by Anna Clark, Master’s Student in History and Armstrong Browning Library Graduate Research Assistant
Every spring, the Armstrong Browning Library hosts a guest lecturer for its annual Browning Day which commemorates the legacy of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This year’s lecture was given by Dr. Kevin A. Morrison in the Hankamer Treasure Room on April 27th.
This year’s Browning Day lecture, “Translated into Song: Robert Browning and A Picture at Fano,” explored the connections between sensory and perceptual experience of material culture and the written word. Dr. Kevin Morrison’s presentation was based on Robert Browning’s 1855 poem, “The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano.” This poem was the first that Robert Browning wrote after his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and their relocation to Italy. The poem’s inspiration came to Browning after traveling to the small town of Fano, Italy, located on the Adriatic coast. While he was in Fano with Elizabeth, they entered a chapel where a painting entitled L’angelo Custode (The Guardian Angel) by the Italian Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (known as Guercino) was on display.
We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul’s content
—My angel with me too: and since I care
For dear Guercino’s fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent)—
And since he did not work thus earnestly
At all times, and has else endured some wrong—
I took one thought his picture struck from me,
And spread it out, translating it to song.
-Excerpt from Robert Browning’s “The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano”
Kevin A. Morrison, Professor of British Literature at Henan University and ABL Visiting Scholar
Morrison is a Professor of British Literature at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, and a Visiting Scholar of the Armstrong Browning Library. His latest book, Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Thought and Place, was published by the Edinburgh University Press in 2018 and won the 2020 MLA Prize for Independent Scholars. Morrison’s book explores the links between Victorian material culture and liberal political theory through the study of four Victorian writers, including Robert Browning. Morrison is also a founder and the current president of the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies as well as the editor of the society’s journal. His newest book, The Provincial Fiction of Mitford, Gaskell, and Eliot, is set to release this fall.
In his lecture, Morrison explained how this poem, one of Browning’s least studied, marked a shift in the poet’s literary approach. Morrison detailed the history of the poem, the significance it held to Browning, and how Browning refined his sensory alertness to and perceptual engagement with historical materiality. The poem is largely a story of the relationship between person and object: a story of Browning and his relationship with a painting he viewed in a small church in Fano, Italy. For Browning, this particular painting struck a chord with him, and he was encouraged by Elizabeth to translate his visual and emotive experience into “song.” What Browning is doing in “The Guardian Angel” poem is translating his idea—his experience—of the painting into a poetic and auditory medium.
Morrison described how for the poet, the painting spoke to his soul before it generated any thought. In the poem, Browning attempts to convey to the reader this spiritual encounter with the painting that occurred apart from rational contemplation of it. Morrison further explained how the poem does not simply give a description of the painting; if the poem were just reduced to an artistic description of what it is physically depicted on the canvas, then it would still remain Guercino’s artistic expression. What is innovative here is Browning’s own personal engagement with the painting. In the poem, Browning captures his deep desire to re-engage in a religious appreciation of beauty through his experience of sitting in front of the painting and his prayerful contemplation of it. In this way, Browning’s pedagogical activity is different than his peers and even his earlier works of poetry.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.
-Excerpt from Robert Browning’s “The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano”
The ABL’s copy of the Guardian Angel painting hanging in the Leddy-Jones Research Hall. Guercino’s painting depicts a child perched on a tomb whose hands are clasped by those of his or her guardian angel. The pair appear to be in prayer, looking up to the heavens where three cherubs peer down.
In the audience, members of a Baylor Lifelong Learning Class held at the ABL were present as well as Baylor faculty and students and members of the general public. The lecture was the culmination of three weeks of study for members of the Lifelong Learning Class who met at the ABL weekly to discuss and study the works and lives of the Brownings using library materials.
In her opening remarks, library director Jennifer Borderud highlighted the Guardian Angels, a group of library patrons who help support the ABL’s ability to provide free public admission, expand its material collections, and make possible events such as the annual Browning Day lecture. If you are interested in donating a gift to the Guardian Angel Fund to support the ongoing development of our unique collection of materials dedicated to the Brownings and their Victorian contemporaries as well as the hosting of Browning Day and other public programs, the Armstrong Browning Library thanks you for your generosity.
Additionally, if you are interested in experiencing the moving pathos of Guercino’s The Guardian Angel painting yourself, we encourage you to travel to Fano, Italy, and to send a postcard to the ABL. Once we receive the news that you have visited the painting in Fano, you will become a lifelong member of the exclusive Fano Club, which meets at the library every year around Robert Browning’s birthday (May 7th).
The Armstrong Browning Library would like to express its sincerest gratitude to Dr. Kevin A. Morrison for this year’s lecture and his ongoing collaboration with us to promote the study of the works and lives of poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. To learn more about Dr. Morrison’s previous visits to the library and his archival research at the ABL, the following link is provided: Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: Archival Expectations and Unexpected Surprises | Armstrong Browning Library & Museum (baylor.edu)