When Rome was carried by a.s.sault in 1527, and the Papal Court was besieged in the castle of S. Angelo, Cellini played the part of bombardier. It is well known that he claims to have shot the Constable of Bourbon dead with his own hand, and to have wounded the Prince of Orange; nor does there seem to be any adequate reason for discrediting his narrative. It is certain that he was an expert marksman, and that he did Clement good service by directing the artillery of S. Angelo. If we believed all his a.s.sertions, however, we should have to suppose that nothing memorable happened without his intervention. In his own eyes his whole life was a miracle. The very hailstones that fell upon his head could not be grasped in both hands. His guns and powder brought down birds no other marksman had a chance of hitting. When he was a child, he grasped a scorpion without injury, and saw a salamander "living and enjoying himself in the hottest flames." After his fever at Rome in 1535, he threw off from his stomach a hideous worm--hairy, speckled with green, black, and red--the like whereof the doctors never saw.[360] When he finally escaped from the dungeons of S. Angelo in 1539, a luminous appearance like an aureole settled on his head, and stayed there for the rest of his life.[361] These facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardan, Paracelsus, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in them; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting what he says about his exploits, since imagination and self-conceit could so far distort his judgment.
It may be regretted that Cellini has not given a fuller account of the memorable sack of Borne. Yet, confining himself almost wholly to his own adventures, he presents a very vivid picture of the sad life led by the Pope and cardinals, vainly hoping for succour from Urbino, wrangling together about the causes of the tragedy, sewing the crown jewels into their doublets, and running the perils of the siege with common soldiers on the ramparts. When peace at last was signed, Cellini paid a visit to Florence, and found that his father and some other relatives had died of plague.[362] His brother Cecchino, however, who was a soldier in the Bande Nere of Giovanni de" Medici, and his sister Liperata survived. With them he spent a pleasant evening; for Liperata having "for a while lamented her father, her sister, her husband, and a little son that she had been deprived of, went to prepare supper, and during the rest of the evening there was not a word more spoken of the dead, but much about weddings.
Thus we supped together with the greatest cheerfulness and satisfaction imaginable." In these sentences there is no avowal of hard-heartedness; only the careless familiarity with loss and danger, engendered by war, famine, plague, and personal adventures in those riotous times.[363]
Cellini gladly risked his life in a quarrel for his friends; but he would not sadden the present by reflecting on inevitable accidents. This elastic temper permeates his character. His affections were strong, but transient.
The one serious love-affair he describes, among a mult.i.tude of mere debaucheries, made him miserable for a few days. His mistress, Angelica, ran away, and left him "on the point of losing his senses or dying of grief." Yet, when he found her again, a short time sufficed to satisfy his longing, and he turned his back with jibes upon her when she bargained about money.
It is worthy of notice that, at the same time, he was an excellent son and brother. His sister was left a widow with two children; whereupon he took them all into his house, without bragging about what appears to have been the best action of his life. In the same spirit he conscientiously performed what he conceived to be his duty to Cecchino, murdered by a musketeer in Rome. After nursing his revenge till he was nearly mad, he stole out one evening and stabbed the murderer in the back.[364] So violent was the blow that he could not extricate his dagger from the man"s spine, but had to leave it sticking in his nape. Next to his own egotism the strongest feelings in Cellini were domestic; and he showed them at one moment by charity to his sister"s family, at another by a savage a.s.sa.s.sination.
