Lines 300-335 Summary

For, don't you mark? 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;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,
Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,
And trust me but you should, though! How much more,
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,
It makes me mad to see what men shall do
And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
"Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"
Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain
It does not say to folk—remember matins,
Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,
A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.
I painted a Saint Laurence six months since
At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:
"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"
I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—
"Already not one phiz of your three slaves
Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,
But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,
The pious people have so eased their own
With coming to say prayers there in a rage:
We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.
Expect another job this time next year,
For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—
Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!

• Ultimately, it's wonder that makes people stop and gawk the most at art, Lippo argues. A good painter can paint something a person sees a hundred times a day, and make that object or scene better to that person. That's just what art does, yo.
• "I mean," (Lippo seems to say), "haven't you seen your own rascally face?" (Or maybe Lippo's talking about one of the guardsmen's companions here). "Well, just give me a piece of chalk and you'll see it right enough!"
• "Cullion" is a pretty interesting word here. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll see that it's an archaic word for "rascal" or a "low fellow." It comes from an Old French word meaning "testicle." Yep—Lippo's gettin' just a wee bit crude here with his diction.
• Back to the poetic action: if Lippo can paint an everyday scene and cause such wonder, then how much more fantabulous could he make "higher thing[s]" (309)? This more than likely refers to all those "saints and saints and saints" and similar subjects that he refers to back in lines 48-49.
• Being able to do this would make Lippo too big for his britches. In that case, what need would there be for the Prior to preach? Lippo would have it all covered for the congregation in his paintings.
• This prompts him to lament the fact that he'll be dead and won't be able to see all of the changes that art might wreak upon the world.
• The material world means something in itself, and this something is good. It's Lippo's job—nay, calling—to find this meaning through his paintings.
• But (and there's always a but, isn't there?), the meaning Lippo teases out isn't necessarily that which will cause viewers to pray or focus their minds on holy things. For instance, Tom the Baker won't come look at one of Lippo's paintings and naturally remember that he has a fast coming up the following week. This reinforces the argument Lippo has been recreating in his monologue between his idea of art, and the Church's idea of it.
• We're back in bitter territory now. Lippo claims that you don't need art to get people to pray or go to Church. All you need for that is the image of the crucifix, which he here presents as a sort of low version of art. Check it: it's just "A skull and bones,/ Two bits of stick nailed crosswise" (320-321). We're sure that sentiment wouldn't make the Church happy, but we see Lippo's opinion on the Church's idea of "art."
• Lippo gives us a nice anecdote to illustrate (see what we did there?) his point. He recently painted an image of St. Lawrence ("Shout Outs" is your friend here), which got precisely the type of reaction the Church was looking for. The people have defaced the fresco by scratching and rubbing out the images of the three slaves who turn St. Lawrence over the fire (eww). (BTW: "phiz" is an archaic term for "face.")
• Eventually, the pious people will have completely erased the image, so Lippo will have another job to do in its place—mission accomplished.
• Of course, Lippo just thinks the Prior (who is probably the voice he's dramatizing) and the lot of them are fools, because they just don't get it.