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EDWARD WELLS SOUTHWORTH
FUND

CHISEL, PEN AND POIGNARD
OR
BENVENUTO CELLINI
HIS TIMES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

TBE LIFE OF BIB KENELH DIOBY, by one of bis
Descendants. With 7 Illustrations. 8vo, 16s.
FALKLANDB. With 6 Portraits and 2 other Illustra
tions. 8vo, 10s. 6d.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.

FRONTISPIECjJ

BENVENVTO-GELLINI-

CHISEL, PEN & POIGNARD
OR
BENVENUTO CELLINI
HIS TIMES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Lc^Levtilt., T.
BY THK AUTHOR OF
"THE LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBY," "THE LIFE OF A PRIG," ETC.
WITH NINETEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

TO A LADY.
Cellini sourirait a votre grace pure,
Et dans un vase grec sculptant votre figure,
II vous ferait sortir d'un beau calice d'or,
D'un lys qui devient femme en restant lys encor,
Ou d'un de ces lotus qui lui doivent la vie,
Etranges fleurs de l'art que la nature envie.
—Les Voix InUrieures. Victor Huoo.

LONGMANS; GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1899
All rights restrved

PREFACE.
This book must doubtless risk the criticism that,
if there were one man above all others con
cerning whom there was no need for anything
more to be written, that man was Benvenuto
Cellini, whose autobiography was pronounced
by Horace Walpole to be "more amusing than
any novel ".
With the passing remark that Horace Wal
pole's idea of an amusing novel is likely to
have been The Castle of Otranto, we may go
on to say that the above criticism is open to
both an objection and a reply. The objection
is that such a criticism would practically admit
the disqualification of all modern writers from
expressing their opinions concerning people of
the past, whenever those opinions have been
founded upon records of high literary merit.
The reply is that if ever there were a character
which ought not to be estimated at its owner's
valuation, that character was Benvenuto Cel
lini's.

vi Preface.
Excellent and entertaining as is Cellini s
autobiography, his much less known Treatises,
although for the most part highly technical,
contain many passages quite as good as any
thing in the Life, and they have been freely
quoted in the present volume, to which, again,
has been added information from various ex
traneous sources, bearing upon Cellini, his
times and his contemporaries.
The Vita has been translated into English
by Nugent/Roscoe and ]/r&. Symonds, the
rendering of the last-named translator being far
the fullest and the best. It has also been
translated into German by Goethe and into
French by Leclauche\ An excellent English
translation of the Trattati, from the pen of
Mr. Ashbee, appeared in 1898.
Of critical works upon Cellini, the most
elaborate is the splendidly illustrated Benvenuto
Cellini, in French, by M. E. Plon.
Into the disputed question of the authenticity
of the portraits of Cellini, which is discussed at
great length in the pages of M. Plon, it has not
been considered necessary to enter in these
pages. Four are here given, representing him
at various ages.

CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.
The Cellini and the Medici.

PAGE

The Renaissance — Birth of Cellini — Michael Angelo, the
goldsmith— The Medici— Election of Leo X.— Cellini
exiled from Florence — Torrigiano — Cellini runs away
to Rome — Death of Leo X.  I
CHAPTER II.
Musician, Goldsmith and Artilleryman.
Leo X. — Clement VII. — Villa Farnesina — Gismondo Chigi
— Cellini in the Papal Band — Quarrel with the Bishop
of Salamanca — Cellini deals in antiquities — Plague
in Rome — Artists' Club — Cellini on grotesques — The
War between Francis I. and Charles V.— Siege of
Rome — Cellini goes to Florence — Death of his father 16
CHAPTER III.
Two Murders.
Legitimate line of the Medici put on one side — Parentage
of Alessandro — Revolution in Florence — Cellini at
Florence — Returns to Rome — Other great goldsmiths
— Cellini murders the constable who killed his brother
— His quarrel with, and murder of, Pompeo — He
nearly kills Benedetto  32

viii Contents.
CHAPTER IV.
Quarrels and Incantations. PASS
A burglar — The Pope suspects Cellini of forging money
— Pay and appointments from Clement VII. — Sebas
tian del Piombo — Clement VII. and his two meetings
with Charles V. at Bologna — Cellini's quarrel with
Cardinal Salviati — Angelica — Incantations — Angiolo
Gaddi— Death of Clement VII.— Election of Paul III. 47

CHAPTER V.
Florence and Rome.
Paul III. — Pier Luigi — How Cellini treated an innkeeper
— Cellini goes to Florence — Alessandro de' Medici —
Ottaviano de' Medici — The medal and its reverse —
Return to Rome — Pardon ofthe Assumption — Illness
— Giovanni Gaddi — Florence again — Angry with
Vasari — Return to Rome — Assassination of Ales
sandro — Soderini and Bettini — Election of Cosimo
de' Medici — St. Ignatius and St. Philip Neri . . 61

CHAPTER VI.
In Prison.
Visit of Charles V. to Rome — Latino Juvenale — Cellini's
work for the Emperor — Cellini slandered to the Pope
—Venice— Cardinal Bembo— Cellini's first visit to
Paris — Rosso — Ippolito d' Este — Return to Rome —
Arrest of Cellini— The mad constable of St. Angelo
—Cellini's escape— Cardinal Cornaro — Re-imprison
ment— Castle of St. Angelo— Cellini's religion-
Liberated at request of the Cardinal of Ferrara—
Cellini kills a postmaster  73

