Fra Lippo Lippi

by Robert Browning
     
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!  

Below are images of some relevant paintings.
Some are links to larger versions.
You need not clap your torches to my face.  
Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk!  
What, ’tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
   
And here you catch me at an alley’s end    
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?    
The Carmine’s my cloister: hunt it up,    
Do, — harry out, if you must show your zeal,  

Cosimo de’Medici
(16th century posthumous portrait by Pontormo)
Click for larger image
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,  
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10
Weke, weke, that’s crept to keep him company!  
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you’ll take  
Your hand away that’s fiddling on my throat,  
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?  
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend  
Three streets off — he’s a certain . . . how d’ye call?  
Master — a . . . Cosimo of the Medici,  
I’ the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!  
Remember and tell me, the day you’re hanged,  
How you affected such a gullet’s-gripe! 20
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves  
Pick up a manner nor discredit you:  
Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets  
And count fair prize what comes into their net?  
He’s Judas to a tittle, that man is!  
Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.  
Lord, I’m not angry! Bid your hangdogs go    
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health    
Of the munificent House that harbours me    
(And many more beside, lads! more beside!) 30  
And all’s come square again. I’d like his face —    
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door    
With the pike and lantern, — for the slave that holds  
              
Possible self-portrait of Fra Lippo Lippi with his son Filippino Lippi
(detail from his fresco of the funeral of the Virgin Mary)
John Baptist’s head a-dangle by the hair  
With one hand (“Look you, now,” as who should say)  
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!  
It’s not your chance to have a bit of chalk,  
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!  
Yes, I’m the painter, since you style me so.  
What, Brother Lippo’s doings, up and down, 40
You know them and they take you? like enough!  
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye —  
’Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.  
Let’s sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.  
Here’s spring come, and the nights one makes up bands  
To roam the town and sing out carnival,  
And I’ve been three weeks shut up within my mew,  
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints  
And saints again. I could not paint all night —    
Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. 50  
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,    
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song, —    
Flower o’ the broom,    
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!    
Flower o’ the quince,    
I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?    
Flower o’ the thyme — and so on. Round they went.    
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter    
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight, — three slim shapes,    
And a face that looked up . . . zooks, sir, flesh and blood, 60  
That’s all I’m made of! Into shreds it went,    
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,    
All the bed-furniture — a dozen knots,    
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,    
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,    
And after them. I came up with the fun    
Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met, —    
Flower o’ the rose,    
If I’ve been merry, what matter who knows?    
And so as I was stealing back again 70  
To get to bed and have a bit of sleep    
Ere I rise up tomorrow and go work    
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast    
With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,    
You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!    
Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head —    
Mine’s shaved — a monk, you say — the sting’s in that!    
If Master Cosimo announced himself,    
Mum’s the word naturally; but a monk!    
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! 80  
I was a baby when my mother died    
And father died and left me in the street.    
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two    
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,    
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,    
My stomach being empty as your hat,    
The wind doubled me up and down I went.    
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,    
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)    
And so along the wall, over the bridge, 90  
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,    
While I stood munching my first bread that month:    
“So, boy, you’re minded,” quoth the good fat father    
Wiping his own mouth, ’twas refection-time, —    
“To quit this very miserable world?    
Will you renounce” . . . “the mouthful of bread?” thought I;    
By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;    
I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,    
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,    
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici 100  
Have given their hearts to — all at eight years old.    
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,    
’Twas not for nothing — the good bellyful,    
The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,    
And day-long blessed idleness beside!    
“Let’s see what the urchin’s fit for” — that came next.    
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.    
Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:    
Lord, they’d have taught me Latin in pure waste!    
Flower o’ the clove, 110  
All the Latin I construe is, “amo” I love!    
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets    
Eight years together, as my fortune was,    
Watching folk’s faces to know who will fling    
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,    
And who will curse or kick him for his pains, —    
Which gentleman processional and fine,
   
