5802. RB to Edward Dowden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 123–125.
19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, London.
Oct. 13. ’66.
My dear Sir, I was out of reach when your very kind & welcome letter arrived here,—you guessed this, I will believe,—hence these very tardy thanks for it. The first blunder you point out is enormous, [1] —only explicable to myself,—& hardly that,—from the circumstances under which I well remember having written the poem, “Transcendentalism”: I was three parts thro’ it, when called to assist a servant [2] to whom a strange accident, partly serious partly ludicrous, had suddenly happened, and after a quarter of an hour’s agitation, of a varied kind, I went back to my room and finished what I had begun. I have never touched the piece since—and really suppose that the putting “Swedish” for “German”, or “Goerlitzish,” is attributable just to that: for I knew something of Boehme, & his autobiography, and how he lived mainly, and died in the Goerlitz [3] where he was born. But the thought in my head was of that revelation he describes,—not of his nationality,—hence, I hope, my blunder—and such excuse as it may admit of. Depend on it, I will alter the word in the next edition,—ay, and look more warily after what may be other slips of the kind.
But—here I get up from my knee and assure you there is no slip in the other case,—at least, I was wide awake when I made Fra Lippo the elder practioner of art, if not—as I believe—the earlier born: I looked into the matter carefully long ago, and long before I thought of my own poem, from my interest in the Brancacci frescos, [4] —indeed, in all early Florentine Art: I believe the strange confusions and mistakes of Vasari are set tolerably right now: you may know, he took Lippino the son, for Lippo the father. I suppose Lippo to have been born—as Baldinucci says [5] —about 1400: he entered the Carmine [6] aged eight years and immediately “in cambio di studiare, non faceva [mai] altro che imbrattare con fantocci i libri”: [7] let us assume even, with the last Editors of Vasari, that he was born in 1412, and that this entrance took place in 1420,—still, since it is certain that Masaccio did not begin the paintings in the Brancacci before 1440, [8] —you see there was a good score of years wherein Lippo might well work and Masaccio watch him working. The Editor sums up “Se le pitture del Chiostro e della Chiesa del Carmine furono fatte da Lippo quando vestiva l’abito Carmelitano, bisognerebbe conghietturare con ragione che le pitture sue furono poi e studiate e imitate da Masaccio,” [9] —which is my own “reasonable conjecture.” Masaccio was born in 1402, and, as Vasari writes in his life, “lavorava nel Carmine seguitando sempre le vestigie di Filippo.” [10] But all that “Life” is a tissue of errors. I could never have had these facts shaken out of my head, even by the crying and laughing of poor W. my servant aforementioned.
But—thank you just as heartily in this case as in the former. I don’t deserve such kind care about my works,—but am very grateful for it, all the same; and shall ever be, My dear Sir,
Yours most truly
Robert Browning.
Publication: LRB, pp. 103–104.
Manuscript: Brown University.
2. Wilson, as identified by “W.” below.
3. Görlitz, a city on the Neisse river, 54 miles E. of Dresden.
4. In the Brancacci chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. The frescoes, depicting events in the life of St. Peter, are principally by Masaccio and Masolino (1383–?1447). Some of the frescoes were later completed by Filippino Lippi (1457/58–1504), son of Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1406–69).
5. In Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue un qua (2 vols., Torino, 1768–70, I, 557) by Filippo Baldinucci (1625–96).
6. The monastery connected to the church.
7. Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), Le Vite de’ più eccelenti pittori, scultori e architetti (13 vols., Firenze, 1846–57), 4, 115. The editors of The Poems of Browning translate this passage as follows: “Instead of studying never did anything but cover his books and those of the other boys with caricatures” (Vol. 3, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, Joseph Phelan, Harlow, England, 2007, p. 537). Cf. “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855), lines 129–130: “I drew men’s faces on my copy-books, / Scrawled them within the antiphonary’s marge.” RB’s copy of this edition of Vasari sold as lot 1182 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2379).
8. Since RB’s time, Masaccio’s life dates have been given as 1402–28, and the Brancacci frescoes dated in the mid-1420’s.
9. “If the paintings in the Cloister and Church of the Carmine were done by Lippo, while he still remained a Carmelite, it would be only reasonable to infer that these paintings were later studied and copied by Masaccio.” Cf. Vasari, 4, 115n.
10. “He worked at the Carmine, always following the steps of Filippo.” Cf. Vasari, 3, 155.
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