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"Forgotten, What Happened on Ponte Vecchio—the Bridge Which Took Robert Browning From St. Remigio Church to Uffizi Gallery"

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 proposition—not upon a folding chair in Uffizi, 'Room 2—Giotto 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 pace—the Uffizi pace—a pace quite unlike the static stubbornness of the unchanged placements in the Gallaria Palatina of the Pitti Palace—no, 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 rain—rescued, 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 written—they 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 Uffizi—that 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 entrances—whereupon 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, there—and 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 poles—there 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 greatness—would 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 imperfections—her aged unattractiveness, her addiction, her myalgionic muscular weakness, her coughing and retching from tuberculosis—led 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 speculation—not a single sentence in critical Browning studies—that I know of—suggests 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 greatness—was it Lucrezia, Del Sarto's wife? What held Robert Browning—was it Elizabeth?