The fact that Browning had an interest in studying the London galleries before he went to Italy, and indeed, was a student of pictures from his childhood, has already been noted in the introductory remarks.[176] Just how great the poet’s knowledge of Italian art was at this period, is hard to determine. But his first poem, _Pauline_, contains a reference to Andromeda, a picture by Caravaggio, who was a Renaissance artist. Mrs. Orr[177] tells us that the picture was always before him as a boy and that he loved the story of the divine deliverer and the innocent victim which it represented. In one of his early letters to Elizabeth Barrett, Browning gives the following account of his fondness for Andromeda: “How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me. My Polidore’s perfect Andromeda along with ‘Boors Carousing’ where I found her--my own father’s doing, or I would say more.” These statements prove that a fondness for _some_ Italian art, at least, had been a part of his life from a very early age; and in addition, they suggest that a person who had so keen an appreciation for a picture by an artist so little known as Caravaggio, must have known a great deal more about Italian art than is implied in this one statement. Browning was in his twenty-first year when _Pauline_, the poem referring to Andromeda, was published. This was five years before his first visit to Italy, but even at this time, his appreciation of the picture was so complete that he compared the ever-beautiful and unchanging Andromeda to himself and seemed to feel that she had as real an existence.