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Fra Lippo Lippi Essay

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THE BODY AND SOUL OF FRA LIPPO LIPPI
Robert Browning’s 19th-century poem entitled “Fra Lippo Lippi” centers thematically around the discussion of art. Fra Lippo Lippi is a 15th-century monk and artist whom engages in a dramatic monologue with the law. As an unreliable narrator, he reveals things about himself and those around him that perhaps he is unaware of revealing. Fra Lippo Lippi expects that his behavior is seen as wrong but dismisses it with his poetic narrative of how life has tried to shape his art, imprisoning his God-given eye. As the verse unfolds the silent audience is acquainted with the aesthetic theories of the Prior and of Fra Lippo Lippi. Fra Lippo Lippi states the artist can capture what …show more content…

Fra Lippo Lippi will give his soul to God in order to paint the body but the Prior will only allow his body to work as an instrument to paint the soul. Fra Lippo Lippi begins to draw monks and church folk in their true and real form of being black, fat, gossips and criminals. At the Priors’ first sight of such realism on canvas, the conflict of the artist and art begins as Fra Lippo Lippi’s aesthetic theories do not match his own.
The Prior’s complaint about Fra Lippo Lippi’s art is that he does not draw the man’s soul; only drawing the body parts is not useful as it promotes entertainment and not prayer.
“Your business is not to catch men with show,
With homage to the perishable clay,
But lift them over it, ignore it all,
Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh.
Your business is to paint the souls of men--” (lines 179-183)
His aesthetic theory is that of religion and lifting the soul up over the body. The Prior views Fra Lippo Lippi’s painting as the “devil’s-game” (line 178) because of the reality it exposes of the church. “Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts, She’s just my niece...” (lines 195-196). The ‘niece’ is really the Prior’s mistress and along with other true to life figures he captures from the church, Fra Lippo Lippi paints a sinful portrait of real life. How to draw the soul without the body is what the Prior

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