“My Last Duchess” is a work of art that reflects on the nature of art itself. Specifically, the poem is interested in how art can contain layered, contradictory truths. This model of art is reflected in the portrait of the duchess, the bronze Neptune, and the poem itself.

The portrait of the eponymous duchess, which serves as the focal point of the poem’s narrative, contains multiple contradictions. The first is that between life and death. Although the duchess is in fact dead, having been killed by the duke, she figuratively lives on in Fra Pandolf’s lifelike portrait. Although this is a metaphorical sense of life, the duke touches on it repeatedly, noting that she looks “as if she were alive.” Indeed, the duchess lives on in the duke’s delusional imagination. Relatedly, the portrait also contains the contradictory truths that the duchess is controlled and yet uncontrollable. The portrait represents an effort to constrain the duchess, fix her in time, and place her within a literal and figurative frame. And yet the duchess depicted in the portrait is as uncontrollable as she was in life. On her cheek, she bears a blush that symbolizes her responsive and appreciative temperament—the very quality the duke detested and suppressed by killing her.

In the poem’s last lines, the duke turns the emissary’s attention to a bronze sculpture cast for him by Claus of Innsbruck. It depicts Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, “taming a sea-horse.” The duke is pleased by this gift, not realizing that the piece contains a deeper truth that contradicts the surface display of pomp. Indeed, the piece reflects the duke’s own domineering character, his pathological need to “tame” the duchess. There is a keen irony in his cheerful blindness to this contrasting truth.

The poem itself displays a similar dynamic to that of the Innsbruck bronze. On the surface, the poem expresses the duke’s perspective, his attitudes and desires. He is the sole speaker and thus bears the power to shape the narrative in ways that suit his interests. And yet the irony of the poem lies in the horror of his character, which he reveals despite himself. While he wishes to convey a truth about the duchess’s indiscriminate tastes, he reveals instead the truth of his own vanity and brutality. And while his monologue gleams with a bronze-like verbal polish, it tells an ugly tale.