"How the change fell upon him, and how it wrought, anyone may see who compares his later with his earlier work.... The time came when another than Salome [referring to Andrea del Sarto's picture of Salome dancing before Herod] was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she required of him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the forfeit into her hands.... In Mr. Browning's noblest poem--his noblest, it seems to me--the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh. One point only is but lightly touched upon--missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and skillful--the effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. How his life was corroded by it, and his soul burnt into dead ashes we are shown in full, but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was before, what as a painter he might have been without it." The bare facts of this poem are taken from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. Vasari, once a pupil of Andrea del Sarto, hated Lucrezia and in his account spared no details of her evil influence. Later chronicles give a somewhat more favorable view of her, but the main facts of the story remain undisputed. Of the origin of the poem, Mrs. Andrew Crosse (see "John Kenyon and His Friends" in _Temple Bar Magazine_, April, 1900) writes; "When the Brownings were living in Florence, Kenyon had begged them to procure him a copy of the portrait in the Pitti of Andrea del Sarto and his wife. Mr. Browning was unable to get the copy made with any promise of satisfaction, and so wrote the exquisite poem of Andrea del Sarto--and sent it to Kenyon!" For another literary presentation of Andrea del Sarto see _Andre del Sarto_, a play by Alfred de Musset. 15. _Fiesole_. A town on a hill above the Arno about three miles northwest of Florence. See _Pippa Passes_. 40. _We are in God's hand._ Andrea's fatalistic view of life aids him in escaping the poignancy of remorse. 65. _The Legate's talk._ The representative of the Pope praised Andrea's work. For the high esteem accorded Andrea when he was in Paris at the court of Francis I, see lines 149-161. 82. _This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand._ Eugene Muntz (quoted in _Masters of Art_ series, in the number entitled "Andrea del Sarto") says of Andrea's skill: "No painter has excelled him in the rendering of flesh.... No painter, moreover, has surpassed him in his grasp of the infinite resources of the palette. All the secrets of richness, softness, and _morbidenza_, all the mysteries of _pastoso_ and _sfumato_ were his. It is not then as a technician that we must deny Andrea del Sarto the right to rank with the very greatest. It is as an artist (using the word in its highest sense) that he falls below them, for he was lacking in the loftier qualities of imagination, sentiment, and, worst of all, conviction." _Histoire de l'Art pendent la Renaissance_. 93. _Morello_. A mountain of the Apennines and visible from Florence.