Contents. ix
CHAPTER VII.
Paris. PAGE
Ippolito d' Este, Cardinal of Ferrara — Ariosto — Medal of
Duke of Ferrara — Lucretia Borgia — Cellini's second
visit to France — Quarrels with the Cardinal of Ferrara
about his salary — Francis I. — Francis gives Cellini a
castle — The candelabra — The King visits Cellini's
workshop — The salt-cellar — The Nymph of Fontaine
bleau — The Fountain of Fontainebleau — Compli
ments to the King — Offends Madame d'Etampes —
Cardinal of Lorraine  87

CHAPTER VIII.
Madame d'Etampes.
Madame d'Etampes — Guido Guidi — Intruders in Cellini's
castle — Diane de Poitiers — Primaticcio — Acts of
violence — Caterina — Cellini's Jupiter among the
bronzes from the antiques — Quarrel with Madame
d'Etampes — Fortifications of Paris — Things begin
to go badly — Easy way of keeping Cellini in France
— Cellini leaves France — Accused of stealing vases
— End of Madame d'Etampes  99

CHAPTER IX.
Florence.
Return to Florence — Cosimo de' Medici — Order for the
Perseus — The Major-domo — Baccio Bandinelli —
Difficulties — Bust of Cosimo — Unpleasant letters
from France — A very ugly incident — Venice —
Quarrels with Bandinelli  113
b

x Contents.
CHAPTER X.
The Perseus.
PAGE
Casting ofthe Perseus — Michael Angelo's praise of Cellini
— Rome again — Return to Florence — Eleonora,Gcand
Duchess of Tuscany — Offended by Cellini — The
Grand Duke restores antique statuettes— Quarrels
with the Grand Duchess — The two uncoverings of
the Perseus  126
CHAPTER XI.
The End.
Disappointment about payment for the Perseus — The
Grand Duchess's good offer refused — A friend makes
a bad bargain for Cellini — Angry interview with
Grand Duke — Bandinelli!s high valuation of the
Perseus — Cellini tries to get the order for the
Neptune from Bandinelli — The great crucifix —
Death of Bandinelli — C;ll;ni gets, aird loses, the
order for the Neptune — End of the Grand Duchess
— Death of Grand Duke — Poisoning of Cellini —
Marriage — Death of Cellini — Epilogue . . . 140
Index  155

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PLATE

iwuc.

I. Benvenuto Cellini

Facing page

13

II. Pope Leo X.

ji

16

III. Vase 

»

24

IV. Ewer 

jj

36

V. Pope Clement VII. and Charles "^

'¦

52

VI. Pope Paul III. .

D

61

VII. Alessandro de' Medici .

u

64

VIII. Benvenuto Cellini

• »

82

IX. Francis I 

11

90

X. The Salt Cellar .

jj

95

XI. Crystal Vase

ii

97

XII. La Duchesse d'Etampes

ii

100

XIII. The Nymph of Fontainebleau

it

104

XIV. Cosimo de' Medici

ii

118

XV. A Greyhound

ii

126

XVI. Eleonora di Toleda

n

133

XVII. The Perseus

• jj

138

XVIII. Benvenuto Cellini

»

149

CHAPTER I.
THE CELLINI AND THE MEDICI.
The man, whose circumstances and surroundings
form the subject of the following pages, sustained
his own life with his chisel, took the lives of others
with his poignard, and provided entertainment for
future lives with his pen. His name was Benvenuto
Cellini and he was born in Florence in the year 1 500.
The recollection of the Renaissance, which such a
statement inevitably awakens in the mind, will almost
as inevitably recall to the memories of English readers
two names, those of J. A. Symonds and John Ruskin.
To the one the Renaissance was an emancipation of
the intellect, enabling mankind to avail itself of the
treasures of ancient art and literature ; to the other it
was a substitution of paganism for Christianity, of
fashion for originality, and of knowledge at second
hand for knowledge self-discovered, the only know
ledge, in Mr. Ruskin's opinion, of which man has any
right to be proud.1 To less enthusiastic students of
the past, the Renaissance may appear to have been
an incident which, like most human events, and for
that matter like most human characters, ought not
to be distinctly classed as " good " or " bad " without
qualification.
1 Stones of Venice, vol. iii., p. 57.
A

2 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Other influences, besides the Renaissance, had
lately changed, and were still changing, the circum
stances of mankind at the opening of the sixteenth
century. The invention of printing had been an event
in comparison with which the Renaissance itself was
a trifle ; the practical use of the long-known 1 principle
of the mariners' compass had recently doubled the
world so far as its area was known to civilised man ;
and the development2 of fire-arms was causing a
revolution in the conditions of warfare.
In the realm of science, Copernicus was engaged
upon his celebrated discoveries during Cellini's child
hood ; in that of politics, the crafty Machiavelli was at
the same time plotting within Cellini's own city, and, ;
in a sphere partly political and partly religious, the
execution of Savonarola had caused intense excite
ment and fierce discussion only two years before
Cellini's birth, and at his birthplace.
Cellini worked so much for Popes, Cardinals, and
Bishops, and wrote so frequently and so freely about
them, that they need some notice in a prelude to this
humble treatise upon the artist and his times. Most
people would seem to consider religion a topic ill-
timed, improper, and even indecent, when introduced
by anybody except themselves — then it is a different
matter altogether — and its appearance in the first
1 It is claimed by the Chinese that it was discovered by their
ancestors 2000 years before Christ. But by their own account the
Chinese would appear to have invented everything several thousands
of years B.C. and then to have forgotten all about it.
8 The Moors are said to have used artillery of some sort against
Zaragossa in 1118, but field artillery was probably used for the first
time in the fifteenth century. See Chesney's Observations on Fire
arms.

