painting, the new only peeped out of the
old, like the saucy face of a nymph from the ilexes of a sacred grove.
This is the historical moment Browning illustrates. Lippo Lippi was
forced to paint the worn religious subjects: Jerome knocking his breast,
the choirs of angels and martyrs, the scenes of the Gospel; but out of
all he did the eager modern life began to glance! Natural, quaint,
original faces and attitudes appeared; the angels smiled like Florentine
women; the saints wore the air of Bohemians. There is a picture by
Lippo Lippi in the National Gallery of some nine of them sitting on a
bench under a hedge of roses, and it is no paradox to say that they
might fairly represent the Florentines who tell the tales of the
_Decameron_.

The transition as it appeared in art is drawn in this poem. Lippo Lippi
became a monk by chance; it was not his vocation. A starving boy, he
roamed the streets of Florence; and the widespread intelligence of the
city is marked by Browning's account of the way in which the _boy_
observed all the life of the streets for eight years. Then the coming
change of the aims of art is indicated by the way in which, when he was
allowed to paint, he covered the walls of the Carmine, not with saints,
virgins, and angels, but with the daily life of the streets--the boy
patting the dog, the murderer taking refuge at the altar, the white
wrath of the avenger coming up the aisle, the girl going to market, the
crowd round the stalls in the market, the monks, white, grey, and
black--things as they were, as like as two peas to the reality; flesh
and blood now painted, not skin and bone; not the expression on the face
alone, but the whole body in speaking movement; nothing conventional,
nothing imitative of old models, but actual life as it lay before the
painter's eyes. Into this fresh aera of art Lippo Lippi led the way with
the joy of youth. But he was too soon. The Prior, all the
representatives of the conservative elements in the convent, were sorely
troubled. "Why, this will never do: faces, arms, legs, and bodies like
the true; life as it is; nature as she is; quite impossible." And
Browning, in Lippo's defence of himself, paints the conflict of the
past with the coming art in a passage too long to quote, too admirable
to shorten.

The new art conquered the old. The whole life of Florence was soon
painted as it was: the face of the town, the streets, the churches, the
towers, the winding river, the