After killing the musketeer, Cellini retired for refuge to the house of Alessandro de" Medici, Duke of Civita di Penna, who had been his brother"s patron. The matter reached the Pope"s ears, for whom Benvenuto was at work upon crown jewels. Clement sent for him, and simply said: "Now you have recovered your health, Benvenuto, take care of yourself." This shows how little they thought of homicide in Rome. After killing a man, some powerful protector had to be sought, who was usually a cardinal, since the cardinals had right of sanctuary in their palaces. There the a.s.sa.s.sin lay in hiding, in order to avoid his victim"s friends and relatives, until such time as a pardon and safe-conduct and absolution had been obtained from his Holiness. When Cellini, soon after this occurrence, stabbed a private enemy, by name Pompeo, two cardinals were anxious to screen him from pursuit, and disputed the privilege of harbouring so talented a criminal.[365] The Pope, with marvellous good-humour, observed: "I have never heard of the death of Pompeo, but often of Benvenuto"s provocation; so let a safe-conduct be instantly made out, and that will secure him from all manner of danger." A friend of Pompeo"s who was present, ventured to insinuate that this was dangerous policy. The Pope put him down at once by saying, "You do not understand these matters; I would have you know that men who are unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, are not subject to the laws." Whether Paul really said these words, may be doubted; but it is clear that much was conceded to a clever workman, and that the laws were a mere _brutum fulmen_. No man of spirit appealed to them. Cellini, for example, was poisoned by a parish priest near Florence:[366] yet he never brought the man to justice; and in the case of his own murders, he only dreaded the retaliation of his victims" kinsmen. On one occasion, indeed, the civil arm came down upon him; when the city guard attempted to arrest him for Pompeo"s a.s.sa.s.sination. He beat them off with swords and sticks; and, after all, it appeared that they were only acting at the instigation of Pier Luigi Farnese, whom Benvenuto had offended.
During his residence at Rome, Cellini witnessed an incantation conducted in the Colosseum by a Sicilian priest and necromancer. The conjurer and the artist, accompanied by two friends, and by a boy, who was to act as medium, went by night to the amphitheatre. The magic circle was drawn; fires were lighted, and perfumes scattered on the flames. Then the spirit-seer began his charms, calling in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or what pa.s.sed for such, upon the leaders of the hosts of h.e.l.l. The whole hollow s.p.a.ce now filled with phantoms, surging up by legions, rushing down from the galleries, issuing from subterranean caverns, and wheeling to and fro with signs of fury. All the party, says Cellini, were thrown into consternation, except himself, who, though terribly afraid, kept up the fainting spirits of the rest. At last the conjurer summoned courage to inquire when Cellini might hope to be restored to his lost love, Angelica;--for this was the trivial object of the incantation. The demons answered (how we are not told) that he would meet her ere a month had pa.s.sed away. This prophecy, as it happened, was fulfilled. Then they redoubled their attacks; the necromancer kept crying out that the peril was most imminent, until the matin bells of Rome swung through the darkness, freeing them at last from fear. As they walked home, the boy, holding the Sicilian by his robe and Benvenuto by his mantle, told them that he still saw giants leaping with fantastic gestures on their path, now running along the house roofs, and now dancing on the earth. Each one of them that night dreamed in his bed of devils.[367]
The interest of this incident is almost wholly picturesque. It throws but little light upon the superst.i.tions of the age.[368] The magnitude of the Colosseum, the popular legends concerning its magical origin, and the terrible uses of blood to which it had been put, invested this building with peculiar mystery. Robbers haunted the huge caves. Rubbish and weeds choked the pa.s.sages. Sickly trees soared up from darkness into light among the porches, and the moon peered through the empty vomitories. If we call imagination to our aid, and place the necromancers and their brazier in the centre of this s.p.a.ce;--if we fancy the priest"s chaunted spells, the sacred names invoked in his unholy rites, the shuddering terror of the conscience-stricken accomplices, and Cellini with defiant mien but quailing heart, we can well believe that he saw more than the amphitheatre contained. Whether the spectres were projected by the conjurer from a magic lantern on the smoke that issued from his heaps of blazing wood, so that the volumes of vapour, agitated by the wind and rolling in thick spirals, showed them retreating and advancing, and varying in shape and number, is a matter for conjecture. Cellini firmly believed that he had been environed by living squadrons of the spirits of the d.a.m.ned.
