Transcript Fra Lippo Lippi

Dear All,
Sorry, once again, for being absent; shoulder’s no good to anyone today. Sorry, too,
for any typos in these slides – one-handed typing is a clumsy business!
Today, take some time to join the Wiki. Currently, it’s a party of two… Ben might
guide anyone who needs it in the right direction. Once we have everyone on board,
we can use this site as a way of sharing and submitting work, and as a support for
revision.
BEFORE you do that, though. Spend a little more time on “Fra Lippo Lippi.” This is a
tricky poem in many ways; hard to get to grips with it, without covering a little of the
history. Slide 6 gives you very brief definitions of historicism and new historicism.
These are two related critical approaches, relevant to this poem because 1) it has often
been analyzed by other critics in historicist terms (AO3); 2) Browning is carrying out
an almost new historicist act here, because in retelling the story of C15 Fra Lippo
Lippi and the Italian Renaissance, he is also engaging in C19 debates about art and
aesthetics.
In many ways, this poem is an artistic manifesto. Look at the notes on the following
slides, and then compare the following passages: lines 175-235, as compared with
lines 270-335. What arguments are being preented in these passages, and where is
Browning putting his support?
Ignore the yellow question on slide 2, but use the green qs as a starting point.
Roughly half the class should concentrate on 175-235, and half 270-335. We will
Key Question: Write about the importance of time in
Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi.”
Starter:
1. What is the story of “Fra Lippo Lippi”?
2. What is the point of “Fra Lippo Lippi”?
•
Which building block is this second question related to?
The Italian Renaissance saw the development of geometric
principles of perspective (the basic 3D drawings using vanishing
points that you will have done in D&T) in art, science, and
technology.
This contributed to a more sophisticated naturalism (roughly, in
our everyday talk, what we would call “being realistic”) in
painting and drawing; perspective allowed for a more “realistic”
sense of depth in painting.
This development didn’t please everyone, though. Some there
were who thought that the more accurate representation of the
physical world – the world of appearances rather than spiritual
realities – would lead people to fixate on the physical, the bodily,
rather than the spiritual.
In the C19, this view was put forward forcefully by Alexis Rio,
who associated the supposed spiritual decline of art particularly
with Lippi and Masaccio (slides 7 & 8). Rio’s view was adopted by
a number of critics, including Browning’s friend Anna Jameson.
Italian Art, pre-Renaissance
Cimabue
(approx.
1240-1302;
Florentine
painter)
Duccio (approx.
1255-1319;
Sienna)
Giotto (approx. 1266-1337; Florentine painter, student of Cimabue); thought to be more
realistic/naturalistic than Cimabue or Duccio; greater sense of depth/perspective than
mediaeval art
Masaccio (1401-28);
increasing realism,
use of perspective
and vanishing point
Begun by Masaccio,
finished by our very
own Filippo
Fra Lippo Lippi (Fra Filippo), 1406-69
Fra Angelico (1395-1455)
Roughly contemporary with
Filippo; he’s unfavourably
compared with these two
(lines 235-36). What are
the differences?
Fra Lorenzo (1365-1424)
Historicism
 Understanding works in terms of their
socio-cultural context
New Historicism
 Understanding works in terms of their
socio-cultural context, but realizing, too,
that we are shaped by socio-historical
forces
Browning is engaging with debates that were relevant to
both Filippo and the Italian Renaissance, and C19
aesthetics.
For example: Browning could have sensed the high
regard many had for Angelico and Lorenzo (slide 9)
through his reading of a C16 critic called Vasari. But
Browning is also directly responding to a view made
popular by Alexis Rio (slide 3), but which lasted until
later in the C19 (see next slide).
What views about art is Browning exploring, and which
does he support?
If attractiveness, and attractiveness of the
best kind, sufficed to make a great artist,
then Filippo would be one of the greatest,
greater perhaps than any other Florentine
before Leonardo. […] Yet by themselves
all these qualities [of his paintings]
constitute only a high-class illustrator, and
such by native endowment I believe Fra
Filippo to have been. […] [He] had no
profound sense of either material or
spiritual significance – the essential
qualifications of the real artist. […]
Filippo’s strongest impulse was not
toward the pre-eminently artistic one of
re-creation, but rather […] toward the
expression of the pleasant, genial,
spiritually comfortable feelings of
ordinary life.
Bernhard Berenson, “The Florentine Painters
[1896],” in The Italian Painters of the
Reanaissance, pp. 90-91
Art/poetry & Life – function of art…
Aesthetics/politics
Transcendent/Material (corporeal)
C19 aesthetic debate…
Alexis Rio, Anna Jameson, Mary Shelley…
Moral/spiritual decline
Scenes/
places
Temporality
Characterization
Voice
Narrative
Perspective(s)
Destination
Misc.
1.
Scenes & places
2.
Time (temporality) & Sequence
3.
Characterization
4.
Voices in the story
5.
Point of view (narrative perspective)
6.
Destination: Or, “The Big ‘So What?’”
The Building Blocks