Browning’s “Pictor Ignotus” and nineteenth‐century “Christian” art
2004; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0890549042000280810
ISSN1477-2663
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Art and Culture Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes For Ian Jack on his eightieth birthday. Kelley and Lewis, X, 83. Browning to Frederick Oldfield Ward, 18 Feb. 1845. See Bullen. The connection is accepted by Jack, IV, 23, Pettigrew, I, 1088, and others. Maynard, 131 ff. Kelley and Lewis, xi, 70. Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 11 Sep. 1845. In the first volume of her Rambles she records having met Rio in the gallery in Dresden. There she described his face as being “well‐known” suggesting that she had met him on some previous occasion. Shelley, i, 245. In fact her account of the work of Fra Angelico in Florence, far from letting go of Rio’s skirts, the writer, she says who “satisfactorily proves that the modern art of painting resulted from the piety of the age in which it had birth” (Shelley, ii, 140–1), she not only paraphrases Rio on the “celestial sweetness he infuses into his saints and angels”, she quotes his words, in translation in the notes (Shelley, ii, 144 and 146 note). Kelley and Lewis, xi, 70. Browning is not precise about which image or images by Fra Angelico he has in mind here, but there is one which specifically involves a saint preaching to the “common folk”. The Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican contains a series of paintings by Angelico depicting the life of Saint Stephen. One of these shows him preaching to a group comprising women and one child seated in the street, all in various postures and intently preoccupied with the saint’s address. Behind them stand a crowd of men. See Bonsanti, 149 no. 74. I can, however, find no image of anybody wearing spectacles in Fra Angelico’s work, though in his day spectacles were fairly freely available. Klenze, 40. Palgrave, 533. Darley (Citation1837). Palgrave, 532. Jameson, (Citation1845), p. 122. Ruskin, iv, 332 Hecimovich, 261, speaks of Browning’s “extraordinary interest [in] and knowledge” of Roman Catholicism, while Badger, 88, suggests that Browning’s reservations about Catholicism focus on what he saw as its inflexible and doctrinaire nature. Melchiori, 174 and note, takes Badger to task, however, for not recognizing “the depths of bitter anti‐Catholic prejudice underlying [Browning’s] frequent attempts at broadmindedness”. As outlined by Davie, 141–152. “Old Pictures in Florence” in Browning, v, 303, l. 148. “Pictor Ignotus” Browning, iv, p. 26, ll. 1–2. Wackenroder, Confessions of an art loving monk. F. Schlegel, Paintings in Paris and the Netherlands 1802–1804. This appeared first as series of articles in the journal Europa. Gossman, and Gombrich both contain good accounts of the relationship between German theory and the establishment of the Nazarenes. Schlegel, 49. Cornelius quoted Gombrich, 122 Eastlake quoted Vaughan, 183. Gossman, 1–2. Overbeck, 10 Montalembert, 425. Pugin, 8. Vaughan, 41. Vaughan is extremely illuminating on the relationship between the Nazarenes and British artists in this period. William Dyce’s Paolo and Francesca (1837) is conceived much in the spirit of Nazarene work. Barker, 106 Anonymous, “The German school of art”, Art Union, 1(Citation1839): 168. Anonymous, “The Living Artists of Europe: no 1—Overbeck”, Art Union, 6 (Citation1844): 13. Ruskin, III, xxxii. In that same volume of Modern Painters (1843) Ruskin contrasted the “older Italians” with “the mechanical incapacity of the unhappy Germans … strained, artificial, and diseased.” Ruskin, III, 351. Kelley and Lewis, IV, 256. Robert Browning to Richard Monckton Milnes, March 1840. Much information about Milnes comes from Pope‐Hennessy. Rio, II, 176. For Darley see Cooper, 201–220. Milnes, 129–30. Needler, 23. Schnorr von Carolsfeld had joined the Nazarenes in 1817 and had been called to Munich by Ludwig I in 1827. In 1810 Rogers bought what he thought was a Giotto in the Charles Lambert sale in London. It originated with Thomas Patch who sawed a