The Popes. 3
chapter of a book on secular matters might be suf
ficient to make many readers lay the volume down ;
but it may be respectfully submitted that the sub
jects of ecclesiastics and religion are not necessarily
synonymous. It so happened that Benvenuto Cellini was born
during the pontificate of perhaps the most notorious
Pontiff in the long list of successors of St. Peter. The
infallibility claimed by Catholics for their Pope does
not, of course, include impeccability ; and the short
comings of Alexander VI. are admitted by the warmest
advocates of the papacy, who can well afford to make
such an admission ; for, of the 259 Popes who have
occupied the papal throne during the nineteen centuries
of the Christian era, only five or six have been charged
with immorality,1 even by the writers most hostile to
the papacy. And, if the temporal powers of the Pope
were sometimes used for such questionable purposes
as to induce Ariosto to say of them : —
He passed a heap of flowers, that erst distilled
Sweet savours, and now noisome odours shed ; 2
it is none the less remarkable that under such a Pope
as Alexander VI. the Church, in general, should
have been so well governed as it was.
At the death of Alexander VI. Cellini was only
four years old, and he lived in the pontificates of no
less than ten Popes, most of whom came in for
troublous times, since they witnessed that most re
markable religious revolution of the Christian era,
1 The Faith of our Fathers, by Cardinal Gibbons, p. 147.
2 Orlando Furioso, canto xxxiv. -lxxx. (Rose's translation).

4 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the so-called Reformation, which began in Cellini's
youth and was completed in his old age.
If the average Englishman were asked to name the
great feature of the early part of the sixteenth century
in Italy, he might not impossibly reply: "the im
morality of the priesthood ".
That the general immorality of that period was
very great is unquestionable.1 Whether it was worse
in Italy than elsewhere, and if ft were, whether the
immorality was the result of the Renaissance, or
whether the Renaissance was the result of the im
morality, we will not pause to inquire. As to the
immorality of priests, it is necessary to begin by qualify
ing the term by adding " some of the " priests, and
then to go on to ask whether, at a time when licen
tiousness was so greatly prevalent, it can be a matter
for surprise that some of those who entered the ranks
of the clergy should have been still tainted by the
pernicious atmosphere of their homes, or that they
should have retained some of the evil habits of their
youth. In the study of such a character as that of Cellini,
a man steeped in vice himself, and ever ready to
impute vice to others, it is well, on the one hand, to
be prepared to face the fact that a certain amount of
immorality was existent among ecclesiastics, and, on
1 The Catholic historian, Dr. Ludwig Pastor, in his History of the
Popes (Antrobus's translation, vol. v., p. 113), says: "Undoubtedly
of all the evils which darken Italian life in this period, the deadliest
was the prevailing immorality. . . . Illegitimate children were not
accounted any disgrace, and hardly any difference was made between
them and those born in wedlock." Referring to the previous cen
tury, he says (p. 114) : " When Pius II. came to Ferrara in 1459, he
was received by seven princes, not one of whom was a legitimate son ".

Monte di Pieta. 5
.*
the other, to be guarded against exaggerations in the
accounts of it. And let it be remembered that if
the sixteenth century produced an Alexander VL, it
also produced a St. Pius V., while the family of
Borgia not only brought forth the ill-reputed Pope,
but also the excellent St. Francis.
The times of Cellini may have been notorious for
the predominance of vice and self-indulgence ; but
they were no less remarkable for the increase in the
numbers of hospitals and beneficent institutions in
Florence.1 So great was the relief from extortion
afforded by the then recently established Monte di
Pieta, that a single Jewish money-lender offered the
Florentine Government 20,000 golden florins to put a
stop to it.2 If the deeds of certain Italian ecclesi
astics would not bear the light, there were at the same
time monks at St. Mark's at Florence, at Monte
Cassino, and elsewhere, who were setting examples of
extraordinary virtue.8
The mania for everything classical and for things
that were pagan, because they were classical, resulted
in the introduction into churches of decorative figures,
professing to represent saints and angels, but much
more resembling the conventional ideas of sybils and
cupids ; yet there was never a time at which the art
of painting more lavishly or more successfully pro
duced works embodying Christian truths, history, and
tradition. Nor would it be true to say that, if
there were many priests of very strict life, they were
exclusively to be found among the simple, un-
1 Pastor's History of the Popes, vol. v., p. 61.
" 2 Napier's Florentine History, vol. iv., p. 4g.
3 Life of St. Philip Neri, by A. Capecelatro, pp. 49, 64.

6 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
educated, and weak-minded, while all the men of
ability and learning were saturated with the spirit of
paganism. Cardinal Ximenes, a man of spotless
morality, was distinguished for his literary culture,
and Cardinal Cajetan was generally reputed to be the
most learned and brilliant of all the theologians since
the time of St. Thomas Aquinas.1
A subject, which engaged the attention of Cellini
far more than religion, was art ; and, in the whole
history of art, no period was of greater interest or
importance than his own. He lived in the days of
Raphael and of Leonardo da Vinci ; among his
acquaintances was Titian, among his friends was
Michael Angelo. The present church of St. Peter's 2
was begun in his infancy. The poet, Ariosto, was in
the zenith of his fame during the first half of Cellini's
life; the musician, Palestrina, became celebrated in
its second half.
Let us pass over Cellini's little-to-be-credited boasts
of ancestry. It is sufficient to remember that his
father, Giovanni, was a professional engineer and an
amateur musician. Nor need we dwell upon the
details of his birth, beyond remarking that his father
welcomed him as " Benvenuto," and gave him that
welcome as a name at his baptism.
The dearest wish of Giovanni was that Benvenuto
should choose music as his profession ; but this was
not at all to the tastes of the boy, which, like those of
most sons, were the exact opposite of those of his
progenitor. The lad succeeded in inducing his father
1 Pastor's Popes, vol. iv., p. 85.
* The foundation stone was laid when he was six years old.

