“Pictor Ignotus” Summary

• I could have painted pictures just like the ones by that young man you praise so highly. My soul leaps up at the thought! Nothing held me back—ah, a thought that makes me sad even as it comforts me. Fate never prevented me from bursting out against a dark sky like the blaze of stars, revealing my blazing God-given brilliance. Nor would my body have failed to support my soul's ambitions: it would have raised its eyes to heaven or plummeted to the center of the earth in an instant—or just turned around and around, calm and curious, to peer right out toward the limits of what we can understand, toward all that we can see of truth in humanity. And—just like that young man you speak so highly of—I could have expressed everything I saw in a painting. I could have captured faces that spoke of deep feeling, captured them so fully that, though silent, they would have seemed to speak. I would have captured Hope, rising up on tiptoe for a kiss—or Rapture, gazing tenderly downward like a dove on her nestlings—or Confidence, with bright forehead and firm mouth, resolute as a castle. Oh, those human faces I might have painted—has my cup of talents spilled? What gifts have I been given that I haven't done my best to save up? I won't say that I haven't dreamed (so often and vividly!) of traveling—in the form of my pictures—out into the world, moving all who looked upon me, traveling to the Pope or the Kaiser, to the four corners of the globe. I imagined my paintings going to grand cities or to prosperous, growing towns; I imagined that people might throw flowers in the path of the carts that carried my artwork, and that the streets those carts might be renamed in memory of the happy day my art arrived. And then I dreamed that wise old people would honor me, and that talented young artists (not yet risen to fame and glory themselves) would come to learn from me. Oh, what a life it would have been, the life I and my pictures would share—a life garlanded with love and praise. And when I died, I wouldn't go to heaven, but stay right here on earth, a friend to all people. This thought was so overwhelmingly sweet I became afraid of it! But then, I heard a new voice, which changed my dream. I found my own dreams terrifying, as if I were peeking through the door of a pagan temple during a ceremony. Then, I found that the world didn't seem the same as it had before: among the people who loved and trusted me, there arrived... well, who called up all these unfriendly, judgmental faces? Though I shrunk from them like a nun before a troop of lustful soldiers, they lured me out, and in spite of my best intentions... well, enough of that! These people buy and sell and trade pictures as if they were just ornaments or furnishings. Where they live, there our pictures have to live, looking on their faces and listening to their chatter, putting up with all their petty little thoughts as they blather, "Oh, I love this, I hate that, I like this more and that less!" And so, I made my choice. If, sometimes, my heart feels heavy as I paint these endless monastery walls with the same faces—the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus, saint after saint, all with the same lovely, chilly stare—at least I haven't sold out to some businessman. The shadows of the monastery will, at least, keep shallow babblers away from the place where my pictures stand aside from the world. The only sound here is prayer; getting ever sootier and darker from the constant smoke of candles, my paintings rot away on the damp stone walls, in halls that have never echoed with frivolous footsteps. So die, then, my pictures! Slowly, surely, softly die! Oh, you young man, whom everyone speaks so highly of—is that praise worth anything, really? Does a trumpet blast sound triumphant when it's blown so crudely? Does water taste sweet when besmirched with dirt?

“Pictor Ignotus” Themes

• 

  Artistic Failure and Disappointment

  The speaker of "Pictor Ignotus" is exactly what the poem's title suggests: an "unknown painter," an anonymous Italian Renaissance artist who never made it big. This, he claims, was by choice. Unlike a certain talented "youth" whom everyone "praise[s] so" (a younger painter making a big splash in Florence), he wasn't willing to sell out to shallow rich men. However, the speaker's wistful dreams of what it might have been like to share his gifts with the world—and the parts of his story he refuses to tell—suggest that he's a disappointed man whose skills, courage, and luck never quite lived up to his ambitions. For an artist, the poem suggests, such failures can mean grievous suffering.

