Fra Lippo Lippi

Author : Robert Browning
Genre : Dramatic Monologue
Based on : Filippo Lippi in Vasari’s Lives of the artists, and Vasari was a famous Florentine painter
Year : 1855

The poem is written in blank verse, non-rhyming, iambic pentameter.

Fra means Brother. This poem, Fra Lippo Lippi, is about a 15th century real-life painter.  The poem is critiquing the purpose of an art, either it should be art for art sake or art for life sake. In addition it talks about the influence of church on the artistic freedom.

Summary

Lippo Lippi is caught by few watchmen hovering near a brothel, past midnight. He curses the men and mentions his patron, ‘Cosimo of the Medici’ and said he knew him better. He expected that mentioning  such a divine figure would get some fruitful results from the watchmen, but it went futile. Then he claimed himself as a well-known painter and a Monk and having an altercation with watchmen; to tackle the situation in a better way, he started explaining about his pity provoking past.

During his early childhood, he lost his parents. He sustained a year or two without having basic needs. Then he was sent to his aunt to be taken care of, there too he left hungry on many occasions. When he was eight, he flee away. After spending few days and nights without food, he was offered food and shelter by a Christian convent,  by on one condition that he has to renounce the worldly pleasures and he should become a monk. With a great oscillating mind, but because of his hunger, he nodded immediately.

Lippo furthermore added his unbridled desire for painting even when he was a kid. Surprisingly he was having a skill of differentiating the human face from one another as well as making the portrait picturesque and lively. He soon became the convent’s artist, he painted monks of different physique with distinct accuracy in paintings, that earned him good name and fame among the monks.

In his paintings he laid the chief importance on psyche than physique. Yet he turned out to be a deafer to the criticism raised by the crowds, in the beginning he gave importance to the soul but when he gave importance to the physique once he tasted the physical pleasure. It created some stir among the people who criticize him. They scolded him that he won't be counted among the famous painters of the world, and he would be called as the third greatest of the world. He doesn't mind not being called the third greatest artist in the world, but he wants to represent what actually is there.

Lippo talks about a painting he plans on making- a masterpiece of religious art which will contain God, ‘Madonna and her babe’ and himself in the corner. He heads back home, leaving his listener behind and he appreciates the idea of his painting.