III. IRREGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF REFERENCES.--While the influence of painting began so early in Browning’s poetical career, and extended to its close, the last art poem being _Beatrice Signorini_, in the Asolando group, published just at the time of his death, the chronological distribution of the subject is by no means regular. In _Paracelsus_, reference to painting is found; _Sordello_ has some minor references; _Pippa Passes_ contains some mention of painting and much concerning sculpture. _Pictor Ignotus_, the first poem devoted entirely to a painter, was published in 1845. All these items form a comparatively slender thread of references up to the publications of 1855. At that date Browning had lived in Italy nine years, had studied art histories, and seen pictures. Our chronicler, Mrs. Browning, we recall, furnishes us the information--in the previously mentioned letter of 1847 to Horne--that they were reading Vasari. This was the next year after the Brownings went to Italy to take up their residence there. Though Browning’s early trips (in 1838 and 1844) seem to have had small influence on his poetic treatment of painting, the Italian residence bore fruit. Between 1847, the year when the residence began, and 1855, only one poem of Browning’s was published, and some references to painting are found in it. The publications of 1855 include the following poems on painting: _Old Pictures in Florence_, _The Guardian Angel_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Andrea del Sarto_, and _One Word More_. In this one year, all the finest and best known of his poems on painting were given to the world. Just why this is true is hard to prove but easy to conjecture. The time just previous to their publication marks the period of greatest, most intimate art study, since these poems were the product of the first nine years in Italy. There was a certain power, appreciation, and a fineness of feeling associated with these first years in the great art center of Florence that never returned again. For some time before this, Browning had been an interested student of art, and the Florentine residence brought his ideas to their full maturity. The best that he was capable of putting into verse on the subject of painting was both imagined and written during this first period in Italy, the home of painting. IV. SOURCES OF THE POEMS.--An event recorded by Mrs. Browning, in a letter to Mrs. Jameson, dated May 4, 1850, throws light on the source of _Old Pictures in Florence_. She says that her husband had picked up at a few pauls each some “hole and corner pictures” in a corn shop a mile from Florence. Mr. Kirkup (one of the best judges of pictures in Florence) threw out such names for them as “Cimabue, Ghirlandajo, Giottino, a Crucifixion painted on a banner, Giottesque, if not Giotto, but unique or nearly so, on account of linen material--and a little Virgin by a Byzantine master. Two angel pictures, bought last year, prove to have been sawed off of the Ghirlandajo, so-called.”