body language. Some literary analysts claim Browning adapted his versification to his characters; Andrea del Sarto is no exception. It explores aestheticism and human reciprocity, and as a result is written in near perfect iambic pentameter. Analysis During his life Browning struggled with religion. At age 13, he announced he was atheist, following in the foot steps of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet he looked up to. As Browning got older he was considered a Theist. Browning spent much of his work exploring and questioning religion through his dramatic monologues. Browning's main audience for all his poetry was his beloved wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Browning based del Sarto's love for his wife, Lucrezia, on his own love for his wife. Andrea del Sarto explores broad themes such as if all human interactions are governed by aesthetic or exchange value, failure, whether one's wife is a possession, and morality in general. Browning chose to use painters as his subjects during the renaissance because art was much easier to access than writing, which was accessible only to those of wealth. According to literary scholar Roma A. King the entire poem is "between asserted artistic and masculine virility and a steadily increasing awareness of debility." He backs this up by describing how he is trying to suggest his own masculine strength: However, later undertones hint at a suspecting of lacking and not being enough, as Lucrezia still chooses her lover over her husband, even though he is making her a romantic suit. He quickly falls into a class of literary males who lack masculinity and passion; the only thing that makes him truly different from Prufrock or any similar characters is that he is aware of his dilemma. King discusses del Sarto's lack of virility, as he describes his wife the way a painter would, with lines and shapes, as opposed to a husband or person of romantic interest: Instead of images of interest and arousal, he speaks of her as a figure to be painted. This is much the same as in the rest of the work, according to Stefan Hawlin, another literary scholar. He believes that Browning is explaining, through this poem, that del Sarto is not as famous as many other artists because he “shies away from the vivid and necessarily sexual fullness of life, and the spirituality that is a part of that fullness.” Hawlin also explains that his