e characters and the
situation, and dramatically represents a story which is based
on a Florentine tradition that Duke Ferdinand I placed
his equestrian statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata so that
he might gaze forever towards the old Riccardi Palace,
where a lady he loved was imprisoned by her jealous husband.
The bride and her ducal lover are seen exchanging
their first looks, through which they perceive the genuineness
of their love; and the temporizing of each is presented,
through which, for the sake of petty conveniences,
they submit to be thwarted by the wary husband, and to
have the end they count supreme delayed until love and
youth have gone, and the best left them is the artificial
gaze interchanged by a bronze statue in the square and a
clay face at the window. The closing stanzas point the
moral against the palsy of the will, whose strenuous exercise
is life's main gift.

I. There's a palace in Florence: refers to the old
Riccardi Palace, now the Palazzo Antinori, in the square
of the Annunziata, where the statue still stands.

22. encolure: neck and shoulder of a horse

33. The pile which the mighty shadow makes: refers to
another palace in the Via Larga where the duke (not the
lady) lived, and which is to-day known as the Riccardi
Palace. Cooke's "Browning Guide Book" and Berdoe's
"Browning Cyclopaedia" both confuse the two, attributing
error to Browning in spite of his letter about it. This
confusion was cleared up by Harriet Ford (Poet-lore, Dec.
1891, vol. iii. p. 648, "Browning right about the Riccardi Palace'').

36. Because of a crime, etc.: refers to the destroying of
the liberties of the Florentine republic by Cosimo dei
Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo, who lived in the then
Medici (now Riccardi) Palace, whose darkening of the
street with its bulk symbolizes the crime which took the
light from Florence.

57. catafalk: the stage or scaffolding for a coffin whilst in the church

94. Arno bowers: the palace by the Arno, the river
flowing through Florence.

95. Petraja: a Florentine suburb.

169. Robbia's craft: the Robbia family were skilled in
shaping the bisque known as Della Robbia ware which
was long one of the Florentine manufactures, and traces
of which, when Browning wrote, still adorned the outer
cornice of the palace.

202.