The next four years were spent by Cellini chiefly in Rome, in peril of his life at several seasons, owing to the animosity of Pier Luigi Farnese. One journey he took at this period to Venice, pa.s.sing through Ferrara, where he came to blows with the Florentine exiles. It is interesting to find the respectable historian Jacopo Nardi involved, if only as a peacemaker, in this affray.[369] He also visited Florence and cast dies for Alessandro"s silver coinage. It was here that he found opportunities of observing the perilous intimacy between the Duke of Civita di Penna and his cousin--_quel pazzo malinconico filosofo di Lorenzino._[370] In April 1537, having quarrelled with the Pope, who seems to have adopted Pier Luigi"s prejudice against him, Cellini set out for France with two of his workmen. They pa.s.sed through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua, staying in the last place to model a medallion portrait of Pietro Bembo;[371] then they crossed the Grisons by the Bernina and Albula pa.s.ses. We hear nothing about this part of the journey, except that the snow was heavy, and that they ran great danger of their lives. Cellini must have traversed some of the most romantic scenery of Switzerland at the best season of the year; yet not a word escapes him about the beauty of the Alps or the wonder of the glaciers, which he saw for the first time. The pleasure we derive from contemplating savage scenery was unknown to the Italians of the sixteenth century; the height and cold, the gloom and solitude of mountains struck them with a sense of terror or of dreariness. On the Lake of Wallenstadt Cellini met with a party of Germans, whom he hated as cordially as an Athenian of the age of Pericles might have loathed the Scythians for their barbarism.[372] The Italians embarked in one boat, the Germans in another; Cellini being under the impression that the Northern lakes would not be so likely to drown him as those of his own country. However, when a storm swept down the hills, he took a terrible fright, and compelled the boatmen at the point of the poniard to put him and his company ash.o.r.e. The description of their struggles to drag their heavily laden horses over the uneven ground near Wesen, is extremely graphic, and gives a good notion of the dangers of the road in those days.[373] That night they "heard the watch sing at all hours very agreeably; and as the houses of that town were all of wood, he kept bidding them to take care of their fires." Next day they arrived, not without other accidents, at Zurich, "a marvellous city, as clear and polished as a jewel." Thence by Solothurn, Lausanne, Geneva, and Lyons, they made their way to Paris.
This long and troublesome journey led to nothing, for Cellini grew weary of following the French Court about from place to place; his health too failed him, and he decided that he would rather die in Italy than France.[374] Accordingly he returned to Rome, and there, not long after his arrival, he was arrested by the order of Pope Paul III.[375] The charge against him, preferred by one of his own prentices, was this.
During the siege of Rome, he had been employed by Clement to melt down the tiaras and papal ornaments, in order that the precious stones might be conveyed away in secrecy. He did so; and afterwards confessed to having kept a portion of the gold filings found in the cinders of his brazier during the operation. For this crime Clement gave him absolution.[376]
Now, however, he was accused of having stolen gold and jewels to the amount of nearly eighty thousand ducats. "The avarice of the Pope, but more that of his b.a.s.t.a.r.d, then called Duke of Castro," inclined Paul to believe this charge; and Pier Luigi was allowed to farm the case. Cellini was examined by the Governor of Rome and two a.s.sessors; in spite of his vehement protestations of innocence, the absence of any evidence against him, and the sound arguments adduced in his defence, he was committed to the castle of S. Angelo. When he received his sentence, he called heaven and earth to witness, thanking G.o.d that he had "the happiness not to be confined for some error of his sinful nature, as generally happens to young men." Whereupon "the brute of a Governor replied, Yet you have killed enough men in your time." This remark was pertinent; but it provoked a torrent of abuse and a long enumeration of his services from the virtuous Cellini.
The account of this imprisonment, and especially of the hypochondriacal Governor who thought he was a bat and used to flap his arms and squeak when night was coming on, is highly entertaining.[377] Not less interesting is the description of Cellini"s daring escape from the castle.
In climbing over the last wall, he fell and broke his leg, and was carried by a waterman to the palace of the Cardinal Cornaro. There he lay in hiding, visited by all the rank and fashion of Rome, who were not a little curious to see the hero of so perilous an escapade. Cornaro promised to secure his pardon, but eventually exchanged him for a bishopric. This remarkable proceeding ill.u.s.trates the manners of the Papal Court. The cardinal wanted a benefice for one of his followers, and the Pope wished to get his son"s enemy once more into his power. So the two ecclesiastics bargained together, and by mutual kind offices attained their several ends.
