Men and Women

“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.

105.  The Urbinate:  Raphael Santi (1483-1520), so called because born
     at Urbino.

106.  Vasari:  painter and writer of the “Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters,” which supplied Browning with material for this poem and for “Fra Lippo.”

130.  Agnolo:  Michel Agnolo Buonarotti, painter, sculptor, and 1architect (1475-564).

149.  Francis:  Francis I of France (1494-1547), who invited Andrea to his Court at Fontainebleau, where he was loaded with gifts and honors, until, says Vasari, “came to him certain letters from Florence written to him by his wife . . . with bitter complaints,” when, taking “the money which the king confided to him for the purchase of pictures and statues, . . . he set off . . . having sworn on the Gospels to return in a few months.  Arrived in Florence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, making presents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his own parents, who died in poverty and misery.  When the period specified by the king had come . . . he found himself at the end not only of his own money but . . . of that of the king.”

184.  Agnolo . . . to Rafael:  Angelo’s remark is given thus by Bocchi, “Bellezze di Firenze”; “There is a bit of a manikin in Florence who, if he chanced to be employed in great undertakings as you have happened to be, would compel you to look well about you.”

210.  Cue-owls:  the owl’s cry gives it its common name in various languages and countries; the peculiarity of its cry as to the predominant sound of oo or ow naming the species.  This Italian a`ulo> is probably the Bubo, of the same family as our cat-owl.  Buffon gives its note, he-hoo, boo-hoo; hence the Latin name, Bubo.

241.  Scudi:  Italian coins.

261.  The New Jerusalem:  Revelation 21.15-17.

263.  Leonard:  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, who, together with Rafael and Agnolo, incarnates the genius of the Renaissance.  He visited the same Court to which Andrea was invited, and was said to have died in the arms of Francis I.