I. GENERAL STATEMENT.--While forty-nine out of a total of two hundred twenty-two poems by Robert Browning refer to some one of the five fine arts--sculpture, music, poetry, architecture, and painting--only eight mention sculpture; and the references in these poems are comparatively insignificant. No one poem deals with sculpture as a theme, nor does any sculptor express his views of the art in dramatic monologue, as Abt Vogler does for music, and Fra Lippo Lippi for painting. Reasons for the preponderance of the other arts will be discussed later, in connection with further suggestions concerning personality and its relations to art in Browning’s poetry. It is often difficult to estimate separately Browning’s treatment of sculpture and painting, since he discusses the two arts together in several of his poems (for example, _Old Pictures in Florence_) and since many important Italian artists were both painters and sculptors. However, the predominant art of the man in question, or the art which Browning emphasizes most in connection with him, has been taken as a basis for classification. Estimating in this manner, one finds that the poet refers, in the eight poems, to seven artists--Niccolo Pisano and Giovanni Pisano, Canova, Ghiberti, Giovanni da Bologna, Baccio Bandinelli and Bernini--all of historical interest. Claus of Innsbruck (in _My Last Duchess_), and Jules (in _Pippa Passes_) with his companion art students, are purely imaginary. Reference is made to seven historical works of sculpture: the Psiche-fanciulla and Pietà of Canova, the statue of Duke Ferdinand, John of the Black Bands, Pasquin’s statue, the Fountain of the Tritons, and the Bocca-dell’-Verità. Three fictitious pieces of sculpture which are named are also introduced, besides a number of imaginary unnamed works. Such references to sculpture as exist in the poems seem to conform entirely to the facts of history, where there is any pretense of historical accuracy. Sculpture is so unimportant a feature of most of the poems that there was certainly very little temptation to enlarge on the facts for dramatic purposes, or for any other reason. II. HISTORICAL SCOPE.--It is improbable that Browning consciously, or unconsciously either, for that matter, decided to treat different periods of sculpture until he had covered the historical field, or that he ever selected any one phase of this art with so general a purpose in mind. In certain cases he chose some event or characteristic feature of a period, and before he had finished the poem referred to a sculptor, or to the condition of the art at that time, as one of the details in a realistic background for his picture of the times. Nevertheless he has accomplished, without any definite purpose, a result similar to a brief historical survey of sculpture in Italy; his references showing relation to practically every important period of the art.