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,    
Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch    
The droppings of the wax to sell again, 120  
Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped, —    
How say I? — nay, which dog bites, which lets drop    
His bone from the heap of offal in the street, —    
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,    
He learns the look of things, and none the less    
For admonition from the hunger-pinch.    
I had a store of such remarks, be sure,    
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.    
I drew men’s faces on my copy-books,    
Scrawled them within the antiphonary’s marge, 130  
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,    
Found eyes and nose and chin for A’s and B’s,    
And made a string of pictures of the world    
Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,    
On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.    
“Nay,” quoth the Prior, “turn him out, d’ye say?    
In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.    
What if at last we get our man of parts,    
We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese    
And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine 140  
And put the front on it that ought to be!”    
And hereupon he bade me daub away.                                       
Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,    
Never was such prompt disemburdening.    
First, every sort of monk, the black and white,    
I drew them, fat and lean:  then, folk at church,    
From good old gossips waiting to confess    
Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends, —    
To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,    
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 150  
With the little children round him in a row    
Of admiration, half for his beard and half    
For that white anger of his victim’s son    
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,    
Signing himself with the other because of Christ    
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this    
After the passion of a thousand years)    
Till some poor girl, her apron o’er her head,    
(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve    
On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, 160  
Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers    
(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.    
I painted all, then cried “’Tis ask and have;    
Choose, for more’s ready!” — laid the ladder flat,    
And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.    
The monks closed in a circle and praised loud    
Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,    
Being simple bodies, — “That’s the very man!    
Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!    
That woman’s like the Prior’s niece who comes 170  
To care about his asthma:  it’s the life!”    
But there my triumph’s straw-fire flared and funked;    
Their betters took their turn to see and say:    
The Prior and the learned pulled a face    
And stopped all that in no time. “How? what’s here?    
Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!    
Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true    
As much as pea and pea! it’s devil’s-game!  

  
Two paintings of Saints by Giotto di Bondone.
Your business is not to catch men with show,  
With homage to the perishable clay, 180
But lift them over it, ignore it all,  
Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh.  
Your business is to paint the souls of men —  
Man’s soul, and it’s a fire, smoke . . . no, it’s not . . .  
It’s vapour done up like a new-born babe —  
(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)  
It’s . . . well, what matters talking, it’s the soul!  
Give us no more of body than shows soul!  
Here’s Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,  
That sets us praising, — why not stop with him? 190
Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head  
With wonder at lines, colours, and what not?  
Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!  
Rub all out, try at it a second time.  
Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,    
She’s just my niece . . . Herodias, I would say, —    
Who went and danced and got men’s heads cut off!  


Herod’s Banquet by Fra Lippo Lippi
Have it all out!” Now, is this sense, I ask?  
A fine way to paint soul, by painting body  
So ill, the eye can’t stop there, must go further 200
And can’t fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white  
When what you put for yellow’s simply black,  
And any sort of meaning looks intense  
When all beside itself means and looks naught.  
Why can’t a painter lift each foot in turn,  
Left foot and right foot, go a double step,  
Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,  
Both in their order?  Take the prettiest face,  
The Prior’s niece . . . patron-saint — is it so pretty  
You can’t discover if it means hope, fear, 210  
Sorrow or joy? won’t beauty go with these?    
Suppose I’ve made her eyes all right and blue,  

Detail from Herod’s Banquet by Fra Lippo Lippi showing Herodias
    
Can’t I take breath and try to add life’s flash,  
And then add soul and heighten them threefold?  
Or say there’s beauty with no soul at all —  
(I never saw it — put the case the same —)  
If you get simple beauty and naught else,  
You get about the best thing God invents:  
That’s somewhat: and you’ll find the soul you have missed,  
Within yourself, when you return him thanks. 220
“Rub all out!” Well, well, there’s my life, in short,  
And so the thing has gone on ever since.  
I’m grown a man no doubt, I’ve broken bounds:  
You should not take a fellow eight years old  
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.  
I’m my own master, paint now as I please —  
Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!  
Lord, it’s fast holding by the rings in front —  
Those great rings serve more purposes than just  
To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! 230
And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes    
Are peeping o’er my shoulder as I work,    
The heads shake still — “It’s art’s decline, my son!  


