![]() ![]() Having set himself on equal footing with the chief officer, Lippi proceeds to explain himself. The theme of recuperating human integrity at the expense of the prevailing orthodoxy runs throughout the poem. ![]() Having successfully negotiated the encounter, Lippi takes the opportunity to decry the principle of mindless obedience that led the officers to suspect him: “Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets/And count fair prize what comes into their net?” What Lippi objects to is the kind of systematic approach to working that reduces humanity’s lot to that of “pilchards” or small fish. Lippi begins his defense by playfully accusing his captors of overzealousness, but then substantiates his defense by referring to his influential patron, “Cosimo of the Medici,” which effectively removes him from the grip of the law. The monologue begins as Lippi pleads his case to a group of officers who have caught him in the city’s red-light district. The speaker’s zeal and manifest unorthodoxy also overlap with those of the apparently spirited Lippi of Renaissance Italy, who was dismissed for misconduct from a rectorship and later eloped with a nun. As the poem reflects, Lippi the historical figure enjoyed the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), a banker who possessed great political power in the city. ![]() The poem “Fra Lippo Lippi” owes its beginnings to the account given in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1568) of a painter-monk of the same name who lived in Florence during the fifteenth century. ![]()
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