  Looking enviously at the success and fame of a talented young painter whose art is setting Florence afire, the speaker insists that he could have done that; nothing held him back from achieving a similar brilliance, from fully expressing his own gifts. He simply chose, he claims, not to involve himself in the sordid art world, where tasteless merchants treat great paintings as just so much "garniture and household-stuff"—that is, as mere décor.

  But the poem also hints that the speaker wanted to leave a bigger mark on the world than he has. Midway through his story, he begins to describe (and can't bring himself to finish describing) an unfriendly encounter with "cold faces" who "judge[d]" his work—a story that implies that the public simply didn't want what he had to offer. He responds by dismissing the "pettiness" of such critics and withdraws into a solitary life of making rote, uninspired religious paintings for a monastery—a place where, at least, the "light" and trivial critics will never come. There's clearly an element of sour grapes here.

  More poignantly, the speaker knows and admits that he never made the kind of art he wanted to (and felt himself capable of). Picturing the life he might have led if he'd made a truly great work of art—a work that would live on after his death as a "friend" to "every man"—he finds the vision so sweet it "fright[ens]" him. Though he feels sure he could have poured "all his gift" out on the world, he either hasn't had the nerve to express his vision fully (in spite of those unfriendly critics) or doesn't possess quite so much artistic power as he wishes he did. The poem doesn't come down on either side of this issue—and really, the answer hardly matters. Whether the painter lacked courage or talent, the result is the same: obscurity and disappointment.

  The speaker's difficulty in facing up to his failures—his sour-grapes aspersions on the bright youth's talent, his insistence that he's withdrawn from the world merely to preserve his art's purity—suggests that the pain of artistic failure is almost too much to bear. Truly loving art, knowing what great art looks like, and not quite getting there is a bitter torment.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Power of Art

  The speaker of "Pictor Ignotus," a disappointed and anonymous Italian Renaissance painter, never quite achieved the artistic heights he dreamed he might. But in imagining those heights, he reveals the power of art. Great art, the poem suggests, can express deep wisdom, change lives, and confer immortality on its maker.

  Picturing the art he feels he could have made, the speaker falls into a reverie about paintings that capture "truth made visible in man." In other words, such paintings express deep truths about the human experience through images of people. The speaker imagines, for instance, that he might have painted faces that were "each obedient to their passion's law" and "proclaimed" those passions "without a tongue"—that wordlessly showed what it was like to feel deeply, embodying everything from "Hope" to "Rapture" to "Confidence." Such paintings, the poem suggests, call up those same feelings in their painters and their viewers, too. By reflecting the human experience truthfully, art has the ability to alter human experience, helping people to feel and understand in new ways.

  Great art's power to touch people this way, the speaker suggests, makes it a "friend" to "earth's every man"—and an immortal one at that. If an artwork captures something truthful and goes on speaking to people, it will never die; people will return and return to it, feeling as if it really is a friend, a companion who makes their lives better. The artist who makes such an artwork gets to live on, as well: painter and painting, the speaker says, are "linked," and if your art survives, a piece of you survives. (Think of how people rather plummily call Shakespeare the "Immortal Bard," for instance: as long as people are reading him and acting him and thinking about him, he in some sense lives on.)

  Truly great art, then, has a serious power both for the person who makes it and the people who experience it. For artist and art-lovers alike, brilliant art teaches wisdom, reveals truth, and allows one to touch eternity. No wonder the speaker's disappointment is so bitter: he knows how lofty and lovely a goal he aimed for, and he knows he's fallen short of it.

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• 

  The Commodification of Art

  There might be an element of sour grapes in this poem's speaker's disgust at the shallow, petty, acquisitive world of Renaissance art patrons (who, it just so happens, don't wish to buy any of his work). But there's also a genuine criticism of the way that fashion and wealth can reduce meaningful artwork to just so much flashy, trendy ornamentation. Those who treat art as nothing but a status symbol, this poem suggests, do art a real injury and misunderstand its power.

