This is a woman nobly carved, and the step from Michel, Pauline and Lady Carlisle to her is an immense one.
By exercise of his powers Browning's genius had swiftly developed.

There comes a time, sooner or later, to a great poet when, after many experiments, the doors of his intellect and soul fly open, and his genius is flooded with the action and thought of what seems a universe.
And with this revelation of Man and Nature, a tidal wave of creative power, new and impelling, carries the poet far beyond the station where last he rested.

It came to Browning now.

The creation of Palma would be enough to prove it, but there is not a character or scene in _Sordello_ which does not also prove it.
* * * * * In this new outrush of his genius he created a very different woman from Palma.

He created Pippa, the Asolan girl, at the other end of society from Palma, at the other end of feminine character.