Cellini with his broken leg went back to languish in his prison. He found the flighty Governor furious because he had "flown away," eluding his bat"s eyes and wings. The rigour used towards him made him dread the worst extremities. Cast into a condemned cell, he first expected to be flayed alive; and when this terror was removed, he perceived the crystals of a pounded jewel in his food. According to his own account of this mysterious circ.u.mstance, Messer Durante Duranti of Brescia, one of Cellini"s numerous enemies, had given a diamond of small value to be broken up and mixed with a salad served to him at dinner. The jeweller to whom this charge was entrusted, kept the diamond and subst.i.tuted a beryl, thinking that the inferior stone would have the same murderous properties. To the avarice of this man Cellini attributed his escape from a lingering death by inflammation of the mucous membrane.[378]
During his first imprisonment he had occupied a fair chamber in the upper turret of the castle. He was now removed to a dungeon below ground where Fra Fojano, the reformer, had been starved to death. The floor was wet and infested with crawling creatures. A few reflected sunbeams slanting from a narrow window for two hours of the afternoon, was all the light that reached him. Here he lay, alone, unable to move because of his broken leg, with his hair and teeth falling away, and with nothing to occupy him but a Bible and a volume of Villani"s "Chronicles." His spirit, however, was indomitable; and the pa.s.sionate energy of the man, hitherto manifested in ungoverned acts of fury, took the form of ecstasy. He began the study of the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis, and trusting firmly to the righteousness of his own cause, compared himself to all the saints and martyrs of Scripture, men of whom the world was not worthy. He sang psalms, prayed continually, and composed a poem in praise of his prison.
With a piece of charcoal he made a great drawing of angels surrounding G.o.d the Father on the wall. Once only his courage gave way: he determined on suicide, and so placed a beam that it should fall on him like a trap. When all was ready, an unseen hand took violent hold of him, and dashed him on the ground at a considerable distance. From this moment his dungeon was visited by angels, who healed his broken leg, and reasoned with him of religion.
The mention of these visions reminds us that Cellini had become acquainted with Savonarola"s writings during his first imprisonment.[379] Impressed with the grandeur of the prophet"s dreams, and exalted by the reading of the Bible, he no doubt mistook his delirious fancies for angelic visitors, and in the fervour of his enthusiasm laid claim to inspiration. One of these hallucinations is particularly striking. He had prayed that he might see the sun at least in trance, if it were impossible that he should look on it again with waking eyes. But, while awake and in possession of his senses, he was hurried suddenly away and carried to a room, where the invisible power sustaining him appeared in human shape, "like a youth whose beard is but just growing, with a face most marvellous, fair, but of austere and far from wanton beauty." In that room were all the men who had ever lived and died on earth; and thence they two went together, and came into a narrow street, one side whereof was bright with sunlight. Then Cellini asked the angel how he might behold the sun; and the angel pointed to certain steps upon the side of a house. Up these Cellini climbed, and came into the full blaze of the sun, and, though dazzled by its brightness, he gazed steadfastly and took his fill. While he looked, the rays fell away upon the left side and the disk shone like a bath of molten gold. This surface swelled, and from the glory came the figure of a Christ upon the cross, which moved and stood beside the rays. Again the surface swelled, and from the glory came the figure of Madonna and her Child; and at the right hand of the sun there knelt S. Peter in his sacerdotal robes, pleading Cellini"s cause; and "full of shame that such foul wrong should be done to Christians in his house." This vision marvellously strengthened Cellini"s soul, and he began to hope with confidence for liberty. When free again, he modelled the figures he had seen in gold.
The religious phase in Cellini"s history requires some special comment, since it is precisely at this point that he most faithfully personifies the spirit of his age and nation. That he was a devout Catholic there is no question. He made two pilgrimages to Loreto, and another to S. Francis of Vernia. To S. Lucy he dedicated a golden eye after his recovery from an illness. He was, moreover, always anxious to get absolution from the Pope.
More than this; he continually sustained himself at the great crises of his life, when in peril of imprisonment, while defending himself against a.s.sa.s.sins, and again on the eve of casting his "Perseus," by direct and pa.s.sionate appeals to G.o.d. Yet his religion had but little effect upon his life; and he often used it as a source of moral strength in doing deeds repugnant to real piety. Like love, he put it off and on quite easily, reverting to it when he found himself in danger or bad spirits, and forgetting it again when he was prosperous. Thus in the dungeon of S.
Angelo he vowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre if G.o.d would grant him to behold the sun. This vow he forgot until he met with disappointment at the Court of Francis, and then he suddenly determined to travel to Jerusalem.
The offer of a salary of seven hundred crowns restored his spirits, and he thought no more about his vow.