The Coronation of the Virgin
by Angelico (Giovanni di Fiesole)
You’re not of the true painters, great and old;  
Brother Angelico’s the man, you’ll find;  
Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:  
Fag on at flesh, you’ll never make the third!”  
Flower o’ the pine,  
You keep your mistr- manners, and I’ll stick to mine!  
I’m not the third, then: bless us, they must know! 240
Don’t you think they’re the likeliest to know,  
They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,  
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint  
To please them — sometimes do and sometimes don’t;  
For, doing most, there’s pretty sure to come  
A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints —  
A laugh, a cry, the business of the world —  
(Flower o’ the peach,  
Death for us all, and his own life for each!)  
And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over, 250  
The world and life’s too big to pass for a dream,    
And I do these wild things in sheer despite,  

The Coronation of the Virgin and Adoring Saints
by Fra Lorenzo (also called Lorenzo Monaco, meaning Lawrence the Monk)
And play the fooleries you catch me at,  
In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass  
After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,  
Although the miller does not preach to him  
The only good of grass is to make chaff.  
What would men have? Do they like grass or no —  
May they or mayn’t they? all I want’s the thing  
Settled for ever one way. As it is, 260
You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:  
You don’t like what you only like too much,  
You do like what, if given at your word,  
You find abundantly detestable.  
For me, I think I speak as I was taught;  
I always see the garden and God there        
A-making man’s wife:  and, my lesson learned,    
The value and significance of flesh,    
I can’t unlearn ten minutes afterwards.    
     
You understand me: I’m a beast, I know. 270  
But see, now — why, I see as certainly  
   
Saint Peter Distributing Alms
by Masaccio (Tommaso Guidi)
As that the morning-star’s about to shine,  
What will hap some day. We’ve a youngster here  
Come to our convent, studies what I do,  
Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:  
His name is Guidi — he’ll not mind the monks —  
They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk —  
He picks my practice up — he’ll paint apace,  
I hope so — though I never live so long,  
I know what’s sure to follow. You be judge! 280
You speak no Latin more than I, belike;  
However, you’re my man, you’ve seen the world  
— The beauty and the wonder and the power,  
The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,  
Changes, surprises, — and God made it all!  
— For what?  Do you feel thankful, ay or no,  
For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line,  
The mountain round it and the sky above,    
Much more the figures of man, woman, child,    
These are the frame to?  What’s it all about? 290  
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,    
Wondered at? oh, this last of course! — you say.    
But why not do as well as say, — paint these    
Just as they are, careless what comes of it?    
God’s works — paint anyone, and count it crime    
To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works    
Are here already; nature is complete:    
Suppose you reproduce her” — (which you can’t)      
“There’s no advantage! you must beat her, then.”    
For, don’t you mark? we’re made so that we love 300  
First when we see them painted, things we have passed    
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;    
And so they are better, painted — better to us,    
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;    
God uses us to help each other so,    
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,    
Your cullion’s hanging face?  A bit of chalk,    
And trust me but you should, though! How much more,    
If I drew higher things with the same truth!    
That were to take the Prior’s pulpit-place, 310  
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,    
It makes me mad to see what men shall do    
And we in our graves! This world’s no blot for us,    
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:    
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.    
“Ay, but you don’t so instigate to prayer!”    
Strikes in the Prior:  “when your meaning’s plain    
It does not say to folk — remember matins,    
Or, mind you fast next Friday!” Why, for this    
What need of art at all?  A skull and bones, 320  
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what’s best,    
A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.    
I painted a Saint Laurence six months since    
At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:    
“How looks my painting, now the scaffold’s down?”    
I ask a brother: “Hugely,” he returns —    
“Already not one phiz of your three slaves    
Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,    
But’s scratched and prodded to our heart’s content,    
The pious people have so eased their own 330  
With coming to say prayers there in a rage:    
We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.    
Expect another job this time next year,    
For pity and religion grow i’ the crowd —    
Your painting serves its purpose!” Hang the fools!  

