One elaborate portrait is continued throughout the poem.

It is that of Salinguerra, the man of action as contrasted with Sordello the dreamer.

Much pains are spent on this by Browning.

We see him first in the streets of Ferrara.
Men understood Living was pleasant to him as he wore His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er, Propped on his truncheon in the public way.
Then at the games at Mantua, when he is told Sordello will not come to sing a welcome to him.

What cares he for poet's whims?
The easy-natured soldier smiled assent, Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin, And nodded that the bull-bait might begin.
Then mad with fighting frenzy in the sacking of Vicenza, then in his palace nursing his scheme to make the Emperor predominant, then pacing like a lion, hot with hope of mastering all Italy, when he finds out that Sordello is his son: "hands clenched, head erect, pursuing his discourse--crimson ear, eyeballs suffused, temples full fraught." Then in the fourth book there is a long portrait of him which I quote as a full specimen of the power with which Browning could paint a partisan of the thirteenth century.