  The one advantage of never having achieved artistic fame, the speaker says, is that he hasn't had to put up with the "pettiness" of rich merchants, who "prate" (or chatter mindlessly) about their fashionable likes and dislikes while treating the artworks they buy as little more than "garniture and household-stuff"—ornaments and furnishings. Such men, the speaker says, are "light" (that is, shallow and trivial); he finds some comfort in the thought that his poor paintings won't have to hang in their houses and listen to their empty talk.

  Of course, it's the buying power of these shallow men that makes the Renaissance art world go round, and without their patronage, the speaker can't achieve the fame and glory he quietly longs for. Perhaps, the poem hints, artists of all eras have to struggle with this conundrum. The speaker's idealistic refusal to have any truck with fashion, wealth, and power is part of what keeps him obscure.

  Nonetheless, the poem suggests his critique of chattering merchants isn't altogether unfair. If art can make "hearts beat and bosoms swell," touching people deeply, then to treat it as little more than a fashionable decoration does it a real disservice.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Pictor Ignotus”

• Lines 1-6

  I could have painted pictures like that youth's
  Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar
  Stayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!
  —Never did fate forbid me, star by star,
  To outburst on your night with all my gift
  Of fires from God:

  "Pictor Ignotus," a heading reveals, is set in "Florence, 15—". In other words, the poem will take place in the heart of the Italian Renaissance—though exactly when is unclear. The generalized "15—" date lets readers know only that this is the 16th century; the poem is dealing with the mood of an era, not with specific historical events.

  The poem's title, similarly, is specific and vague at once. Translated from the Latin, "Pictor Ignotus" means "unknown painter." That's precisely what the speaker of this dramatic monologue will turn out to be: an anonymous artist, a person who never stamped his name on the world.

  Artistic anonymity might be a particularly painful predicament for a resident of 16th-century Florence. This is the era of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli—of legends, in short, artists whose work still inspires awe today. Or, more precisely, it's the era just after those artists' heyday, a time when a new generation of painters might be inspired to rise to their heights.

  As the speaker's first words reveal, he is all too well aware he's not among this illustrious crew:

  I could have painted pictures like that youth's
  Ye praise so. [...]

  These words drip with envy and yearning. This speaker is clearly no "youth" himself anymore, no spring chicken—and he knows that he didn't paint pictures like those of the young man whose art is apparently setting Florence afire. (Readers who know a little about art history might suspect that this youth is Raphael, the wunderkind of the Renaissance).

  Worse still, he knows that this talented youth's pictures really are as good as they're cracked up to be; this kid's not just a flash in the pan. If the speaker had unleashed his full gift, he feels certain, his pictures would have been "like that youth's"—would have achieved something similar.

  But he never did. Though his "soul springs up" with excitement and elation at the thought of what he could have done, he's forced to admit that he didn't do it. Nothing, he insists, held him back; "no bar," no impediment, got in his way, and "never did fate forbid" that he reach artistic greatness. This thought gives him simultaneous pain and comfort. It's "sadden[ing]" to think that he didn't achieve what he could have; it's "sooth[ing]" to go on believing that he had the stuff, even if he didn't use it.

  The speaker's envy and sorrow here aren't just pettiness. They're born of a lofty and idealistic view of what it is to be an artist. Listen to the speaker's metaphors here:

  —Never did fate forbid me, star by star,
  To outburst on your night with all my gift
  Of fires from God: [...]

  Artistic talent, here, is celestial, divine:

  • The speaker's image of the stars suggests that art was his fate—written in his stars, rather than forbidden by them—and that his brilliance could (and should) have lit up the heavens themselves.
  • His image of his "gift" as "fires from God" suggests, even more solemnly, that art is a sacred calling. Perhaps this image even alludes to the biblical story of Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit visits the Apostles in the form of tongues of flame hovering above their heads. This visitation grants them the ability to speak in many different languages, so that they can go forth and preach to the world.
  • This subtle allusion might suggest that art isn't just a divine gift, but a divine responsibility: a power that's meant to be used in sharing sacred truths.

  This speaker, then, sees art as a high and holy enterprise, one that he feels honored to have been called to. How much the more painful, then, that he never rose to the calling—and knows it.