The Medici. 7
to place him under a Florentine goldsmith, named
Michael Angelo, an artist ] not to be confused with
the great sculptor of the same name. This Michael
Angelo was quite at the head of his craft in Florence ;
and he not only set gems with great skill in ladies'
ornaments, but also designed and prepared bejewelled
crests and helmets for knights to wear at tourna
ments.2 . . . Shields, helms, and spears,
Hung high, with diamonds flaming and with gold.3
As will by-and-by appear, his master's son, Baccio
Bandinelli, eventually became Cellini's greatest and
bitterest enemy.
Benvenutd Cellini tells us that his father was the
"attached friend of the House of Medici," just as
modern men in the position of humble dependants
are fond of speaking of their haughty patrons behind
their backs as "very old friends," and his own life is
so connected with that family as to render it desirable
to recall the reader's memory very briefly to a few of
the details of its well-known history.
During the fourteenth century the democracy of
Florence was chiefly disturbed internally by the dis
putes between the Guelphs, the party most faithful
to the Pope, and the GhibeUines,4 the faction most
in favour of the emperor ; but, in the fifteenth, a new
1 Goldsmiths were classed among artists in Italy, and several
became painters, among them being Orcagna, Ghiberti, Antonio
del Pollainolo,- Franeia, Verrochio, and Andrea del Sarto.
2 Vasari, iv., p. 232. 3 Milton.
4 The reader scarcely needs reminding that Dante was an adherent
to this party.

8 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
power began to assert itself. If the aristocracy of
brewers was not to appear until four hundred years
later, that of bankers had already come into existence.
The banking trade of Florence was enormous ; among
its clients were the kings of England, and, of all the
Florentine bankers, the most affluent were the Medici,
who at one time had sixteen branches in different
parts of Europe.1
Great men of commerce, the Medici gradually grew
into even greater citizens. They did not disturb the
republic, nor did they take any special title, until
their influence had become so paramount as to render
them more like the Caesars in their relations to the
Roman Commonwealth, than like powerful members
of a late medieval democracy.2
Respecting the political conduct of the Medici,
posterity may hold various opinions ; but on one
point no one can fairly deny them honour. As a
family they were the greatest patrons of the arts and
sciences that the world has ever known, and it is
chiefly as patrons of art that we are to be brought
in contact with them in these pages.
Few men did more to bring about the great
classical revival, commonly called the Renaissance,
than did Cosimo de' Medici,3 who availed himself ol
his opportunities in having agents and correspondents
in many parts of Eastern Europe, and even Asia, to
collect manuscripts in the Hebrew, Greek, Chaldaic,
1 Napier's Florentine History, iv., 33.
2 Freeman's General Sketch, pp. 221, 222.
8 He died long before the birth of Cellini. Later on we shall have
much to do with another Cosimo, who became Grand Duke of
Tuscany.

Soderini. 9
Arabic, and Indian languages.1 As to the encourage
ment given by the Medici in later days to painters
and sculptors, it is too well known to need description.
Giovanni Cellini had been much employed by
Lorenzo the Magnificent before the birth of Ben
venuto ; but the star of the Medici was not then in the
ascendant. Lorenzo's son, Pietro 1 1., had been ex
pelled from Florence two years before Benvenuto was
born, and three years later he was drowned. Pier
Soderini, who had meanwhile been made gonfaloniere
of Florence, became almost as munificent a patron of
Giovanni Cellini, and, we suppose, as "attached a
friend," as had been Lorenzo de' Medici, and he
wisely urged him to teach Benvenuto other arts
beside music. To his own personal interests Pier
Soderini was less alive, for he unfortunately consented
to the holding of a Council of French Cardinals at
Pisa. And thereon Pope Julius II. took the side of the
Medici, and induced the Viceroy of Naples, who was
general-in-chief of the army of the anti-French
League, to enter Tuscany, depose Soderini, and
restore the Medici.
When Benvenuto was twelve years old, Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent and afterwards Pope Leo X., entered
Florence with his two nephews, one of whom was
heir to the government, and Giovanni assumed the
rule of the city during the heir's minority. At first
all went well ; but the very next year the influence of
the Medici began to wane, again, and the republican
1 Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, 66. One of Cosimo's
librarians became a Pope — Nicholas V. — and founded the Vatican
Library.

io Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
spirit to revive. At that time the Medici had lost
much of their wealth, and they were only maintained ¦ •
as rulers of Florence by the support of the Pope and
the anti-French League.
Then a dangerous conspiracy against the Medici was
discovered, and among those supposed to be impli
cated in it was Machiavelli, who was arrested and
tortured.1 The death of Pope Julius II. brought about a
change in the fortunes of the Medici. Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici was elected Pope, and took
the title of Leo X. This Pope began his ecclesias
tical career very early in life. He received the
tonsure at seven, he was made an Abbot — though
only nominally, in order to be entitled to the
revenue of a certain abbey — at eight, and he was
created a Cardinal at thirteen, with the condition that
he was not to take his seat in the sacred congregation!
until he was considerably older. Yet even twenty-
five years later, when he was elected Pope, he was
not a priest, nor was it till four days after the
election that, at the age of thirty-eight, he was
ordained to the priesthood.
With his election to the papacy the power of the
Medici was restored at Florence ; and great was the
delight of the Florentines at the choice of their citizen
as a Pope. It is said that 40,000 golden crowns were
spent in erecting Leo X.'s arms over the churches,
public buildings, and even private houses in the city.
On the occasion of his first visit to Florence, as
Pope, his reception was magnificent. A temporary
fagade in front of S. Maria del Fiore was painted by
1 Napier's Florentine History, iv., 693.

