Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper is a short collection of English poems by Robert Browning, published in 1876.[1] The collection marked Browning's first collection of short pieces for more than twelve years. It received a mixed reception.[1] The title poem, which ostensibly discusses the life and works of 15th-century Italian painter Giacomo Pacchiarotti, is actually a thinly veiled attack on Browning's own critics, in particular Alfred Austin,[1] and many other pieces in the collection take the same tone.
William Lyon Phelps called the poem Pachiarotto "an error in judgment".[1] Park Honan and Edward Irvine regarded it as indicating "a growing perversity not wholly attributable to old age, a new failure in self-control and more deeply in self-assurance."[1]