Student Question
What is the climax of Fra Lippo Lippi?
Quick answer:
The climax of Fra Lippo Lippi comes in these lines:
we loveFirst when we see them painted, things we have passedPerhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.
Art is sacred to Lippi because the ordinary is sacred, created by God, and Lippi can show people through his art the everyday beauty they have missed. This is the heart of Lippi's artistic creed, so it is the poem's climax.
Fra Lippo Lippi is an artist and monk who is criticized by his superiors
in the church for not painting religious subjects. This is because Lippi,
though a monk, is a man who loves the earthy pleasures of life. When he is
questioned by night watchmen, who have found him out after an evening of
drinking, he launches into the dramatic monologue that is the poem.
He defends his life decision to be out and about among ordinary people,
saying that these folk reflect the reality of God's creation. He uses them as
models of saints and holy people in his painting for the same reason: they
highlight that the saints were human just like us. Lippi also doesn't
understand why he has to sneak around to have relationships with women and
complains that his superiors try to repress him.
The poem reaches its climax, however, as Lippi defends his art as holy
precisely because it is about ordinary life, stating,
we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted—better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that.
In other words, Lippi believes that God gave us art (and artists) so that
we can have presented to us the sacred and beautiful aspects in everyday life
that we might otherwise miss. Painting reality, rather than idealized figures,
is holy because life itself is holy. This represents the climax of the poem
because it states Lippi's deepest and most heartfelt beliefs about the purpose
of his art.
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