5-31. Raphael's "lady of the sonnets" was Margharita (La Fornarina), the
baker's daughter, whose likeness appears in several of his most
celebrated pictures. The Madonnas enumerated in ll. 22-25 are the
Sistine Madonna, now in the Dresden Gallery; the Madonna di Foligno, so
called because it had been painted as a votive offering for Sigismund
Corti of Foligno; the Madonna del Granduca (Petti Palace, Florence) in
which the Madonna is represented as appearing to a votary in a vision;
and probably the Madonna called La Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. There
is no evidence that Raphael wrote more than one sonnet, or three at
most. The "century of sonnets" attributed to him by Browning "is
probably an example of poetical license." The volume Guido Reni
treasured and left to his heir was a volume with a hundred designs by
Raphael. (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopædia_, p. 297)
32-57. Dante's chief work was his great poem, the _Inferno_, in which
were caustic sketches of evil men of various sorts. The sketch in the
lines 35-41 is made up from two descriptions (_Inferno_, Cantos 32, 33)
of traitors, the one to his country, the other to a familiar friend. The
second of these was still alive when Dante wrote (W. M. Rossetti,
_Academy_, Jan. 10, 1891). Beatrice, or Bice, was the woman Dante loved.
It was on the first anniversary of her death that he began to draw the
angel. Dante tells of this in the _Vita Nuovo_, xxxv, and there
describes the interruption of the "people of importance."
63-4. To Raphael painting is an art that has become his nature; to
Dante, poetry is an art that has become his nature. But this one time,
for the woman of his love, each chooses the art in which he may have
some natural skill but for which he has had no technical training.
73-108. The "artist's sorrow" as contrasted with the "man's joy" is
illustrated from the experiences of Moses in conducting the children of
Israel out of Egypt (_Exodus_ xvii). His achievement savors of disrelish
because of the grumbling unbelief of the people, and because of the
ungracious irritation into which he has been betrayed even when taxing
his God-given power to the utmost in their behalf. He must hold steadily
to his majesty as a prophet or he cannot control and so serve the crowd,
but he covets the man's joy of doing supreme service to the woman whom
he loves.
97. _Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance._ _Exodus_ xix, 9, 16; xxxiv,
30.
101. _Jethro's daughter._ Zipporah, the wife of Moses. _Exodus_ ii, 16,
21.
121. _He who works in fresco._ The fresco painter uses large free
strokes of the brush. But in order to give something distinctive to the
lady of his love he will try painting tiny illuminations on the margins
of her missal.
143. _Be how I speak._ That is, he usually writes dramatically, giving
the experience and uttering the words of the characters he has created,
such as the Arab physician, Karshish; the Greek Cleon; Norbert, the man
whom the Queen loved in "In a Balcony"; the painter, Fra Lippo Lippi;
the heroic pilgrim, Childe Roland; the painter, Andrea del Sarto. But
now, for once, he speaks in his own person, directly to the woman he
loves.
144-156. In Florence they had seen the new moon, a mere crescent over
the hill Fiesole, and had watched its growth till it hung, round and
full, over the church of San Miniato. Now, in London, the moon is in its
last quarter.
163. _Zoroaster._ Founder of the Irano-Persian religion, the chief god
of which, Varuna, was the god of light and of the illuminated
night-heaven.