''Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper'' is a short collection of English poems by
Robert Browning
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian literature, Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentar ...
, published in 1876.
The collection marked Browning's first collection of short pieces for more than twelve years. It received a mixed reception.
The title poem, which ostensibly discusses the life and works of 15th-century Italian painter
Giacomo Pacchiarotti, is actually a thinly veiled attack on Browning's own critics, in particular
Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was c ...
,
and many other pieces in the collection take the same tone.
Contents
* ''Prologue''
* ''Of Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper''
* ''At the "Mermaid"''
* ''House''
* ''Shop''
* ''Pisgah-Sights''
* ''Fears and Scruples''
* ''Natural Magic''
* ''Magical Nature''
* ''Bifurcation''
* ''Numpholeptos''
* ''Appearances''
* ''St. Martin's Summer''
* ''
Hervé Riel''
* ''A Forgiveness''
* ''Cenciaja''
* ''
Filippo Baldinucci
Filippo Baldinucci (3 June 1625 – 10 January 1696) was an Italian art historian and biographer.
Life
Baldinucci is considered among the most significant Florentine biographers/historians of the artists and the arts of the Baroque period. ...
on the Privilege of Burial''
* ''Epilogue''
Reception
William Lyon Phelps called the poem ''Pachiarotto'' "an error in judgment".
Park Honan
Leonard Hobart Park Honan (17 September 1928 – 27 September 2014) was an American academic and author who spent most of his career in the UK. He wrote widely on the lives of authors and poets and published important biographies of such writers as ...
and Edward Irvine regarded it as indicating "a growing perversity not wholly attributable to old age, a new failure in self-control and more deeply in self-assurance."
References
Poetry by Robert Browning
1876 poems
British poetry collections
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