I do not wonder that the speaker in Robert Browning's "Old
Pictures In Florence," speaking to the ghost of Giotto, fails to
mention by name Uffizi while writing his poem, if it may be said that
a poem of depiction is written 'on site' and not in the poet's study
be it a week or a year later.
Allow the propositionnot upon a folding chair in Uffizi,
'Room 2Giotto and 13th Century Painting Room,' nor adjacent in
the velvet light housing the juxtapositioned frames of Carravaggio and
Rembrandt, which positioning defines the manner of a curator's intellectual
pacethe Uffizi pacea pace quite unlike the static stubbornness
of the unchanged placements in the Gallaria Palatina of the Pitti Palaceno,
not upon a folded canvas seat sits Robert Browning, but upon a three-legged
stool of oak set afront the row of pews in a small country church some
miles away, so the better to talk to Giotto that little distance from
his "Pietà from St. Remigio," a panel better rescued from its narrow
perch out a wall seeded by mold and run with drops of rainrescued,
taken over Ponte Vecchio to town, cleaned and galleried in Uffizi.
If it is that Giotto's abstraction will not be worshipped in
a simple church by passers-by, the painting master were so in assemblage
in a gallery with fellows and rendered Saints. If it is that Browning
proclaims in his poem a dialectic that hinges on 'contradictio in adjecto'
(perfection in imperfection) the writing masters were in paradoxial
argument with the Aristotelian paradigm of essences.
And yes, although with no rejoinder, or a chance to, with the
strange woman that Browning met on a sunny afternoon while both stood
in admiration of a bust of Benvenuto Cellini by Raffaello Romanelli,
a bust placed upon a square column at the easterly end of the bridge,
Ponte Vecchio.
It is this woman who serves to my essay its propositional theme,
a theme that begins with patronage to Giotto as a way to build a base
for the proposition that it is the imperfections given by God to women
that men worship. The value of the imperfect, which, in Browning's case
(the imperfect as opportunity) must be worked into his poetry. But this
meeting is ahead of things that must be established before.
If one can imagine that after a choice that had to be made a
desperate colony of St. Remingo parishioners agree to the premises of
Browning's poem"Old Pictures in Florence"one that
had not at the time been writtenthey will crate Giotto's"Pieta"
and take it over Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that must be crossed if one
intended to carry a painting to the 'offices,' to Uffizithat there
the masterpiece be cared for and restored. If one can hold to the pragmatics
of necessity that attended to such transfer, why not agree that Browning
monitored (to guarantee the delivery), followed the two or three men
entrusted to carriage over the bridge and 100 meters onward to the gallery's
back entranceswhereupon workers-in-wait would take the offering,
give thanks for it, and withdraw inside.
Perhaps Browning's wish to see Giotto's painting taken away from
those who failed to appreciate its value and the placing of it in the
hallowed halls of Uffizi was a way of saying"I will take my poetry
away from the people who do not honor me. I will take it away and place
it in a safe place within myself."
Imagine that and it's easy to see Browning, entirely satisfied
that all was well, take leisurely the five-minute walk from Ponte Vecchio
to his home in Casa Guidi where Elizabeth would be early into her opium,
awake, lying in bed.
"It is done. Giotto is safe at Uffizi."
"Now that your work has its end, let us go to Vallombrosa to
the Abbey Church. I must leave this heat."
"The new material I bought for the seamstress? the gown in crinoline,
has not let you breathe? Ha." Robert pulled Elizabeth's gown away and
the wrap that held her breasts lay wet and slack.
"But let's do go. You can play the organ again where Milton played,
thereand again I will gather those precious leaves."
"As Milton played. Yes, and he too gathered leaves . . ."
". . . and wrote,"
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th'Etrurian shades
High over-arch't embow'r.
"And someday I will write,"
(Elizabeth would write Casa Guidi Windows II. 1136-39)
The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick
That June-day, knee-deep, with dead beechen leaves,
As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick
And his eyes blind.
"And you will work on your Sarto poem."
##
The woman on the bridge drew her finger down Cellini's nose.
"You are Robert Browning? I saw you with the people from the church
taking the painting to Uffizi."
"Yes."
"I've read surely the greater part of your work. I have some
training. May I speak of something without your thinking I am some kind
of witch?"
"You may. I am curious."
"I forsee that despite your extraordinary genius, you will fail
to reach the first rank as a poet, fail to reach true greatness." Without
subsequent words, the woman turned and walked away.
##
The next week Robert Browning and Elizabeth began the two-day
journey to Abbey Church. To reach the Abbey Church Elizabeth would have
to be drawn by oxen up the mountain side on skins stretched between
polesthere was no road. Such was Elizabeth's challenge and Robert's
obedience to it. But it would be a short visit; Elizabeth sickened and
the Abbott bade them leave after three days.
Robert continued to haunt old churches, continued to lobby for
the preservation of master paintings. Elizabeth's health wavered. She
required daily doses of opium. She was pulling Robert into her needs,
pulling him into her dependency. One morning Robert awoke and saw his
wife at the window. He adjusted his pillows, sat up, and said, "Good
morning, Lucrezia."
As he said the words, the poem "Andrea del Sarto," took
its fill from Browning's thought. It was finished. Now only the writing
remained. The words of the woman on the bridge came to him, "I forsee
that despite your extraordinary genius, you will fail to reach the first
rank as a poet, true greatness."
Was the woman speaking of an identity with Del Sarto? The first
rank of greatnesswould it elude him as it had the painter? Why
not? Andrea had Lucrezia and Robert Browning had Elizabeth.
It is not unreasonable to hold to the idea that undo attention
to Elizabeth's imperfectionsher aged unattractiveness, her addiction,
her myalgionic muscular weakness, her coughing and retching from tuberculosisled
Robert to what may be called 'a domestic fork in the road.' That the
'fork' lay at all in Robert's path is entirely my speculationnot
a single sentence in critical Browning studiesthat I know ofsuggests
the line of thought 'that to continue in a state of affection for his
wife, a fortiori, love and adoration, Robert found himself having
to elicit within himself some kind of psychogenic amnesia, or better
as a survival mechanism some kind of enhanced modification to his poetry
theories of 'perfection in imperfection.'
He chose the later path, and the theme of it, having been in
looser measure always in place, now would rage quietly as defiantly
placed. The theme of it? 'Perfection is the less because it cannot
be developed; it has reached its goal.' In this way, 'Incompleteness
is a great advance over completeness.'
Elizabeth infirm is a great advance over Elizabeth in health.
The ideal of the Browning's position, then, is to 'not have it otherwise.'
Does Vasari speak of Browning when he speaks of Del Sarto, "In
him art and nature combine to show that all that may be done in painting,
when design, colour, and invention unite in one and the same person.
Had this master possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind,
had he been distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius
and depth of judgement in the art he practiced, he would beyond all
doubt have been without an equal. But there was a certain timidity of
mind, a sort of diffidence and want of force in his nature, which rendered
it impossible that those evidences of ardour and animation, which are
proper to the more exhaulted character, should even appear in him; nor
did he at any time one particle of elevation which, could it but have
been added to the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would have rendered
him a truly divine painter. . ."
What held Andrea del Sarto from destiny's mark of greatnesswas
it Lucrezia, Del Sarto's wife? What held Robert Browningwas it
Elizabeth?