Andrea Del Sarto
by
Robert Browning
(Critical Analysis, Characterization & Optimism)
Critical Analysis
Like
other monologues of Robert Browning this long dramatic monologue also grows out
from a peculiarly critical condition. The speaker is Andrea, a painter of
repute, who addresses to his wife. He fully knows that his beautiful wife does
not love him, and comes to him only when she is in need of money. The pointer
is shown to have got a chance to be with his wife. She has come to take money
so that she can repay the debts of her lover. The painter is in his studio with
her, and begins to express his unbound love for her in spite of knowing that she
does not love him. Andrea is shown in a reflective mood and his thoughts range
over the past and present and in this way, he reveals various aspects of his
tragic life and his wife’s unfaithfulness.
As
Lucrezia looks towards him, he asks her to keep looking like that. He praises
her beauty and calls her, ‘my serpentining beauty”. Her ears are so perfect
that their beauty is spoiled even by the pearl that hangs therein. Her face is
beautiful like the Moon, and as with the Moon, everyone is fascinated by her
also. All love her, though she loves no one. Lucrezia is pleased at this
compliment and smiles. Andrea asks her to look at that yonder portrait representing
her in her first pride in him, and Andrea himself is a young man full of hopes,
but now toned down to an autumnal sober grey as that of Fiesole at the time. It
is all as God wishes; we seem free, but are really fettered. If Lucrezia had
loved him and inspired him, he would have attained to Rafael’s heights. If,
with her perfect beauty and low ensuring voice, she had brought an equally
noble mind, and urged him to paint, not for gain, but for, “God and the Glory,”
he would have ranked with painters, like Raphael and Michael Angelo. But it is
no use regretting for what is past and gone. He must not blame her. “All is as
God overrules.” Besides, Raphael and Angelo had no wives, and yet they could
put soul into their works. This shows that true inspiration comes from within.
God
compensates and punishes adequately everyone at the end, and it is better that
he has not received his reward in this world. God will reward him in the life
to come. He can now look forward to heaven with hope and confidence. Thus,
Andrea becomes the spokesman of Browning’s philosophy. Therefore, he does not
regret his failure. He would very much like to paint a portrait of Virgin Mary
with his wife serving as his model. People will compare Raphael’s painting to
his and would prefer him (Raphael), but they will excuse him, when they come to
know that the Virgin in his picture was painted after his own wife, while
Rafael had no such wife as his model. They would realise that it was his wife
who dragged him down.
In
order to impress her further with his skill, he tells her that once Angelo said
to Raphael, while the latter was in the prime of his powers, that there was, “a
sorry little scrub”, in Florence who, if encouraged and inspired by Popes and
Kings in the way Rafael was, would prove a formidable rival to him. But what
matters to him is whether Lucrezia is pleased or not, for it was for her that
he had thrown away the golden chance of his life. All he wanted was only such
an hour as this, such a smile as hers at that moment. Refreshed in this way, he
could paint better, get more money and then give it all to her.
Andrea
wants to keep her to himself for some time more, but she is impatient to go to her
cousin waiting outside for a private meeting with her. Perhaps, she wants money
to pay his debts, and perhaps she wants to take that money from him with her
smiles. By all means, he is ready to give her the money she needs in exchange
for her smiles. The past comes to Andrea’s memory as it would to an old man’s
memory. He realizes full well that he sinned in embezzling the money of
Francis. He was also guilty of letting his parents die of want, but he
justifies his conduct saying that, that was their lot; he, too, has suffered
from lack of means. Everyone must bear his lot in the world. In Heaven, he
might get a chance and paint again with great artists, like Leonardo, Michael
Angelo and Raphael. But he would still have her as his wife (they three being
wifeless) and so he would still be dragged down by her. Even then, he would
prefer to have her there also. So great is his love for her.
At
this moment, the cousin (the lover) of Lucrezia whistles again Perhaps his
whistling is more urgent than before, and so Andrea permits her to leave him
and go to him.
Characterization
The
Monologue tells the pathetic tale of the moral and artistic failure of a
talented painter, “faultless”, in execution, but devoid of any lofty purpose in
his life or art. The use of the word “faultless” is ironical, for no art can be
called perfect, which does not have spiritual beauty. The true artist is he who
has lofty ideals to inspire him, and whose execution is necessarily imperfect,
as it can never attain the height of his ideal. The artist, whose execution is perfect
and faultless, but lacks “soul”, must needs be an inferior artist: he might be
a great craftsman, but he can never be ranked with supreme artists like Raphael
or Michael Angelo who, no doubt, committed technical mistakes in their
pictures, but whose ideal was always pitched high, and whose art is expressive
of, “the divine discontent”, within their souls. Andrea aims low, achieves his
ideal, and knows that the grayness of complacency has fallen over his art and
so sighs: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s Heaven for?
The
tragedy of Andrea is that he has no “loftiness of ideal,” though in point of
workmanship he is simply faultless. This innate defect in Andrea, Browning
represents as increased by the influence of his wife, Lucrezia, whom he
pictures as not merely unprincipled, but heartless and shallow, quite incapable
of appreciating any, but the lowest and most material aspects of life.
Optimism
This
poem is not only an admirable piece of character-study, it also embodies
Browning’s philosophy. It brings out the poet’s optimism, his faith in God, and
in the immortality of the human soul. It also throws light on his theory of
art. Artistic greatness is not merely a matter of technical perfection; it must
also be expressive of the urge within the artist’s soul for the ideal and the
unattainable. A great artist must pitch his ideals high, and the ideal must
always elude his grasp. Attainment and satisfaction result in complacency. This
was the tragedy of Andrea. He achieved technical perfection and so lacked the
inner urge for greater achievement. His art lacked, ‘soul’, the fire and glow
of passion and inspiration, and so must be ranked inferior to the art of
Raphael and Angelo, painters who were far his inferiors in technical
excellence.
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