Rejoicings at Florence. n
Andrea del Sarto. Works by Cellini's future enemy,
Bandinelli, decorated the streets.1 The triumphal
car was painted by Pontormo. Among the sym
bolical figures in the procession was a naked boy,
completely gilded, to represent the age of gold.
Medical science was not then sufficiently advanced
to recognise the fatal effects of stopping the pores of
the skin over the whole body, and the poor child
died.2 A Genoese, who happened to be in Florence,
witnessed these gorgeous demonstrations of pride and
joy, and he cynically observed that, when Florence
could boast of as many Popes as Genoa, its citizens
would be better able to judge how far the influence
of native pontiffs advanced the freedom of common
wealths. The new Pope invited Giovanni Cellini to go to
Rome and establish himself there ; but love of
home led him to reject an offer apparently so con
ducive to his interests.
It was then arranged that the young Lorenzo
II. should rule Florence under the direction of
Giulio de' Medici,3 another Cardinal of that great
family who was also destined to become a Pope ;
and this Cardinal practically exercised absolute
sovereignty, obtaining great popularity among the
Florentines by the mildness and equity of his govern
ment as well as by the sociability and urbanity of
his manners. He appears to have been on friendly
terms with the family of Cellini, and he soon did
1 Roscoe's Leo X., iii., 55-57. 2 Vasari, iv., p. 346.
8 Natural son of Giuliano, a younger brother of Lorenzo the
Magnificent.

12 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
them good service ; for when Benvenuto Cellini and
his brother were exiled from Florence, for taking
part in a street quarrel, the good-natured Cardinal
had them recalled. The Cardinal, however, advised"
Giovanni to send Benvenuto to Bologna, and there
to place him under a music master.
At Bologna Benvenuto took a daily lesson in
what he called "that accursed art," but he also
worked under a goldsmith, and he certainly lived
with, and may have studied under, an illuminator ;
of great celebrity. If he did not give as much atten
tion as his father could have wished to his musical
studies, he pleased his parent in another way ; for
he began to earn money, both by his goldsmith's
work and by his drawing ; and of this money his
father was ever graciously ready to partake.
Benvenuto's quick temper having caused him to
take offence at home, not long after his return to
Florence, he ran away to Pisa, where he worked ;
under another goldsmith. There he fell ill of a fever
and eventually went back to his father at Florence
to recover from its effects.
Soon afterwards he was very near to coming, at
the persuasion of Torrigiano, to the land of the
people termed by that sculptor "those beasts of
Englishmen," there to work for King Henry VIII.
Benvenuto, however, took such a dislike to Tor
rigiano, that although he "felt a wish to go to
England with him," he "now could never bear the
sight of him ".
As every one will remember, it was Torrigiano
who broke Michael Angelo's nose — the nose of the
great sculptor, and not that of the goldsmith— in

PLATE I.

Benvenuto Cellini.
Engraved by Allegrini, after Zocchi.

A Broken Nose. ij
the small chapel in the Carmine at Florence which
contains the celebrated frescoes by Masaccio.
" Clenching my fist," said Torrigiano to Cellini
with great satisfaction when describing the incident,
"I gave him such a blow on the nose that I felt
bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my
knuckles, and this mark of mine he will carry with
him to the grave," words which "begat in Cellini
a hatred of the man." 1
After finishing the well-known monument to Henry
VII. in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey,
Torrigiano left England and went to Spain, where he
made a statue of the Virgin for Duke Arcos. Judging
from two enormous bags of money sent to him in
payment for it, he imagined his fortune to be
made, but on opening them he found the coins to be
of the lowest possible value, and not worth in
all thirty ducats, whereupon he broke the statue in
his rage. In revenge, the duke accused him of heresy,
for which he was thrown into the Inquisition, where
he deliberately starved himself to death.2
Once more Benvenuto became angry with his
father " for the same old reason of the music," an art
which his parent persistently pressed him to adopt as
his profession. To music in itself Benvenuto had no
objection. On the contrary, after toiling with his
chisel, he found it a recreation and a solace. But his
father wanted him to make music his trade and his
1 In most cases, where Cellini's own words are quoted without
reference, they are taken from his autobiography, the renderings
being either Mr. Symonds's or my own. When they are from the
Treatises, their source is mentioned in a footnote.
2 Vasari, ii., 485-488.

14 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
toil. Had they then been written, Benvenuto might
aptly, if not very respectfully, have addressed his
father in the words of Shakespeare : —
Preposterous ass 1 that never read so far,
To know the cause why music was ordained !
Was it not to refresh the mind of man,
After his studies, or his usual pain ?
To escape this persecution Benvenuto once more ran
away, and on this occasion to Rome. There he worked
under an able maker of gold and silver vases and
dishes, a branch of metal-work in which Cellini after
wards so greatly distinguished himself.
After two years of hard work, having earned some
money, he returned to his home at Florence, where
his father took his gold with benedictions, but tor
mented him again about " that accursed music".
Nothing could have been much worse than Cellini's
education, from his own account of it He was
eternally pestered to study an art for which he had
no liking and to adopt a profession which he detested.
He was allowed to run away from home and to return
when he chose, with impunity. When after an esca
pade of this sort he brought back any money, it was
readily accepted.
Cellini was now twenty-three : age had not tempered
his impetuosity, and soon after his return to Florence he
got into another street broil, for which he was arrested
and condemned to pay a heavy fine. On leaving the
court he went to the house of his accuser and struck
him in the breast with a dagger. Fortunately the
clothes of his victim prevented the fatal result in
tended by Cellini. To escape the consequences of
this attempted crime Cellini fled from . Florence,

