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“Andrea del Sarto (Called ‘The Faultless Painter’)” and William Page (Called “The American Titian”)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Julia Markus
Julia Markus
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

In 1853 William Page, an American painter living in Rome who was known for his portraits of men and women, discovered what he considered to be a new scientific way of measuring the proportions of the human body. He was inspired by a favorite authority of the Swedenborgians, the Book of Revelation. In an article published in 1879, “The Measure of a Man,” Page remembered:

While seeking for truth of form and adjusting the proportions of my manikins, a remarkable statement in the Revelation engaged my attention: “And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.”– Revelation, xxi (see 12-17 inclusive).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 2 , Spring 1974 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

NOTES

1. I am indebted to Dr. Joshua C. Taylor, Director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, not only for his indispensable biography of William Page but also for the time and information he generously gave me while I was working on this project. I also thank Ms. Elsie Freivogel, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts, Archives of American Art, for helping me to locate the Browning letters to Page. Passages from this correspondence are published with the consent of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

2. Hiram Powers was baptized into the New Church by the Revd. Thomas Worcester when he and his bride stopped in Florence in 1850. So when Page arrived in Florence in the summer of 1850 “Powers was particularly engrossed in Swedenborg, and he must have imparted his interest to Page with some enthusiasm.” (Taylor, Joshua C., William Page: The American Titian [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1957], p. 111.)Google Scholar Page became a Swedenborgian, and Mrs. Browning's correspondence with him contains many references to their mutual interest.

3. Scribner's Monthly, 17 (April 1879), 894. Subsequent citations of this article will appear in the text.

4. MS in Page Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This passage also appears in Taylor, p. 139. Other unpublished letters from Browning to Page quoted in this article are in the same collection.

5. All quotations from Browning's poetry are taken from Browning: Poetical Works, 1833–1864, ed. Jack, Ian (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970)Google Scholar. The line numbers will be indicated in the text.

6. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), p. 348.

7. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Kenyon, Frederic G. (New York: Macmillan, 1897), II, 148Google Scholar (cited hereafter as EBB, Letters).

8. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, ed. , E. H. and Blashfield, E. W. and Hopkins, A. A. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896), III, 280–81.Google Scholar

9. See Melchiori, Barbara, “Browning's ‘Andrea del Sarto’: A French Source in De Musset,” Victorian Poetry 4 (Spring, 1966), 132–36Google Scholar, and MacEachen, D. B., “Browning's Use of his Sources in ‘Andrea del Sarto,’” Victorian Poetry, 8 (Spring, 1970), 61–64.Google Scholar

10. Browning to His American Friends, ed. Hudson, Gertrude Reese (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), pp. 287–88Google Scholar. Quoted by permission of the publisher.

11. Hudson, pp. 35–36.

12. A letter from Browning to Story, 11 June 1854, Hudson, p. 33.

13. EBB, Letters, II, 153.

14. A letter to Mitford, Miss in EBB, Letters, II, 163.Google Scholar

15. Hudson, p. 33.

16. Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Hood, Thurman L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1933), p. 41.Google Scholar

17. A letter dated 8 June [1854], Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, ed. Heydon, Peter N. and Kelley, Philip (New York: Quadrangle and The Browning Institute, 1973), p. 121.Google Scholar

18. In a letter to Ruskin on 3 June [1859], signed R.B. and E.B.B., it is said in introduction of Page that “He has not been successful in life—few are who are uncompromising in their manner of life. When I speak of life, I include art, which is life to him.” (EBB, Letters, II, 316.)

19. Hudson, p. 33.

20. One cannot date the poem on the basis of a letter of Browning's to John Kenyon as DeVane has suggested. See Markus, Julia, “Browning's ‘Andrea’ Letter at Wellesley College: A Correction of DeVane's Handbook,” Studies in Browning and His Circle, 1 (Fall, 1973), 52–55.Google Scholar

21. DeVane, W. C., A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p. 263.Google Scholar

22. See Markus, p. 54.

23. Story, W. W., “A Contemporary Criticism: In Which Federigo di Montafeltro, Duke of Urbino, Gives His Views of Raffaelle,” Poems, 3rd ed. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1888), I, 167.Google Scholar

24. Page Papers. “Tizian's [sic] Way of Painting,” trans, by Browning, Robert, from Zanetti, A. M., Delia Pittura Veneziana (Venezia: Francesco Tosi, 1797), II, 198.Google Scholar