icance of the lineaments
of the human face, and in the forms of nature. The circumstances
under which this faith is expressed, are somewhat droll.
Lippi was a wild fellow and given to excesses of various kinds.
When a boy he took refuge against starvation in the convent
of the Carmelites, in Florence, and became a monk; but he proved
unfaithful to his religious vows, and, impelled by his genius for art,
made his escape from the convent, having first profited by the work
of Masaccio, and devoted himself to painting. After many
romantic experiences, and having risen to distinction in his art,
he returned to Florence and became known to Cosimo de' Medici,
in whose employ he is at the time he is presented to us
in the monologue. It appears he had been shut up by his patron,
for three weeks, in order to be kept at work, "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.
There came a hurry of feet, and little feet, a sweep of lutestrings,
laughs, and whifts of song,"--etc. In his eagerness
to join in the fun, he tears into shreds curtain, and counterpane,
and coverlet, makes a rope, descends, and comes up with the fun
hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met. On his way back
toward daybreak, he is throttled by the police, and it is to them
the monologue is addressed. He ingratiates himself with them
by telling his history, and by his talk on art, and a most interesting
and deeply significant talk it is, the gist of it being well expressed
in a passage of Mrs. Browning's `Aurora Leigh', "paint a body well,
you paint a soul by implication, like the grand first Master. . . .
Without the spiritual, observe, the natural's impossible;--
no form, no motion! Without sensuous, spiritual is inappreciable;--
no beauty or power! And in this twofold sphere the two-fold man
(and still the artist is intensely a man) holds firmly by the natural,
to reach the spiritual beyond it,--fixes still the type
with mortal vision, to pierce through, with eyes immortal,
to the antetype, some call the ideal,--better called the real,
and certain to be called so presently when things shall have
their names."

Browning has closely followed, in the monologue, the art-historian,
Giorgio Vasari, as the following extracts will show (the translation
is that of Mrs. Jonathan Foster, in the Bohn Library):--

"The Carmelite monk, Fra Filippo di Tommaso Lippi