  Already, though, there are some signs that (for all his idealism) the speaker struggles with some pettier feelings about being an artist, too. The first thing he says about that brilliant youth focuses on the praise he's earned, the reputation. Perhaps this speaker liked the idea of being a brilliant artist chosen by God (and earning all the world's acclaim) a little more than he liked painting.

  This long monologue is triggered by an unknown person's remarks on how remarkable that youth is. Readers never learn anything about the "ye" (or "you") the speaker addresses; they could be anyone. In some sense, it just doesn't matter whom the speaker is talking to. He's not really talking to "you" here, he's talking to himself, rehearsing a familiar grievance.

  The speaker will chew over his thwarted ambitions in the course of 72 lines of iambic pentameter—that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "I could | have paint- | ed pic- | tures like | that youth's." It's a fitting form for a Renaissance tale: it makes this poem sound rather like a monologue from Shakespeare. The difference is in the rhyme scheme: a nervous ABAB pattern that seems to dither as the speaker does.

• Lines 6-12

  nor would my flesh have shrunk
  From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift
  And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk
  To the centre, of an instant; or around
  Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan
  The license and the limit, space and bound,
  Allowed to truth made visible in man.

  

  

  

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• Lines 13-24

  And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,
  Over the canvas could my hand have flung,
  Each face obedient to its passion's law,
  Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;
  Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,
  A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,
  Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood
  Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;
  Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,
  And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved—
  O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup?
  What did ye give me that I have not saved?

  

  

  

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• Lines 25-35

  Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)
  Of going—I, in each new picture—forth,
  As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,
  To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,
  Bound for the calmly-satisfied great State,
  Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went,
  Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,
  Through old streets named afresh from the event,
  Till it reached home, where learned age should greet
  My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct
  Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!—

  

  

  

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• Lines 36-43

  Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked
  With love about, and praise, till life should end,
  And then not go to heaven, but linger here,
  Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend—
  The thought grew frightful, 'twas so wildly dear!
  But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights
  Have scared me, like the revels through a door
  Of some strange house of idols at its rites!

  

  

  

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• Lines 44-49

  This world seemed not the world it was before:
  Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped
  . . . Who summoned those cold faces that begun
  To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped
  Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,
  They drew me forth, and spite of me . . . enough!

  

  

  

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• Lines 50-57

  These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,
  Count them for garniture and household-stuff,
  And where they live needs must our pictures live
  And see their faces, listen to their prate,
  Partakers of their daily pettiness,
  Discussed of—"This I love, or this I hate,
  This likes me more, and this affects me less!"
  Wherefore I chose my portion.

  

  

  

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• Lines 57-68

  If at whiles
  My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint
  These endless cloisters and eternal aisles
  With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint,
  With the same cold calm beautiful regard—
  At least no merchant traffics in my heart;
  The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward
  Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart;
  Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine
  While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,
  They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,
  'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.

  

  

  

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• Lines 69-72

  So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!
  O youth, men praise so,—holds their praise its worth?
  Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?
  Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?

  

  

  

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“Pictor Ignotus” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Allusion

  "Pictor Ignotus" sets its Italian Renaissance scene through allusions to the triumphs and struggles of the 16th-century art world.

  One of the most prominent of those allusions touches on the "youth" whom, as the speaker enviously (and endlessly) repeats, everyone "praise[s] so" these days. Odds are good that this brilliant youth is Raphael. Raphael was a Renaissance wunderkind, a genius who flashed like a comet, then died young. His tender, naturalistic paintings changed the course of visual art.

  The speaker's vision of the pictures he could have painted, with "each face obedient to its passion's law," suggest what was new and astonishing about Raphael's art in particular and Italian Renaissance art in general. The big innovation in Renaissance art was a new humanism, an interest in capturing distinctive faces, fleshly bodies, and believable emotion—as contrasted with the stylized, flat, symbolic conventions of the medieval period.