While he loved his life so dearly and indulged so freely in the pleasures of this earth, he made a virtue of necessity as soon as death approached, crying, "The sooner I am delivered from the prison of this world, the better; especially as I am sure of salvation, being unjustly put to death." His good opinion of himself extended to the certainty he felt of heaven. Forgetting his murders and debaucheries, he sustained his courage with devotion when all other sources failed. As to the divine government of the world, he halted between two opinions. Whether the stars or Providence had the upper hand, he could not clearly say; but by the stars he understood a power antagonistic to his will, by Providence a force that helped him to do what he liked. There is a similar confusion in his mind about the Pope. He goes to Clement submissively for absolution from homicide and theft, saying, "I am at the feet of your Holiness, who have the full power of absolving, and I request you to give me permission to confess and communicate, that I may with your favour be restored to the divine grace." He also tells Paul that the sight of Christ"s vicar, in whom there is an awful representation of the divine Majesty, makes him tremble. Yet at another time he speaks of Clement being "transformed to a savage beast," and talks of him as "that poor man Pope Clement."[380] Of Paul he says that he "believed neither in G.o.d nor in any other article of religion;" he sincerely regrets not having killed him by accident during the siege of Rome, abuses him for his avarice, casts his b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in his teeth, and relates with relish the crime of forgery for which in his youth he was imprisoned in the castle of S. Angelo.[381] Indeed, the Italians treated the Pope as negroes treat their fetishes. If they had cause to dislike him, they beat and heaped insults on him--like the Florentines who described Sixtus IV. as "leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius," and his spiritual offspring as "simonia, luxus, homicidium, proditio, haeresis." On the other hand, they really thought that he could open heaven and shut the gates of h.e.l.l.
At the end of the year 1539, the Cardinal Ippolito d"Este appeared in Rome with solicitations from Francis I. that the Pope would release Cellini and allow him to enter his service.[382] Upon this the prison door was opened.
Cellini returned to his old restless life of violence and pleasure. We find him renewing his favourite pastimes--killing, wantoning, disputing with his employers, and working diligently at his trade. The temporary saint and visionary becomes once more the bravo and the artist. A more complete parallel to the consequences of revivalism in Italy could not be found.[383] Meanwhile the first period of his history is closed and the second begins.
Cellini"s account of his residence in France has much historical interest besides the charm of its romance. When he first joined the Court, he found Francis travelling from city to city with a retinue of eighteen thousand persons and twelve thousand horses. Frequently they came to places where no accommodation could be had, and the suite were lodged in wretched tents. It is not wonderful that Cellini should complain of the French being less civilised than the Italians of his time. Francis among his ladies and courtiers, pretending to a knowledge of the arts, sauntering with his splendid train into the goldsmith"s workshop, encouraging Cellini"s violence with a boyish love of mischief, vain and flattered, peevish, petulant, and fond of show, appears upon these pages with a life-like vividness.[384] When the time came for settling in Paris, the King presented his goldsmith with a castle called Le Pet.i.t Nesle, and made him lord thereof by letters of naturalisation. This house stood where the Inst.i.tute has since been built; of its extent we may judge from the number of occupations carried on within its precincts when Cellini entered into possession. He found there a tennis-court, a distillery, a printing press, and a factory of saltpetre, besides residents engaged in other trades.
Cellini"s claims were resisted. Probably the occupiers did not relish the intrusion of a foreigner. So he stormed the place and installed himself by force of arms. Similar violence was needed in order to maintain himself in possession; but this Cellini loved, and had he been let alone, it is probable he would have died of _ennui_.
Difficulties of all kinds, due in part to his ungovernable temper, in part to his ill-regulated life, in part to his ignorance of French habits, gathered round him. He fell into disfavour with Madame d"Estampes, the mistress of the King; and here it may be mentioned that many of his troubles arose from his inability to please n.o.ble women.[385] Proud, self-confident, overbearing, and unable to command his words or actions, Cellini was unfitted to pay court to princes. Then again he quarrelled with his brother artists, and made the Bolognese painter, Primaticcio, his enemy. After being attacked by a.s.sa.s.sins and robbers on more than one occasion, he was involved in two lawsuits. He draws a graphic picture of the French courts of justice, with their judge as grave as Plato, their advocates all chattering at once, their perjured Norman witnesses, and the ushers at the doors vociferating _Paix, paix, Satan, allez, paix_. In this cry Cellini recognised the gibberish at the beginning of the seventh canto of Dante"s "Inferno." But the most picturesque group in the whole scene presented to us is that made by Cellini himself, armed and mailed, and attended by his prentices in armour, as they walked into the court to browbeat justice with the clamour of their voice. If we are to trust his narrative, he fought his way out of one most dangerous trial by simple vociferation. Afterwards he took the law, as usual, into his own hands.
