What concerns us here is that Jules, the French artist, loves Phene; and on his return from his marriage pours out his soul to her concerning his art.
In his work, in his pursuit of beauty through his aspiration to the old Greek ideal, he has found his full content--his heaven upon earth.

But now, living love of a woman has stolen in.

How can he now, he asks, pursue that old ideal when he has the real?
how carve Tydeus, with her about the room?
He is disturbed, thrilled, uncontent A new ideal rises.
How can he now Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait, My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?
Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth-- The live truth, passing and repassing me, Sitting beside me?
Before he had seen her, all the varied stuff of Nature, every material in her workshop, tended to one form of beauty, to the human archetype.
But now she, Phene, represents the archetype; and though Browning does not express this, we feel that if Jules continue in that opinion, his art will die.

Then, carried away by his enthusiasm for his art, he passes, through a statement that nature suggests in all her doings man and his life and his beauty--a statement Browning himself makes in _Paracelsus_--to a description of the capabilities of various stuffs in nature under the sculptor's hand, and especially of marble as having in it the capabilities of all the other stuffs and also something more a living spirit in itself which aids the sculptor and even does some of his work.
This is a subtle thought peculiarly characteristic of Browning's thinking about painting, music, poetry, or sculpture.

I believe he felt, and if he did not, it is still true, that the vehicle of any art brought something out of itself into the work of the artist.