  No wonder, then, that this speaker feels particularly envious of the brilliant youth. He himself seems to be a more old-fashioned painter. His endless devotional paintings of "Virgin, Babe and Saint" suggest that he's almost a pre-Renaissance man: those identical faces, all wearing the "same cold calm beautiful" expressions, sound closer to medieval iconography than lively 16th-century humanism.

  Behind the times artistically (and all too well aware of it), the speaker must also grapple with a characteristic Renaissance attitude toward art. While contemporary readers might be inclined to think of Renaissance painting as lofty and sublime, it was made in a decidedly earthy context. Renaissance Italy was a place marked as much by money-grubbing and power plays as a flowering of the arts, and the speaker's portrait of the shallow, nattering merchants he wouldn't have wanted to sell his art to anyway picks up on an ironic truth about the era. The Renaissance didn't just birth immortal works of art, it commodified them and treated them as status symbols. (Browning reflected on that irony more than once in his dramatic monologues.)

  On the other hand, the Renaissance world truly revered art and artists. When the speaker describes his lost dream that his paintings might travel to their new homes like heroes, with "flowers cast" in the path of the carts carrying them and "old streets named afresh" to celebrate their arrival, he's drawing on a true story. In his Lives of the Artists, the Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari includes a tale in which a painting of Cimabue's (a great master of the early Renaissance) was celebrated in just such a fashion.

  The speaker's most poignant forlorn hope, though, is that he might achieve a kind of immortality through his work. Browning makes this point through a funny little anachronistic allusion. When the speaker imagines that part of him could have lived on in his paintings after his death, he wistfully says that "earth's every man" would have been his "friend"—language that echoes the English Romantic poet Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In that poem, which likewise reflects on art's immortal power, Keats calls a beautiful ancient Greek urn a "friend to man." Perhaps this subtle reference does Keats himself (a favorite of Browning's, and like Raphael a brilliant, short-lived "youth") some honor.

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• Repetition

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

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“Pictor Ignotus” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Pictor Ignotus
• That youth's / Ye praise so
• No bar / Stayed me
• Seconding
• Of an instant
• Bound
• Brood
• Old streets named afresh from the event
• Count them for garniture and household-stuff
• Prate
• This likes me more, and this affects me less
• Wherefore I chose my portion
• At whiles
• Cloisters
• Regard
• Vain
• Travertine
• Light
• Trump

• The poem's Latin title translates to "Unknown Painter"—the words you'd use to label an anonymous work in a gallery.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Pictor Ignotus”

• Form

  "Pictor Ignotus" is one of Browning's trademark dramatic monologues—poems written in the voice of a particular character, like speeches from a play.

  This one takes the shape of one long stanza, 72 lines of iambic pentameter (that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "This world | seemed not | the world | it was | before"). One might also break the poem up into a series of quatrains based on its rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD etc.).

  This steady, singsongy form feels apt for capturing the thoughts of a man with nothing to do but paint yet another identical devotional painting and brood on the artist he could have been.

  Like many of Browning's speakers, this unfortunate painter is an unreliable narrator, and in this long, reflective speech, he reveals more about himself than he might have meant to. While he insists that nothing stopped him from making truly great art, something clearly did—and whether it was cowardice, a lack of skill, or (as he suggests) the cruelty of a venial world, it hardly matters. This speaker knows what great art looks like; he knows he didn't make any; and he's convinced himself there's nothing he can do about that now.

  The poem's shape—with its endless back-and-forth rhymes and its unbroken single stanza—supports the impression that he's left endlessly circling the same resentments and regrets, refusing to face his pain and disappointment.

• Meter

  Like a speech from Shakespeare, this poem is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each of its lines uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in the poem's closing line:

  Tastes sweet | the wa- | ter with | such specks | of earth?

  This familiar old meter's association with Renaissance drama makes it an especially fitting form for a Renaissance tale. But iambic pentameter is also handy for the monologist because it's flexible. Within the longish five-beat line, there's plenty of room for naturalistic variation. Listen, for instance, to the change in the speaker's voice when he wistfully dreams of what it would have been like to become a great (and popular) painter in lines 36 and 39:

  Oh, thus | to live, | I and | my pic- | ture, linked
  [...]
  Here on | my earth, | earth's ev- | ery man | my friend—

  In both lines, the speaker switches out an iamb for a trochee—the opposite metrical foot, with a DUM-da rhythm. The strong-foot-forward stresses on "I and" and "Here on" evoke the speaker's urgent voice as he describes the lovely life he never had.

