lome [referring to Andrea del Sarto's picture of Salome dancing
before Herod] was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she
required of him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the
forfeit into her hands.... In Mr. Browning's noblest poem--his noblest,
it seems to me--the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the
whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh. One point only is but
lightly touched upon--missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and
skillful--the effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. How
his life was corroded by it, and his soul burnt into dead ashes we are
shown in full, but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was
before, what as a painter he might have been without it."

The bare facts of this poem are taken from Vasari's _Lives of the
Painters_. Vasari, once a pupil of Andrea del Sarto, hated Lucrezia and
in his account spared no details of her evil influence. Later chronicles
give a somewhat more favorable view of her, but the main facts of the
story remain undisputed. Of the origin of the poem, Mrs. Andrew Crosse
(see "John Kenyon and His Friends" in _Temple Bar Magazine_, April,
1900) writes; "When the Brownings were living in Florence, Kenyon had
begged them to procure him a copy of the portrait in the Pitti of Andrea
del Sarto and his wife. Mr. Browning was unable to get the copy made
with any promise of satisfaction, and so wrote the exquisite poem of
Andrea del Sarto--and sent it to Kenyon!" For another literary
presentation of Andrea del Sarto see _Andre del Sarto_, a play by Alfred
de Musset.

15. _Fiesole_. A town on a hill above the Arno about three miles
northwest of Florence. See _Pippa Passes_.

40. _We are in God's hand._ Andrea's fatalistic view of life aids him in
escaping the poignancy of remorse.

65. _The Legate's talk._ The representative of the Pope praised Andrea's
work. For the high esteem accorded Andrea when he was in Paris at the
court of Francis I, see lines 149-161.

82. _This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand._ Eugene Muntz (quoted
in _Masters of Art_ series, in the number entitled "Andrea del Sarto")
says of Andrea's skill: "No painter has excelled him in the rendering of
flesh.... No painter, moreover, has surpassed him in his grasp of the
infinite resources of the palette. All the secrets of richness,
softness, and _morbidenza_, all the mysteries of _pastoso_ and _sfumato_
were his. It is not then as a te