So yeah, here’s James Mason’s reading of Andrea del Sarto. I don’t know if he gets the Andrea del Sarto who exists in my head exactly, though much of the weakness is in there, but really he is going for something else. I suppose the clue is in the backing track, but I’m not entirely sure why he chose to read it over ‘aumgn’ by CAN – it’s maybe something to do with fracture or collage art, trying to access the radical modernist Browning that Pound wrests into being in The Cantos. Really, though, is this the best work to do that with?
It could be either a riposte or complement to Browning’s argument about Sarto – an artist who we’re meant to see as a failure when matched against Leonardo, M’angelo, Raphael: riposte, because it shows the art of the masters will be destroyed or unavailable in an age whose major works are strange mechanical-tribal fragments; a complement because the CAN of aumgn refuse technical perfection.
I’ll post the Bishop ordering his tomb tomorrow.
