Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose
mastery of dramatic verse, especiallydramatic monologues, made him one of the
foremost Victorian poets. Fra Lippo Lippi is an 1855 dramatic monologue Throughout this poem,
Browning depicts a 15th century real-life painter, Filippo Lippi, who faces the conflict of a religious life
committed to the Church or a life of leisure. The poem asks the question whether art should be true to life
or an idealized image of life. The poem is written in blank verse, lines that do not rhyme and mostly
in iambic pentameter.
A secondary theme of the dramatic monologue is the Church's influence on art. Although Fra Lippo
paints real life pictures, it is the Church that requires him to redo much of it, instructing him to paint
the soul, not the flesh. (Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!). Aside from the theme of the
Church and its desires to change the way holiness is represented artistically, this poem also attempts to
construct a way of considering the secular with the religious in terms of how a "holy" person can conduct
his life. Questions of celibacy, church law, and the canon are considered as well by means of secondary
characters.
Throughout the poem, “Fra Lippo Lippi” Browning seems to be engaging in a dialogue with the Church
regarding celibacy—both in the artistic and sexual sense. The feelings of the poem’s narrator can easily
be seen as Browning’s own critique and while the main theme concerns art, the strict sense in which the
church views artistic pursuits and products is similar to the way it requires priests to live celibate lives.
While the church’s main argument is that art should be presented as something “higher” than the base
representation of the human form, this denies the essential humanity of the subject, God’s people. Along
these same lines, the way the church frowns upon sexual, lustful activity on the part of its clergy by
demanding celibacy is exactly the same request as for the artist. Both demands of the church, artistic and
sexual are idealized conceptions of how humans should be represented and both, according to the narrator
of the poem, are entirely unrealistic and misguided. Through this poem, Browning is arguing against
mandatory celibacy for priests and is suggesting, through the story and artistic struggle of Fra Lippo
Lippi, that the demands of the church go against human nature. We are all, to use Browning’s word,
“beasts” thus prone to the same desires that the church wishes to “rub out”.
The narrator of the poem by Browning, “Fra Lippo Lippi” argues that his life in cloister has been
unnatural and restraining and bemoans the lack of life he is allowed to experience (although he obviously
breaks the rules). The mandatory celibacy is made even more absurd when the Fra point out, “You should
not take a fellow eight years old/ And make him swear to never kiss the girls” (224-25). Earlier in the
poem, he speaks of this in terms of other boys that had been brought into cloister by openly saying with
great meaning, “Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici/ Have given their hearts to—all at eight years
old” (100-101). He seems to see this celibacy as a terrible waste of youth and life—both of which he
values above all else. He seeks to represent truth through art, despite the fact that everything in his life is
geared towards a completely celibate existence—both in art, sexuality, and life. The story of his life can
be summed up in the simple phrase on line 221, “Rub all out!’ Well, well, there’s my life in short.” He
has been told to extinguish the art and the humanity, thus the keen sexual desire that longs to be free.
Browning, through the character of Fra Lippo Lippi, creates meaning of the poem by suggesting that the
unreal expectations thrust upon him by the church authority go against all that is natural in human beings.
Just as his artwork seeks to preserve the central nature of the human form, his mindset and lustful
appetites are part of this preservation of unrealistic ideals of celibacy. In mocking the demands put upon
by the church, the narrator relates these demands: “Your business is not to catch men with show, / with
homage to the perishable clay, / But life them over it, ignore it all, / Make them forget there’s such a thing
as flesh” (179-182). The church’s desire for unrealistic representation extends from art to the idea that
celibacy should be adhered to and they wish to make parishioners and clergy alike wipe out ideas of the
sinful flesh.
Ultimately, the whole of the poem is a criticism on mandatory celibacy, which is told through the
metaphor of art. If art, like sexual desire, cannot be expressed, then it would seem that religion is
somehow a lie, that there is always something lurking under the surface. The narrator points out not only
the hypocrisy of these celibacy rules, but the inherent flaws that exist within them, namely, that humans
are creatures of the flesh.
