Fra
Lippo Lippi – Robert Browning
The
poem begins as the painter and monk Lippo Lippi, also the poem's narrator, is
caught by some authority figures while roving his town's red light district. As
he begins, he is being physically accosted by one of the police. He accuses
them of being overzealous and that he need not be punished. It is not until he
name-drops "Cosimo of the Medici" (from the ruling family of
Florence) as a nearby friend that he is released.
He then
addresses himself specifically to the band's leader, identifying himself as the
famous painter and then suggesting that they are all, himself included, too
quick to bow down to what authority figures suggest. Now free, he suggests that
the listener allow his subordinates to wander off to their own devices. Then he
tells how he had been busy the past three weeks shut up in his room, until he
heard a band of merry revelers passing by and used a ladder to climb down to
the streets to pursue his own fun. It was while engaged in that fun that he was
caught, and he defends himself to the judgmental listener, asking "what am
I a beast for?" if not to pursue his beastly appetites.
It is
then that Lippo begins to tell his life story. He was orphaned while still a
baby and starved until his aunt gave him over to a convent. When the monks
there asked if he was willing to renounce the world in service of monk-hood,
Lippo was quick to agree since renouncing the world meant a steady supply of
food in the convent. He quickly took to the "idleness" of a monk's
life, even at eight years old, but was undistinguished in any of the studies
they had him attempt.
His one
talent was the ability to recreate the faces of individuals through drawings,
partially because as a starving child he was given great insight into the
details that distinguished one face from another and the way those faces illustrated
different characteristics. Instead of studying in the convent, he devoted
himself to doodles and drawings, until the Prior noticed his talent and
assigned him to be the convent's artist.
As the
convent's artist, Lippo proceeded to paint a myriad of situations, all drawn
from the real world. The common monks loved his work since in his artistry they
could recognize images from their everyday lives. However, "the Prior and
the learned" do not admire Lippo's focus on realistic subjects, instead
insisting that the artist's job is not to pay "homage to the perishable
clay" of flesh and body, but to transcend the body and attempt to reveal
the soul. They insist that he paint more saintly images, focusing on
representations of praise and saintliness instead of everyday reality.
Lippo
protests to his listener that a painter can reveal the soul through
representations of the body, since "simple beauty" is "about the
best thing God invents." Lippo identifies this as the main conflict of his
otherwise-privileged life: where he wants to paint things as they are, his
masters insist he paint life from a moral perspective. As much as he hates it,
he must acquiesce to their wishes in order to stay successful, and hence he
must go after prostitutes and other unsavory activity, like the one he was
caught involved in at poem's beginning. As a boy brought up poor and in love
with life, he cannot so easily forget his artistic impulse to represent life as
he sees it to be.
He then
speaks to the listener about what generations of artists owe one another and
how an artist who breaks new ground must always flaunt the conventions. He
mentions a painter named Hulking Tom who studies under him, who Lippo believes
will further reinvent artistic practice in the way he himself has done through
pursuing realism.
He
poses to his listener the basic question whether it is better to "paint
[things] just as they are," or to try to improve upon God's creations. He
suggests that even in reproducing nature, the artist has the power to help people
to see objects that they have taken for granted in a new light. He grows angry
thinking of how his masters ruin the purpose of art, but quickly apologies
before he might anger the policeman.
He then
tells his listener about his plan to please both his masters and himself. He is
planning to paint a great piece of religious art that will show God, the
Madonna, and "of course a saint or two." However, in the corner of
the painting, he will include a picture of himself watching the scene. He then
fantasizes aloud how a "sweet angelic slip of a thing" will address
him in the painting, praising his talent and authorship, until the
"hothead husband" comes and forces Lippi to hide away in the
painting. Lippo bids goodbye to his listener and heads back home.
******
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