“Though I know the angry
words that passed between them I shall not report them, as I am not
meant to be writing history. I shall concern myself only with my own
affairs.”
--Benvenuto Cellini
“He's the greatest man
his profession has ever known.”
Pope Clement VII on
Cellini (allegedly)
One of the great godfathers of the
memoir genre is arguably Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine polymath of
the High Renaissance, who penned his life story over five years
between 1558 and 1563 when the sculptor was in his early sixties. No
doubt one of the inspirations for the autobiography was to present
his side of the story, a defense of lifestyle anticipating whatever
disagreeable remembrances his many enemies (legion in numbers) might
put down in writing. Though Cellini does his very best to portray
himself as, at best, a respected genius, and at worst, a wronged
innocent, he does admit to various offenses, most especially
cold-blooded murder and hot-blooded sodomy. He is alternately lucid,
pious, vain, psychotic, pretentious, delusional, and self-pitying.
Somehow he is consistently charming despite being a prodigious
name-dropper, an untiring braggart, and a master of invective and
disrespect. But mostly his story regards the life of the artist and
how, just as in the present day, it was incredibly difficult to be
fairly compensated for commissioned work, even when your patrons were
popes, kings, and dukes.
Cellini was born in Florence in 1500.
Establishing his reputation early on as a talented goldsmith, he had
ambitions for Rome, but a scandal involving the murder of an
adversary expedited his departure from his native city. Cellini came
of age when the Medicis of Florence were the most powerful family in
Italy, and one of their own was Pope Clement VII. He gushed over
Cellini's work and trusted him with his jewels and the defense of
Rome when Spanish Imperialists sacked the city in 1527. Cellini
turned out to be a talented soldier, as he has us believe he
single-handedly saved the city from greater ruin by killing both The
Duke of Bourbon and the Prince of Orange with his sharpshooting.
Later, under a new papal chief, Pope Paul III, he would be
imprisoned, but manage to escape in spectacular fashion. Leaving Rome
persona non grata, his talents would flourish in the court of
Fontainebleu under the patronage of King Francis I. His
self-destructive tendencies never waning, Cellini was eventually
chased out of Paris in a cloud of intrigue. Returning home, he worked
for Cosimo I de Medici, the Duke of Florence, where he thrived and
struggled, and less than a decade after completing his autobiography,
died of pleurisy at the age of 71.
Cosimo de Medici, autocrat, Cellini's great patron in Florence in his later years
Cellini's prose style is jocular and
conversational, almost as if he had dictated his life story to a
scribe while busy designing the duke's profile on a silver coin. Of
course, this being an autobiography, Cellini freely edits the story
due the priorities of self-aggrandizement. Despite this, the
narrative flows rather well, though unpleasant episodes are left out
(most conspicuously absent were his imprisonments in his fifties for
assault and sodomy). But Cellini is selling us an archetype of an
artist (that when circumstances necessitate, makes both love and war),
who doesn't trifle with (in his estimation) trivial details: “There
was a suitable opportunity for me to speak of my daughter here, and I
did so in order not to distract from other, more important matters. I
shall say nothing more of her till the proper time.” In the instance when Cellini's parents die of the plague he doesn't remark or mourn their
passing. Nevertheless, he waxes poetically on the mutual admiration
he and his contemporary Michelangelo share, indulges us in his
experiments in black magic with a necromancer, and describes in
detail both times he was poisoned by his adversaries. And then there
is his time in prison, where like so many before and after him, he
finds salvation in God, and discovers in himself a halo of
beatification: “From the time I had my vision till now, a light-- a
brilliant splendor-- has rested above my head, and has been clearly
seen by those very few men I have wanted to show it to.” And from
finding and loving God, he then makes his famous prison break, the
narrative never missing a beat.
What makes Cellini's prose such a
delightful read are his prejudices, his asides, his brusqueness. He
is a first-rate raconteur in the Italian tradition. Cellini on his
courtship of a lady: “We had a very agreeable talk together, and it
wasn't about things you can buy in a shop.” Cellini stereotyping:
“I left Naples at night, with the money on my person, in case I
fell victim to the usual Neapolitan custom and was attacked and
murdered.” Cellini hot-tempered: “I was advised to seek redress
by legal means, though my immediate impulse was to cut his arm off.”
Cellini quoting the King of France: “I am certain that such
beautiful work was never known to the ancients: I well remember
having seen all the best works done by the finest craftsmen of all
Italy, but I never saw any that moved me more than this.” Cellini
traveling in the countryside: “It was an enjoyable journey, save
for an incident near La Palice, when a band of robbers, the
Adventurers, tried to murder us. But we fought them off boldly, and
pushed on to Paris. We arrived there safely, singing and laughing all
the way and not meeting the slightest accident.” Cellini describing
a ploy of his French enemies: “They planned to have their revenge
on me and they consulted a Norman lawyer, who advised them that she
should say I had used her in the Italian fashion, that is to say,
unnaturally, like a sodomite.” And Cellini insulting a rival artist
and his rendition of a model of Hercules: “...one can't be sure
whether his face is that of a man or a cross between a lion and an
ox; that it's not looking the right way; and that it's badly joined
to the neck, so clumsily and unskillfully that nothing worse has ever
been seen; and that his ugly shoulders are like the two pommels of an
ass's pack-saddle; that his breasts and the rest of his muscles
aren't based on a man's but are copied from a great sack full of
melons...”
One of Cellini's great works, Perseus holding the head of Medusa
Taking offense at another sculptor's
grandstanding, Cellini quipped, “Outstanding artists act as such, and
brilliant men who create good and beautiful works of art are shown in
a much better light when others praise them than when they praise
themselves so confidently.” Very agreeable but a bit rich, of
course, when the speaker seems to embellish his received accolades.
But this is Cellini's story and so we should take him at his word
because to repudiate the lavish praise is to doubt all the strange
and horrible misadventures too. In the end, he is clearly a
narcissistic psychopath, but a charming one, and so with the blood
spilled long since washed away, we mostly forgive him. While mostly
overlooked as one of the great Renaissance sculptors, Cellini's
autobiography, almost five centuries later, remains a literary
classic. No doubt his ghost, whether it be in heaven, hell, or
lurking somewhere in the halls of Florence's splendid palace museums,
is not displeased with this good turn in posterity.
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