chnician that we must deny Andrea del
Sarto the right to rank with the very greatest. It is as an artist
(using the word in its highest sense) that he falls below them, for he
was lacking in the loftier qualities of imagination, sentiment, and,
worst of all, conviction." _Histoire de l'Art pendent la Renaissance_.

93. _Morello_. A mountain of the Apennines and visible from Florence.

98. _Or what's a heaven for._ According to Browning's theory, perfection
gained and rested in means stagnation. Aspiration toward the
unattainable is the condition of growth. The artist who can satisfy
himself with such themes as can be completely expressed by his art, is
on a low level of experience and attainment.

105. _The Urbinate._ Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, one of the greatest of
Italian painters. He died in 1520; hence the date of this poem is
supposed to be 1525.

136. _Agnolo._ Michael Agnolo (less correctly, Angelo), 1475-1566, great
both as sculptor and painter.

149. _Francis._ Francis I of France was a patron of the arts. When
Andrea was thirty-two and had been married five years, King Francis sent
for him to come to Fontainebleau, the most sumptuous of the French royal
palaces. Andrea greatly enjoyed the splendor and hospitality of the
French court, and he was happy in his successful work, when Lucrezia
called him home. He obtained a vacation of two months and took with him
money with which to make purchases for the French king. This money he
used to buy a house for Lucrezia.

241. _Scudi._ Italian coins worth about ninety-six cents each.

261. _Four great walls._ _Revelation_, xxi, 15-17.

263. _Leonardo._ Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), one of the greatest of
Italian painters.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT ST. PRAXED'S CHURCH

There is an old church in Rome named in honor of St. Praxed or Praxedes.
The Bishop's Tomb, however, "is entirely fictitious, although something
which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sightseers."
(Mrs. Orr, _Handbook to Robert Browning's Works_, p. 247.)

Ruskin says of this poem: "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence
he writes of the Middle Ages--always vital, right, and profound, so
that in the matter of art, with which we are specially concerned, there
is hardly a principle connected with the medieval temper that he has not
struck upon in these seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his....
I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which