One pair of litigants were beaten; Caterina was nearly kicked to death; and the attorneys were threatened with the sword.
In the midst of these disturbances, Cellini began some important works for Francis. At Paris the King employed him to make huge silver candelabra, and at Fontainebleau to restore the castle gate. For the chateau of Fontainebleau Cellini executed the nymph in bronze, reclining among trophies of the chase, which may still be seen in the Louvre. It is a long-limbed, lifeless figure, without meaning--a snuff-box ornament enlarged to a gigantic size. Francis, who cannot have had good taste in art, if what Cellini makes him say be genuine, admired these designs above the bronze copies of the Vatican marbles he had recently received. He seems to have felt some personal regard for Benvenuto, and to have done all he could to retain him in his service. The animosity of Madame d"Estampes, and a grudge against his old patron, Ippolito d"Este, however, determined the restless craftsman to quit Paris. Leaving his castle, his unfinished works, and other property behind him in the care of Ascanio, his friend and pupil, he returned alone to Italy. This step, taken in a moment of restless pique, was ever after regretted by Cellini, who looked back with yearning from Florence to the generosity of Francis.
Cosimo de" Medici was indeed a very different patron from Francis.
Cautious, little-minded, meddling, with a true Florentine"s love of bargaining and playing cunning tricks, he pretended to protect the arts, but did not understand the part he had a.s.sumed. He was always short of money, and surrounded by old avaricious servants, through whose hands his meagre presents pa.s.sed. As a connoisseur, he did not trust his own judgment, thus laying himself open to the intrigues of inferior artists.
Henceforward a large part of Cellini"s time was wasted in wrangling with the Duke"s steward, squabbling with Bandinelli and Ammanati, and endeavouring to overcome the coldness or to meet the vacillations of his patron. Those who wish to gain insight into the life of an artist at Court in the sixteenth century, will do well to study attentively the chapters devoted by Cellini to his difficulties with the d.u.c.h.ess, and his wordy warfares with Bandinelli.[386] This atmosphere of intrigue and animosity was not uncongenial to Benvenuto; and as far as words and blows went, he almost always got the best of it. Nothing, for example, could be keener and more cutting than the very just criticism he made in Bandinelli"s presence of his "Hercules and Cacus." "Quel b.e.s.t.i.a.l buaccio Bandinello,"
as he delights to name him, could do nothing but retort with vulgar terms of insult.[387]
The great achievement of this third period was the modelling and casting of the "Perseus." No episode in Cellini"s biography is narrated with more force than the climax to his long-protracted labours, when at last, amid the chaos and confusion of innumerable accidents, the metal in his furnace liquefied and filled the mould. After the statue was uncovered in the Loggia de" Lanzi, where it now stands, Cellini achieved a triumph adequate to his own highest expectations. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and Latin, were written in its praise. Pontormo and Bronzino, the painters, loaded it with compliments. Cellini, ruffling with hand on hilt in silks and satins through the square, was pointed out to foreigners as the great sculptor who had cast the admirable bronze. It was, in truth, no slight distinction for a Florentine artist to erect a statue beneath the Loggia de" Lanzi in the square of the Signory. Every great event in Florentine history had taken place on that piazza. Every name of distinction among the citizens of Florence was connected with its monuments. To this day we may read the course of Florentine art by studying its architecture and sculpture; and not the least of its many ornaments, in spite of all that may be said against it, is the "Perseus"
of Cellini.
Cellini completed the "Perseus" in 1554. His autobiography is carried down to the year 1562, when it abruptly terminates. It appears that in 1558 he received the tonsure and the first ecclesiastical orders; but two years later on he married a wife, and died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving three legitimate children. He was buried honourably, and a funeral oration was p.r.o.nounced above his bier in the Chapter House of the Annunziata.
