Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.
NOTES
"Andrea del Sarto." This monologue reveals, beside the personalities
of both Andrea and Lucretia and the main incidents of their lives,
the relations existing between Andrea's character, his choice of a
wife, and the peculiar quality of his art; the whole serving, also,
to illustrate the picture on which the poem is based. The gray tone
that silvers the picture pervades the poem with an air of helpless,
resigned melancholy, and sets forth the fatal quality of facile
craftsmanship joined with a flaccid spirit. --Mr. John Kenyon,
Mrs. Browning's cousin, asked Browning to get him a copy of the
picture of Andrea and his wife in the Pitti Palace. Browning, being
unable to find one, wrote this poem describing it, instead. Andrea
(1486-1531), because his father was a tailor, was called del Sarto,
also, il pittore senza errori, "the faultless painter."
2. Lucrezia: di Baccio del Fede, a cap-maker's widow, says Vasari,
who ensnared Andrea "before her husband's death, and who delighted
in trapping the hearts of men."
15. Fiesole: a hillside city on the Arno, three miles west of
Florence.
93. Morello: the highest of the Apennine mountains north of
Florence.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88