"Andrea del Sarto"
A look at how Robert Browning uses a monologue in his poem, "Andrea del Sarto" to illustrate a justification for the loss of innovative and inventive energies.
This paper explains how English poet, Robert Browning, provides an account of the Renaissance painter in his poem "Andrea del Sarto" in order to illustrate the main points of the poem: Andrea's artistic, emotional, and spiritual failures and how he responds to these failures through his self-denial, self- pity, and retreat into a fantasy world of self-inflicted fear.
From the Paper:"Browning shows us that del Sarto chose Lucrezia as a kind of punishment for his lack of moral responsibility (Crowell 160-175). Del Sarto becomes a failure emotional and is passive and allows Lucrezia to seduce him. Del Sarto is subordinate to Lucrezia. However, rather than freeing himself from his boundaries and living a full life of his own, he vicariously experiences her activities. "My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, / Which everybody looks on and calls his, / And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn" (ll. 29-31). Although he paints with perfection, he intentionally uses as his model the common face and body of Lucrezia. He is unable to allow his talents to flourish by pursuing higher goals. By immersing himself in a woman's world and assigning a variety of roles to Lucrezia-Madonna, wife, objet d'art, and temptress, del Sarto mentally creates a complex caricature upon whom he can project his soul's frailities (Collins 142-157). Lucrezia is everything that del Sarto refuses to accept and experience."