fresco fragment of two haloed mourners from the walls of the Carmine after a fire in 1771. Patch thought that they were by Giotto and published them in his Life of Masaccio … etc (1772). Later, in 1817 Rogers bought a “Cimabue” from the collection of Charles Greville, in 1826 a “Verocchio” and in 1837 another “Cimabue”. See Lygon and Russel, 115. It was bought for 10 guineas by Samuel Rogers. In 1906 it was re‐attributed to Spinello Aretino. See Davies, 498–500. Bowe, 122. Browning told Alfred Domett in 1842 that he “would like” Milnes if he met him. RB to Alfred Domett, 31 Sep. 1842. Kelley and Lewis, VI, 89. Strangely Browning does not seem to have met Rogers until 1851. Martin Athur Shee, President of the Royal Academy, pointed to the success of the arts in Bavaria, and suggested that the “calm and natural” style of contemporary German art resembled that of “ancient Italian art”. Parliamentary Papers, 363 & 367. Parliamentary Papers, 387. In March 1841 Elizabeth Barrett Barrett’s father, invited by John Kenyon, dined with Milnes and reported back that Milnes was a supporter of Puyseism and the Oxford Movement. EBB to George Moutlon‐Barrett. Kelley and Lewis, V, 31. Parliamentary Papers, 387. His publication One Tract More (1841) in support of the Tractarians bears out this impression. This was commissioned by the city of Frankfurt and is now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut. George Darley saw it in Rome in 1834 thought that Overbeck’s work was mere “beautiful imitation” and this painting was “taking up Raffael’s dead hand … to paint with, fixed on the stump of his which he amputated.” Darley (Citation1834). Frank (Citation2002), 87. Ibid. p. 89. See Frank (Citation2000), p. 53. Steinmetz and Wiseman, 460. In 1810, Haydon wrote in his diary that he had seen the “a head of Giotto, saved from the Carmelites’ Church at Florence” which Samuel Rogers bought in that same year (see note 36 above). Pope, I,166. Then in 1818 he obtained a copy of Lasinio’s Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa (1812). Keats wrote about it: “When I was last at Haydon’s I look [sic] over a Book of Prints taken from the fresco of the Church at Milan the name of which I forget—in it are comprised Specimens of the first and second age of art in Italy.” Rollins, II, 19. Haydon (Citation1844–6), II, 181. Haydon (Citation1842), 23–3. Haydon also launched an attack on the Germans in the Spectator 12 Nov and 3 Dec. 1842, 1099 and 1170. Ibid. Rigby, 323, 324, and 325. Ibid., 329. Ibid., 329–330. Ibid., 330 Browning’s first recorded letter to her is in 1840 (Kelley and Lewis, IV, 217) but by then they are on familiar terms. Thereafter very few letters have been preserved, but several remarks in EBB’s correspondence suggest that RB saw her often. Thomas, 76. It is interesting that in 1843 Browning who knew German “tolerably” well told Alfred Domett that he was reading Tieck and A. W. Schlegel. RB to Alfred Domett, 5 Mar. 1843. Kelley and Lewis, VI, 353. See Jameson (1832). Jameson, (Citation1834), I, 261. Jameson (Citation1834), I, 265 note. Visits and Sketches was an important source of information for the British reader about the early history of the Nazarenes. Jameson gave accounts of Overbeck’s work in Rome, together with elaborate descriptions of the new art of Munich and elsewhere in Germany. Jameson (Citation1834), II, 48–9. On 15 Oct. 1841 she wrote to her sister Charlotte Murphy from Paris: “The great event of my life here has been meeting with Rio.” Erskine, 203. It was published in Jameson (Citation1846). EBB was given a proof of “The House of Titian” by Jameson in May 1846 (See Kelley and Lewis, XII, 321). Though she disagreed with Jameson on a number of points, she thought that RB would like the essay and told him that she had quoted his lines from “Pictor Ignotus” (See Kelley and Lewis, XII, 334). DeLaura and Holcomb both contain good accounts of this. It appeared in Dramatic Romances in November 1846, a year later than the composition of “The House of Titian”. Jameson (Citation1846), 24–5. Ibid., 25.
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