository
		here they are the ones yearning and
			striving

Browning: a fairly consistent view of art history
	- yet shifting in each poem
ANDREA DEL SARTO
-Lucrezia - wife
1)an aesthetic theory through narrator's voice
	a. crafter: blank verse enervated
	b. an aesthetic of the imperfect
	c. pitiful/sad -- sympathy
2. Andrea
	a. simple and pure, flawless in any particular
	b. mean spirited in life but judgment profound
		- flaw in character hurts his art
	c. wife unfaithful
		- sitting for his painting before she leaves
3. Andrea went to France - took money back to Italy
	(used money of villa)
	a. scared French agents will catch him
	b. a poor boy like Lippo Lippi
	c. reminding that michaelangelo spotted him
	d. Lucrezia paying off lovers gambling debts

4. Raphael
	a. soul of the artist & the soul of creation
	b. painting can have a body & a soul
	c. technical composition wrong
	d. Andrea - not a striver
		- lesser painter might be the finer
			person
		- faulty man
		- aestheticizing Lucrezia

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