• Rhyme Scheme

  "Pictor Ignotus" uses a steady ABAB rhyme scheme (with new rhyme sounds introduced every four lines). Besides offering scope for Browning's characteristically surprising, playful rhymes (like shrine and travertine, pettiness and affects me less), this persistent pattern reflects the speaker's mood and his predicament.

  Though the poem's speaker insists that fate didn't hold him back from artistic greatness, something sure did—whether it was (as he claims) the ignorant shallowness of wealthy merchants or (more darkly and sadly) a lack of creative nerve. Whatever the reasons, he's certainly stuck now, painting endless smoke-stained Madonnas on endless monastery walls. The relentless one-two-one-two of the rhyme scheme fits in with the speaker's general sense of helplessness, of finding himself stuck in a less-than-ideal situation, thinking always of the different life he could have had—or tries to believe he could have had.

“Pictor Ignotus” Speaker

• The poem's speaker is the "Pictor Ignotus" of the title—in other words, an unknown painter, and a disappointed man. An artist of the Italian Renaissance, he's dismayed to find that his art just hasn't taken off the way he imagined it might. He feels he has within him a well of untapped brilliance that nothing really held him back from deploying; it was, rather, his principled choice not to involve himself in the hurly-burly of the art world that kept his genius from shining forth. Instead, he's resigned to a life of painting endless identical religious pictures in the dark, smoky halls of a monastery—pictures that will go mostly unseen and one day be forgotten or obscured altogether.

  As is often the case in Browning's dramatic monologues, this speaker perhaps shouldn't be taken altogether at his word. His belief that he could have made artworks as glorious as those of an unnamed "youth" he keeps harping on—an upstart kid whose work is currently the toast of the town—may well be more wishful thinking than truth. Readers might take special note of the passage midway through the poem in which the speaker keeps cutting himself off: about to describe a time that he showed his work to a wider audience, he chokes, then starts talking about how petty and trivial the people who buy and sell art are. The distinct implication is that he tried to have a successful public career, but found that no one wanted what he was offering.

  However, the poem remains equivocal about whether the speaker is fooling himself. It's possible this artist indeed had a gift that he never quite expressed, whether out of timidity or because of the wider world's misunderstanding; it's equally possible that he only ever longed for a greatness he simply didn't possess.

  Regardless, the results are the same: the speaker will fade into obscurity. He knows it and feels it, too—though he does try to comfort himself with the thought that at least he's kept his paintings out of the hands of petty little men.

“Pictor Ignotus” Setting

• The poem is set in Renaissance Italy—Florence in "15—," to be a little more precise. The elided 16th-century date makes it clear this poem is less about any particular historical figure and more about the general predicament of the unknown artist. However, readers might be expected to guess that the "youth" the speaker envies so is Raphael: the golden boy of early 16th-century Florence, a brilliant artist who lived a life of glory and achievement, all the more remarkable because it was so short.

  For all that the speaker isn't a fully reliable narrator, his picture of the artistic (and economic) landscape of his time and place is an honest one. His anger against the "merchants" who treat paintings as if they were so much "garniture and household-stuff" touches on something important about the Renaissance. For all that people now might think of Italian Renaissance art as lofty and sublime, its production and distribution was big business, inextricable from power and money. Oil paintings in particular were status symbols: expensive ways for wealthy people to declare their good taste. (Browning thought a lot about the ironies of beautiful, lasting art emerging from Renaissance greed and arrogance; his grotesque Bishop of St. Praxed's unwittingly draws attention to the same phenomenon.)

