Critical appreciation of Browning's 'Fra Lippo Lippi' | 'Fra Lippo Lippi' as a dramatic monologue | Fra Lippo's character

Vivid discussion on Robert Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi (1855)

Caution: The description of the sensuality of the monk given here is to understand the situation that the poet wants to depict in his poem. It is not meant to hurt someone's moral susceptibility. 


Written in Florence in 1853, Robert Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi draws our attention to the life and thinking of the eponymous speaker a painter and monk, belonging to the period of Italian Renaissance. The poem makes a psychological analysis of Lippo's character, as a man and artist, underscores the schismatic nature of Renaissance art and makes a reasoned plea for artistic naturalism. In a review of the poem, George Eliot observed, "We would rather have Fra Lippo Lippi than any essay on Realism in art". Browning, the poet has taken liberties with Vasari's account and modified it to suit his dramatic and didactic needs.

          Browning's dramatic monologues always begin in medias res and Fra Lippo Lippi is not an exception. As the monologue opens, we find Lippo is caught in an embarrassing situation. It is past midnight and the painter-monk is apprehended by the watch in the wrong quarters of the town, where "sportive ladies leave their doors ajar". Lippo's residence, "The Carmine", and the street of ill-fame symbolize the two poles of his personality — the spiritual and the sensuous. Throughout the poem, he is trying to weigh and balance the contrary pulls of the reality and goodness of the "flesh and blood".

          From the very beginning of the poem  Fra Lippo, the interlocutor, tries to convince the police officer about the serious issues of life and art. Though trapped in an awkward situation, Lippo does not lose his self-command and sense of humour. He can intimidate the policemen by dropping the name of his patron, Cosimo of the Medici, the ruler of Florence. Earlier in the poem, the down-to-earth attitude of Lippo is reflected in his diction, which is by and large colloquial. As the monologue develops and Lippo gets warmed up, his language becomes dignified, embellished with learned vocabulary. Having fail to intimidate the policemen, he decides to show his artistry with a shape, observant eye, quick to recognize and register in his mind figures that could later serve as the drawing stuff.

          The friar then justifies his conduct which is a characteristic feature of Browning's dramatic monologue. Lippo explains the circumstances that landed him in the present situation. He was kept confined within his cell for three weeks painting "saints and saints/And saints again". As he leaned out of his window he saw three slim-shaped girls singing and tittering, "Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight". He made a rope ladder and climbed down to the street to follow them. It was "hard by Saint Laurence" and he had to return to his cloister before dawn to resume his painting. But he is arrested now. He also expresses not only his but also others' sensuality and immorality. The prior keeps his mistress but shows her as his niece. Thus he shows the prior's labouring under the contrary pulls of paganism and Christianity, sensuality and sacredness.

          Browning makes it abundantly clear that Lippo became a monk under the compulsion of circumstances rather than from his own will and inclination. He was an orphan and at the age of eight, his aunt puts him in a carmine where he gets all the necessary sustenance. He paints what he sees and his conviction is that "A fine way to paint soul, by painting body". However, his painting shocks the moral susceptibility of "the old grave eyes" of the prior who wants Lippo should paint the soul not "the perishable clay". He also advises Lippo to follow the more inspiring examples of Giotto, Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico, the masters of religious paintings. But as a worshipper of art, he insists truthfulness of painting: "I'm my own master, paint now as I please". The prior's conventional belief of art adds a satirical dimension which is one of the characteristics of Browning's dramatic monologue thought by many critics.

          Some critics also believe that the theme of love and love interest in its multi-dimensional manifestation plays an important role in Browning's dramatic monologue. Though the poem hardly uses any love episodes, it is the painter's love for life and its "simple beauty" which shines out in the poem. Fra Lippo Lippi informs us the only significant word from Latin that he could learn by heart and regarded as the philosophy of life is ""amo" I love!". He loves painting the most. Moreover, Fra Lippo Lippi utters the most profound and archetypal truth of life :

Take away love, and our art is a tomb

He also says once that he allowed his childhood love-interest name Lisa to walk away from his life due to his religious vocation :

I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?

          Throughout the poem, Fra Lippo faces the tug of war between so-called spiritual life and sensuous, secular life, between basic sustenance and liberty. Whereas Tennyson spoke indirectly through classical myth and literary legend, Browning's speakers are, or seem, historical. We thus experience while we read this poem a "disequilibrium" between sympathy and judgement which keeps us constantly aware of Lippo's complex, yet credible personality.

N. B.: Please keep in mind that if the question is on the Dramatic Monologue of the poem then by changing the introduction (1st), third (3rd) & seventh (7th) paragraph, you can resolve the problem. The rest of the answer is more or less the same as the poem deals with the same motif or wants to convey the same message from any angle from where you want to see it. For Fra Lippo characters exclude only the sixth (6th) paragraph. The Introduction of the Dramatic Monologue is given below.

Introduction of the dramatic monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi

The dramatic monologue is a peculiar combination of dramatic properties and poetic faculties with the dramatic qualities predominating. It is a lyrical-dramatic-narrative hybrid. It absorbs an emotional expressiveness from lyrics, a speaker who is not the poet from drama, and elements of mimetic detail and retrospective structuring from the narrative. There is also a silent listener in it. Robert Browning (1812-1889) is a champion of this genre and his masterpiece Fra Lippo Lippi (1855) is also a symbol of his poetic excellence.