Madonna in the Forest
by Fra Lippo Lippi
   
— That is — you’ll not mistake an idle word  
Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,  
Tasting the air this spicy night which turns  
The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!  
Oh, the church knows! don’t misreport me, now! 340
It’s natural a poor monk out of bounds  
Should have his apt word to excuse himself:  
And hearken how I plot to make amends.  
I have bethought me:  I shall paint a piece  
. . . There’s for you! Give me six months, then go, see  
Something in Sant’ Ambrogio’s! Bless the nuns!  
They want a cast o’ my office. I shall paint  
God in their midst, Madonna and her babe,  
Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood,  
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet 350
As puff on puff of grated orris-root  
When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.  
And then i’ the front, of course a saint or two —    
Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,    
Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white    
The convent’s friends and gives them a long day,    
And Job, I must have him there past mistake,  

 


The Coronation of the Virgin
by Fra Lippo Lippi
The man of Uz (and Us without the z,  
Painters who need his patience). Well, all these  
Secured at their devotion, up shall come 360
Out of a corner when you least expect,  
As one by a dark stair into a great light,  
Music and talking, who but Lippo! I! —  
Mazed, motionless and moonstruck — I’m the man!  
Back I shrink — what is this I see and hear?  
I, caught up with my monk’s-things by mistake,  
My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,  
I, in this presence, this pure company!  
Where’s a hole, where’s a corner for escape?  
Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing 370
Forward, puts out a soft palm — “Not so fast!”  
— Addresses the celestial presence, “nay —  
He made you and devised you, after all,  
Though he’s none of you! Could Saint John there draw —  
His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?  
We come to brother Lippo for all that,    
Iste perfecit opus!” So, all smile —    
I shuffle sideways with my blushing face    
Under the cover of a hundred wings  


Detail from The Coronation of the Virgin
by Fra Lippo Lippi
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you’re gay 380
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,  
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops  
The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off  
To some safe bench behind, not letting go  
The palm of her, the little lily thing  
That spoke the good word for me in the nick,  
Like the Prior’s niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say.  
And so all’s saved for me, and for the church  
A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!  
Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! 390
The street’s hushed, and I know my own way back,  
Don’t fear me! There’s the grey beginning. Zooks!  
     
 
Fra Lippo Lippi — Browning’s speaker (1406-1469) is a real-life 15th century Italian Renaissance painter. Lippo (short for Filippo, meaning Philip) Lippi (meaning son of another guy named Filippo) was an orphan who entered a Carmelite monastery —“Fra” means “Brother” — in Florence at the age of eight. He later left the monastery, worked independently, and then found a patron in the Florentine banker Cosimo de’Medici (the Medicis were an extremely powerful family, similar to and the enemies of the Borgias). He took a position as a chaplain to a convent but eloped with Lucrezia Buti, a beautiful young woman who was either a novice (a young woman intending to become a nun) or a young woman under the nuns’ care. They had two children, including Filippino Lippi, who also became a renowned painter. Among Lippo’s students was Sandro Botticelli, famous for The Birth of Venus. Browning took all his facts for Lippo’s life from the book Lives of the Painters by Giorgio Vasari. The book is not always reliable, but any inaccuracies in this case are irrelevant to the message of the poem.
 
Zooks — A shortened form of Gadzooks, a mild profanity deriving from Gad (God) and another word; several have been proposed, but none is certain. The equivalent is probably somewhere between “Jeez” and “Holy crap” today
 
sportive ladies — prostitutes
 
Carmine’s — Lippo is telling the members of the night-watch that he is a monk of the Carmelite order.
 
betters — people of higher social standing
 
Cosimo of the Medici — Lippo is name-dropping here to let the guards know he is well-connected and should not be harassed.
 
tittle — a tiny part of something; Lippo is saying the man (presumably another member of the night-watch) would be a perfect model for Judas.
 
House — the Medicis
 
quarter-florin— a coin; Lippo is bribing the guard.
 
a bit of chalk / A wood coal — both materials are used for sketching
 
style — call, but with the additional meaning of compliment or honor
 
like enough — that seems likely, probable
 
carnival — a festival held before Lent (Catholic period of fasting and abstaining from pleasure)
 
Flower o’ the Broom — These italicized lines are meant to be sung; they are a form of Italian folksong based on rhyming with flower names.
 
ladder — In other words, Lippo cut up his sheets and blankets and tied them into knots so he could climb out the window.
 