  The speaker's eventual fate—painting endless identical religious pictures on the walls of a smoky, obscure monastery—might also suggest that he's stuck in the past, while the brilliant "youth" is a man of his times. One of the biggest shifts in Renaissance art was a movement from stylized, icon-like religious painting to more humanistic and naturalistic representations of the divine. The "cold calm beautiful" expressions on the speaker's Virgins and baby Jesuses and saints feel more medieval than Renaissance. By contrast, the living, expressive, passionate figures the speaker feels he could have painted (and implies the talented youth does paint) come from the bleeding edge of 16th-century art.

Literary and Historical Context of “Pictor Ignotus”

Literary Context

The English poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) was famous in his time for not sounding much like a poet. His contemporaries were confused by his most distinctive works: dramatic monologues like this one, in which Browning inhabited a character like an actor playing a part. Even Oscar Wilde, a big Browning fan, famously said that "[George] Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning." The Victorian literary world was much more at ease with the melancholy lyricism of Tennyson or the elegance of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Browning's wife, and a much more famous poet) than with the novelistic storytelling of Browning's work.

But it's on his earthy, vibrant dramatic monologues that Browning's enduring reputation rests. His most famous poems form a veritable rogues' gallery, with narrators from a spiteful monk to a murderous Italian duke to an equally murderous lover. By allowing these hideous men to speak for themselves, Browning explored the darkest corners of human nature—and took a particular interest in the ways that people justify their terrible deeds. Browning's poetry wasn't all theatrical murder and greed, though; he also wrote tenderly about heroism, homesickness, and heartbreak.

"Pictor Ignotus" first appeared in Browning's 1845 book Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, the seventh in an eight-volume series collectively titled Bells and Pomegranates. The works in this monumental collection influenced writers from the modernists down to the present day; for instance, Browning's life and work inspired contemporary writer A. S. Byatt's acclaimed novel Possession.

Historical Context

In his dramatic monologues, Browning returned time and again to the artists of the Italian Renaissance. He had plenty of opportunity to study the art of that era up close: he traveled extensively in Italy as a young man, and in 1846 he eloped to Florence with his beloved Elizabeth Barrett. (The couple couldn't marry in England because Elizabeth's tyrannical father was not a fan of the match; he would have preferred to keep Elizabeth, a famous poet herself, under his own roof.)

This poem takes place in Browning's adopted city, and thus in the heart of the Italian Renaissance: Florence is traditionally honored as the place where this world-changing artistic and cultural movement—marked by a new humanism and by countless works of literary, artistic, scientific, and political brilliance—was born.

Browning was particularly struck by the ironies and paradoxes of the Renaissance art world: the sometimes comical mingling of Christian and pagan imagery, the unlikely juxtaposition of sublime artwork and the sordid lives of the artists, the general collision of immortal beauty and earthly folly. Though this poem's speaker is certainly embittered and not altogether reliable, his portrait of shallow Renaissance patrons using glorious artworks as mere decorative status symbols is neither unfair nor untrue.

More “Pictor Ignotus” Resources

• External Resources

  • That Youth Ye Praise So — Learn about Raphael, the likely model for the poem's highly praised youth.

  • Browning's Influence — Read writer A. S. Byatt on how Browning influenced her novel Possession.

  • Portraits of Browning — See images of Browning in his own years as a "Pictor Ignotus" (or at least a lesser-known artist) and his later life as a justly honored old sage.

  • More Browning Resources — Visit the Victorian Web to find a treasure trove of information on Browning's life and work.

  • A Brief Biography — Learn about Browning's life at the Poetry Foundation's website.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Browning

  • A Face

  • A Light Woman

  • Among the Rocks

  • A Toccata of Galuppi's

  • A Woman's Last Word

  • Confessions

  • Epilogue

  • Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

  • How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

  • Life in a Love

  • Love Among the Ruins

  • Love in a Life

  • Meeting at Night

  • My Last Duchess

  • Porphyria's Lover

  • Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

  • The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church

  • The Laboratory

  • The Last Ride Together

  • The Lost Leader

  • The Lost Mistress

  • The Patriot

  • The Pied Piper of Hamelin

  • Women and Roses