Death of Leo X. 15
disguised in the habit of a friar, and, after various
adventures, he went again to Rome.
Leo X. was dead ; 1 Adrian VL, who had succeeded
him, reigned for only a few weeks ; and now another
member of the Medici family, Cardinal Giulio, the
ruler of Florence, had just been elected Pope, and
had taken the title of Clement VII.
1 He was said by some people to have been poisoned at the
instigation of Francis I. See Napier's Florentine History, vol. iv.,
pp. 288, 289.

i6

CHAPTER II.
MUSICIAN, GOLDSMITH AND ARTILLERYMAN.
Benvenuto Cellini reached Rome at a very favour
able moment for a young artist. Art was then the
fashion ! Pope Leo X. (see plate ii.) had endeavoured
to make Rome the general resort of painters, sculptors,
architects and men of letters. More serious matters,
however, had occupied the greater part of that Pope's
attention. It was during his pontificate that Luther
published his Theses (ninety-five in number) ; x and, if
Leo X. was tolerant, gentle, and slow in moving
against Luther, he at last issued the famous Bull
of excommunication which Luther publicly burned.
1 " I will not deny," says Cardinal Gibbons in The Faith of our
Fathers, p. 434, " that Indulgences have been abused ; but are not
the most sacred things liable to be perverted ? This is the proper
place to refer briefly to the Bull of Leo X. proclaiming the Indul
gences which afforded Luther a pretext for his apostasy. Leo
determined to bring to completion the magnificent church of St.
Peter, commenced by his predecessor Julius II. With that view he
issued a Bull, promulgating an Indulgence to such as would contri
bute some voluntary offering toward the erection of that grand
cathedral. Those, however, who contributed nothing, shared equally
in the treasury of the Church, provided they complied with the
essential conditions for gaining the Indulgence, the only indisputable
condition enjoined by the Papal Bull were sincere repentance and
confession of sins. D'Aubigne" admits this truth, though in a faltering
manner, when he observed that ' in the Pope's Bull something was
said ofthe repentance of the heart and the confession of the lips'.
The applicants for the Indulgence knew well that, no matter how
munificent were their offerings, these would avail them nothing
without true contrition of heart."

Alinari Photo. Pope Leo X.
By Raphael, in the Pitti Palace, Florence.

Character of Leo X. 17
Indeed it may be said that the Reformation began
under this Pope. It was also during his reign that
the great war broke out between the Emperor Charles
V. and Francis I. of France, both of whom courted
the alliance of the Pope.
In all this trouble and turmoil Leo X. found time.
for other pursuits.1 He it was who engaged Raphael
to paint frescoes in the Vatican, as well as to make a
fresh plan for St. Peter's, and in every way that lay
in his power he tried to further the causes of art and
of science. He did much, again, to encourage church
music, and he was well qualified to direct such an
endeavour by his own scientific knowledge of har
mony, his correct ear and his fine voice.
Led X. was as fond of sports and pastimes as of
arts and sciences. He was an excellent chess-player ;
he was an enthusiastic card-player, and he was
devoted to hunting and hawking. A drawback in
the last-mentioned amusements must have been his
short-sightedness, which prevented him from seeing
distant objects without a glass. He was undoubtedly
fond of pleasure and excitement ; and he may justly
be quoted as a precedent by sporting ecclesiastics ;
but, to his credit be it spoken, even the Protestant
historian, Roscoe,2 declares him to have been, " not
only in his early years, but after his elevation to the
pontificate, an example of chastity and decorum ."

*In his Life of Leo X. Roscoe says (vol. iv., p. 383): "That
astounding proficiency in the improvement of the human intellect was
made during the pontificate of Leo X. is universally allowed. That
such proficiency is principally to be attributed to the exertions oi
that pontiff will now perhaps be thought equally indisputable."
2 Vol. iv., p. 365. B

1 8 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Pope Clement VII. was as fond of art and of
literature as Leo X., and he was well informed on
many subjects, being able to " converse with the same
technical knowledge on mechanics and hydraulics, as
on questions of philosophy and theology".1
Cellini describes him as " an excellent connoisseur,"
and elsewhere,2 he says of him : " Then came that
luckless Pope Clement, and he helped and furthered
the arts too, 'tis true, but he had so much adversity in
his papacy, and there was so much trouble in the
land, that he could never help as much as his kindly
soul longed to do ".
St. Peter's and the Vatican mean so much to the
modern visitor to Rome that it may be worth con
sidering their condition at the time of Cellini's second
arrival in Rome. Four enormous piers, with the
arches springing from them, standing high above their
surroundings, were the only completed promise of
the future St. Peter's. Walls in different stages of
erection, and piles of masonry with the scaffoldings^
and ropes and tools and litter, which inevitably accom
pany the building of a large church, made a chaos of
the space now occupied by what some critics have
blamed as being too even and uniform an edifice.
Raphael was dead, and the work — work which
went but slowly — was carried on under Baldassare
Peruzzi. As the spectator approached the buildings of St.
Peter's and looked to the right, he could see the
newly finished Loggie of Raphael and the portion of
the Vatican where stands the Sixtine Chapel, then
1 Ranke's Popes, vol. i., p. gg.
2 Treatises, p. 52.