Saint Laurence — the church of San Lorenzo
 
Jerome — St. Jerome, early Christian church father who argued for priestly celibacy and asceticism
 
shaved — Monks kept their heads shaved, at least in the center (a tonsure)
 
The warm serge and the rope that goes all round — Monks dressed in a serge (wool) robe and wore belts made of rope.
 
Eight — local police and judicial officers (like a combination of cop and bailiff) in Florence
 
black — furious
 
in no wise — that would be foolish
 
black and white — refers to the different color robes that different monastic orders wear (black for Dominicans, the so-called preaching Friars, and white for Carmelites)
 
breathless fellow — The church offered sanctuary to anyone within its walls; one could not be arrested if one had claimed sanctuary within a church’s walls, as this man obviously had.
 
niece — mistress
 
the life — true-to-life, exceptionally accurate
 
clay — flesh, the body
 
Giotto — Giotto di Bondone (1266 or 1267-1337) an Italian artist from the Medieval period (prior to the Renaissance). Giotto is one of the early artists whose works broke away from the idealized Medieval style and began the more realistic style of the Renaissance. Lippo in effect is continuing the progression Giotto began.
 
Herodias — Herodias is a name for the Herod’s wife. Lippo gets the story slightly wrong here, or at least simplifies it: Herodias’s daughter was Salome, who supposedly was the one who danced and whose father promised her any gift she wanted; as a favor to Herodias, she asked for the head of John the Baptist.
 
Brother Angelico — Fra Angelico (1395-1455, birth name Guido di Pietro, monastic name Giovanni da Fiesole) was an Italian painter of the Late Medieval period famous for his personal virtue. He was beatified by Pope John-Paul II (beatification means he is worthy of veneration and is a step below and sometimes a precursor to sainthood). His work has some characteristics of the older Gothic style and some that come closer to the Renaissance style.
 
Brother Lorenzo — Fra Lorenzo (c. 1370-1425, birth name Piero di Giovanni) was a painter of the Late Medieval period. Although a contemporary of Fra Angelico, his works are more like those of Giotto and other predecessors.
 
fag on — keep working
 
the third — The other monks criticize Lippo by suggesting that he is not only not as good as his predecessors (Angelico and Lorenzo), but that he will never be counted among them if he keeps working the same way.
 
garden — Eden
 
Guidi — Tommaso Guidi, known as “Masaccio” (which means messy or sloppy, and refers not to his painting but his lifestyle) another early 15th century Italian Renaissance artist. He was actually Lippo’s teacher, not his student; Vasari (from whom Browning got Lippo’s biography) had it backwards.
 
cullion — a low-class man
 
Saint Laurence — A 3rd century Christian martyr who apparently had quite a sense of humor: he was executed by being grilled over coals, and during the process he politely suggested his torturers turn him over because he was probably done on one side.
 
Prato — Lippo created a gigantic series of frescoes in the choir of the cathedral in Prato over the course of fourteen or fifteen years; the series is one of his greatest achievements.
 
fresco — a painting technique in which the paint is applied directly to wet plaster walls; the paint becomes part of the wall and the colors remain vivid over time
 
phiz — short for physiognomy and refers to a person’s face or the representation thereof
 
wot — A verb derived from wit, so the phrase means “God knows.”
 
Sant’ Ambrogio’s — another church
 
cast o’ my office — sample of my work
 
orris-root — the fragrant root of an iris, frequently used in perfumes
 
Job — In the Old Testament, Job is a man from Uz to whom YHVH allows terrible things to happen (sort of on a bet) simply to test his faith; he (more or less) patiently accepts his misfortunes. Much later, a final section of the story in which YHVH rewards his faith was added.
 
Iste perfecit opus — Browning misunderstands the meaning of this phrase, which means “This man caused the work to be done.” Browning thought that meant Lippo had put a self-portrait into the painting, but in fact the man depicted the man who financed the work.
 
Saint John — John the Baptist, who according to Mark wore camel hair
 
Saint Lucy — a 4th century Christian martyr; of course, that Lippo bases his portrait of her on the Prior’s “niece” (mistress) is both revealing and ironic
 
Don’t fear me! — don’t fear for (worry about) me
 
grey beginning — dawn