As a man, Cellini excites more interest than as an artist; and for this reason I have refrained from entering into minute criticism of his few remaining masterpieces. It has been well said that the two extremes of society, the statesman and the craftsman, find their point of meeting in Machiavelli and Cellini, inasmuch as both recognise no moral authority but the individual will.[388] The _virtu_, extolled by Machiavelli is exemplified by Cellini. Machiavelli bids his prince ignore the laws; Cellini respects no tribunal and takes justice into his own hands. The word conscience does not occur in Machiavelli"s phraseology of ethics; conscience never makes a coward of Cellini, and in the dungeons of S.
Angelo he is visited by no remorse. If we seek a literary parallel for the statesman and the artist in their idealisation of force and personal character, we find it in Pietro Aretino. In him, too, conscience is extinct; for him, also, there is no respect of King or Pope; he has placed himself above law, and subst.i.tuted his own will for justice. With his pen, as Cellini with his dagger, he a.s.sa.s.sinates; his cynicism serves him for a coat of armour. And so abject is society, so natural has tyranny become, that he extorts blackmail from monarchs, makes princes tremble, and receives smooth answers to his insults from Buonarroti. These three men, Machiavelli, Cellini, and Aretino, each in his own line, and with the proper differences that pertain to philosophic genius, artistic skill, and ribald ruffianism, sufficiently indicate the dissolution of the social bond in Italy. They mark their age as the age of adventurers, bandits, bullies, Ishmaelites, and tyrants.
FOOTNOTES:
[345] "In lode e onor della vita sua e opere d"esso, e buona disposizione della anima e del corpo." _La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini_, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1852; _Doc.u.menti_, p. 578.
[346] I do not by this mean to commit myself to the opinion that Cellini is accurate in details or truthful. On the contrary, it is impossible to read his life without feeling that his vanity and self-esteem led him to exaggeration and mis-statement. The value of the biography consists in its picturesqueness, its brilliant and faithful colouring, and its unconscious self-revelation of an energetic character.
[347] With regard to his pedigree Cellini tells a ridiculous story about a certain Fiorino da Cellino, one of Julius Caesar"s captains, who gave his name to Florence. For the arms of the Cellini family, see lib. i.
cap. 50.
[348] To enlarge upon this point is hardly necessary; or it would be easy to prove from doc.u.mentary evidence that artists so eminent as Simone Martini, Gentile da Fabriano, Perugino, and Ghirlandajo kept open shops, where customers could buy the products of their craft from a highly-finished altar-piece down to a painted buckler or a sign to hang above the street-door. The commercial status of fine art in Italy was highly beneficial to its advancement, inasmuch as it implied a thorough technical apprenticeship for learners. The defective side of the system was apparent in great workshops like that of Raphael, who undertook painting-commissions quite beyond his powers of conscientious execution.
[349] See above, Chapter III, Orcagna"s Tabernacle.
[350] See lib. ii. cap. 5, for the description of Francis I. visiting Cellini in his work-room. He finds him hammering away at the metal, and suggests that he might leave that labour to his prentices. Cellini replies that the excellence of his work would suffer if he did not do it himself.
[351] See Yriarte, _Vie d"un Gentilhomme de Venise_, p. 439, for a process inst.i.tuted by the Inquisition against Paolo Veronese.
[352] He calls it "un chiavaquore di argento, il quale era in quei tempi chiamato cosi. Questo si era una cintura di tre dita larga, che alle spose novelle s" usava di fare."
[353] "Si come un toro invelenito."
[354] "Living men have felt my blows: those many maimed and mutilated stones one sees, attest to your disgrace: the earth hides my bad work."
See the lines quoted by Perkins, _Tuscan Sculptors_, vol. ii. p. 140.
[355] Lib. i. cap. 79.
[356] Lib. ii. cap. 34. The whole history of this woman Caterina, and of the revenge he took upon her and his prentice Paolo, is one of the most extraordinary pa.s.sages in the life.
[357] See Vol. 1., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 377-380.
[358] See Vol. 1., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 362-363.
[359] This might be further ill.u.s.trated by a.n.a.lysing Cellini"s mode of loving. He never rises above animal appet.i.te.
[360] Lib. i. cap. 85. "Nel qual vomito mi usci dello stomaco un verme piloso, grande un quarto di braccio: e" peli erano grandi ed il verme era bruttissimo, macchiato di diversi colori, verdi, neri e rossi."
[361] Lib. i. cap. 128.