its creation there arise desires
and aspirations never to be satisfied on earth, but generating
new desires and new aspirations, by which the spirit of man
mounts to God Himself. The artist (Mr. Browning loves to insist
on this point) who can realize in marble or in color, or in music,
his ideal, has thereby missed the highest gain of art.
In `Pippa Passes' the regeneration of the young sculptor's work turns
on his finding that in the very perfection which he had attained
lies ultimate failure. And one entire poem, `Andrea del Sarto',
has been devoted to the exposition of this thought.
Andrea is `the faultless painter'; no line of his drawing ever goes astray;
his hand expressed adequately and accurately all that his mind conceives;
but for this very reason, precisely because he is `the faultless painter',
his work lacks the highest qualities of art:--

"`A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for? all is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art--the worse.'

"And in the youthful Raphael, whose technical execution fell so far
below his own, Andrea recognizes the true master:--

"`Yonder's a work, now, of that famous youth', etc.

"In Andrea del Sarto," says Vasari, "art and nature combined to show
all that may be done in painting, where design, coloring, and invention
unite in one and the same person. Had this master possessed
a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been
as much distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius
and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would,
beyond all doubt, have been without an equal. But there was
a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of force
in his nature, which rendered it impossible that those evidences
of ardor and animation which are proper to the more exalted character,
should ever appear in him; nor did he at any time display
one particle of that elevation which, could it but have been added to
the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would have rendered him
a truly divine painter: wherefore the works of Andrea are wanting
in those ornaments of grandeur, richness, and force,
which appear so conspicuously in those of many other masters.
His figures are, nevertheless, well drawn, they are entirely
free from errors, and perfect in all their proportions,
and are for the most part simple and chaste: the expression
of his heads is natural and graceful in women and children,