The Villa Farnesina. 19
less than fifty years old and undergoing decoration
by Michael Angelo. Still further to the right, the
Pauline Chapel and the Sala Regia were unbuilt,
as also was the imposing pile of buildings now
occupied by the Pope. Even - the oldest part of the
present Vatican Palace, the Torre Borgia, so called
because it was occupied by Alexander VI. , had only
been built some seventy years.
Clement VII. was living in the Villa Belvedere,
and Cellini writes of being summoned to his presence
there. The Lateran Palace was more or less in ruins
and the Quirinal Palace was not begun until three or
four years after Cellini's death.
Nothing flattered the great patrons of art more
than to see young students copying the pictures in
their palaces, and when the wife of the rich Roman
banker, Gismondo Chigi, found Cellini copying a
recently finished fresco by Raphael, in her beautiful
little villa Farnesina, she spoke encouragingly to him,
and, on learning that he was a goldsmith, asked him
to sketch a design for the setting of one of her jewels.
This led to her giving him an order, and, when the
work was finished, she asked his charge. He replied
that her satisfaction was sufficient payment ; money
he did not desire.
" Friend Benvenuto," said the lady, " have you
never heard it said that when the poor give to the
rich, the devil laughs?"
" What a pleasure it would be to see the poor devil
enjoying a good laugh, in the midst, of all his
troubles ! " answered Cellini.
The next day the lady sent Cellini a very hand
some present ; and, on hearing of this, the master

20 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
under whom he worked was so filled with jealousy
that he gave vent to a torrent of blasphemy. The
next time Cellini met his patroness he said : " Ah,
Signora, I wished to make the devil laugh : you
have made him blaspheme worse than ever".
Instigated by constant letters from his father,
Cellini continued to practise on hfs cornet, and his
proficiency on this instrument becoming known, he
was persuaded, sorely against his will, to practise
with the Papal band, in order to play in it on one
of the Pope's festas. When the performance had
taken place, the Pope was delighted and inquired
the name of the new cornet-player. On hearing
that he was a son of Giovanni Cellini, whom he had
known in Florence, he desired him to join his band
permanently. A bystander remarked that Cellini
was not a musician by profession, but a goldsmith.
Thereupon the Pope said that Cellini should make
plate for him as well as music.
This was really the beginning of his fortunes,
and it is quite possible that he might never have
attained his great celebrity in his favourite art, unless
he had been brought to the notice of the Pope by
means of " that accursed music," which he had
hitherto regarded as the chief obstacle to the de
velopment of his beloved handicraft.
Considering Giovanni's anxiety that his son should
adopt music as his profession, it might be thought
that, by getting into the Pope's band, Benvenuto
had done the best he could for his father ; as a
matter of fact, he nearly killed him ; for so excessive
was the old man's joy, on hearing the news, that it
brought on a fit, which very nearly proved fatal.

The Bishop of Salamanca. 21
Through the influence of his friend, Gio. Francisco
Penni, one of Raphael's favourite pupils and assistants,
Cellini obtained the patronage of the Bishop of Sala
manca, a very rich and eccentric personage, who gave
him an order to make a large silver ewer for holding
water on his sideboard. Cellini's obligatory practis-
ings with the Papal band — " my slavery to that
accursed music," as he again calls it — robbed him of
much valuable time which he would otherwise have
spent upon the bishop's silver ewer. This loss of
time annoyed Cellini, but the delay much more exas
perated the bishop, who sent every day to inquire
whether the vase was finished ; and, when at length
he received it, he exclaimed : " I swear that I will
take as long in paying Cellini as he has taken to
make it ". This speech was reported to Cellini, who
"fell to cursing all Spain, and everyone who wished
well to it".
Now the handle of the silver vase had been made
'to work automatically by a very delicate spring, and
one of the bishop's suite, in handling it, '' with loutish
violence" broke this spring. Forthwith the bishop
sent the vase to Cellini with instructions to mend it
as quickly as possible.
When the bishop's butler came to take back the
silver ewer a few hours later, Cellini said that he
would deliver it up on receiving payment for it — not
before. The butler went away in a rage ; and shortly
afterwards the bishop's major-domo appeared with
several Spaniards, threatening force. This party
Cellini put to flight by pointing a loaded gun at
them. Later still came Penni, through whom the
order for the vase had been received, and he guaran-

22 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
teed that, if Cellini would take it to the bishop, the
Bishop would give him the full payment.
When Cellini had presented himself with the silver
ewer, the bishop " spouted out a torrent of such lan
guage as only priests and Spaniards have at their
command," and ordered Cellini to write out a receipt.
That, said Cellini, he would be delighted to do when
he had received the money. At this " the bishop's
rage continued to rise " ; but, before the end of the
interview, he paid the price of the vase in good coin.
This story was told to the Pope, who was greatly
amused by it, and the bishop, hearing of the Pope's
entertainment at his expense, although much annoyed,
thought it judicious to try to secure Cellini's good will
by promising him further orders. Cellini replied that
he should ever be at his lordship's service, on one
condition — that he should invariably be paid in
advance !
Orders then came in from the Pope and from several
of the cardinals.
In addition to the work which he did at their re
quest in his own art, Cellini drove a brisk trade with
his patrons in antique medals, cameos, and jewels,
which he purchased from Lombard peasants. These
peasants used to come to Rome at certain seasons
to till the vineyards, and while digging in them they
found many such treasures. On the other hand,
the famous surgeon, Da Carpi, bought some small
vases made by Cellini, and passed them off, in other
parts of I tal)-, as antiques.
Cellini now began to earn a great deal of money, and
he was very industrious. As a recreation he used to
shoot pigeons among the ruins with a gun of his own

The Plague. 23
manufacture. He tells us that he always found his
art progressing better when he went out often for
a little fresh air, exercise, and amusement, by in
dulging in this sport, than when he spent the whole
of his days in his workshop.
In the year 1523 the plague broke out with "such
extraordinary violence," says Cellini, "that many
thousands died of it every day in Rome ". The
miracle was that, with the then prevalent notions of
doctoring, anybody should have recovered from it.
Cellini's contemporary, the celebrated surgeon, Am
broise Pare\ gravely tells us that a Scythian physician
stopped an outbreak of plague in a certain city "by
causing all dogs, cats, and such like beasts that were
in the city, to be killed and casting their carcases up
and down the streets, that so by the causing of this
new putrid vapour as a stranger, the former pes
tiferous infection, as an old guest, was put out of its
lodging, and so the plague ceased ".1 As signs of the
approach of the plague, he mentions an unusual excess
of either falling stars, mushrooms, or grasshoppers ; and
he says that some doctors held the opinion that every
possible crevice, or other means of ventilation, ought
to be carefully closed in the chambers of plague
patients. Another specimen of the medical knowledge of the
times was afforded when the Italian doctor, Jerome
Cardan, who was born only a year later than Cellini,
and the Franco-Spanish physician, Cassanante, dis
puted as to whether the Archbishop of St. Andrews
was suffering from a " distillation from the brain into
1 His Works, trans, from the Latin, p. 4g4.

ia. Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the lungs," or whether " the matter of the brain had
become so rarefied that it showed unhealthy activity
in absorbing moisture from other parts".1
Cellini himself was attacked by the plague. The
father of his apprentice was physician to one of the
cardinals, and the son asked his father to come and
see Cellini, who, said he, was " in bed with some
trifling indisposition ".
When the doctor saw that it was a case of plague,
he said he was ruined, as he dared not run the risk of
carrying the infection to the cardinal.
" Why, father," replied the boy, " my master is
worth far more than all the cardinals in Rome."
From that time the doctor remained with Cellini
and nursed him until he recovered
In order to recruit his strength Cellini went to stay
with that rather affected artist, II Rosso, at a place
near to Civita Vecchia, where he rode about on "a
little wild pony, covered with hair four fingers long,
and exactly as big as a well-grown bear ; indeed he
looked just like a bear". While riding on the shore,
Cellini was attacked by a band of ruffians, who had
disembarked from a Moorish privateer, and he only
escaped by the pony taking " an incredibly wide
leap ". Old Pepys would doubtless have added here :
" This I take to be one of his devilish lies ".
He was now working almost entirely as a gold
smith, and he had not yet embarked upon statuary.
This, therefore, may be the best place for noticing
his remarks on arabesques and grotesques. He says
that arabesques are called grotesques "by the ignorant".
1 Jerome Cardan, by W. G. Waters, p. 118.

Alinari Photo.

Vase.
In the Pitti Palace, Florence.
Ascribed to Cellini, or his School.

Arabesques and Grotesques. 25
This name of grotesques was given to them because
they were found in certain subterranean caverns in
Rome by students of antiquity, which caverns were
formerly chambers, hot-baths, cabinets for study,
halls, etc. As those vaulted rooms were commonly
called "grottoes," the word "grotesque" was applied
to the designs found in them — a wrong term, says
Cellini; for the ancients "delighted in composing
monsters out of goats, cows and horses," and called
" these chimerical hybrids by the name of monsters ".
As to the foliage used in design, Cellini says that
the Turkish arabesques were " only composed of arum
leaves with a few small sunflowers," while the Lom
bards constructed " very beautiful patterns by copying
the leaves of briony and ivy in exquisite curves " ; but
the Tuscans and the Romans imitated "the leaves of
the acanthus, commonly called bear's-foot, with its
stalks and flowers curling in divers wavy lines, and
into these arabesques one may excellently well insert
the figures of little birds and different animals, by
which the good taste of the artist is displayed ". And
here are to come in the " monsters," partly vegetable,
partly animal, partly human. " Some hints for crea
tures of this sort can be observed in nature among
the wild flowers, as, for instance, in snap-dragon and
some few other plants, which must be combined and
developed with the help of fanciful imaginings by
clever draughtsmen."
In " fanciful imaginings " Cellini had few equals ; in
anatomy, with the exceptions of Michael Angelo and
Giulio Romano, perhaps no superior, and his sensi
bility to every kind of physical beauty was intense.
It was in thought, in idealism, and in sensibility to

26 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
intellectual and moral beauty that he failed. He was
entirely ignorant of the truth so well expressed by
Young : —
What's true beauty but fair virtue's face —
Virtue made visible in outward grace ?
What's female beauty, but an air divine,
Through which the mind's all genUe graces shine ?
They, like the sun, irradiate all between ;
The body charms, because the soul is seen.
Hence men are often captives of a face,
They .know not why, of no peculiar grace :
Some forms, though bright, no mortal man can bear,
Some, none resist, though not exceeding fair.
In the faces of Cellini's figures, blank animal in
stinct takes the place of an expression of soul and
intellect ; and according to his own descriptions of his
love affairs, mere animal appetite, totally devoid of
any higher or more refined affection, was obviously
the motive.
For a time, however, Cellini had to relinquish his
art for rougher work. As he tells us, " the whole
world was now in warfare ".
We hear much in our days of heredity. Now, the
most strongly marked propensity inherited in some
families is that of marrying heiresses, and if there ever
was a family in which this propensity was deeply en
grained, it was that which produced Charles V. of
Spain. The Low Countries, Burgundy, Castile and
Austria, had all been added to its possessions by
marriages, and through his maternal grandfather,
Maxmilian, Charles V. inherited the empire. This
title was disputed by Francis I. of France, and the
consequent quarrel, combined with others, gave rise

"Charles V. and Francis- 1. 27
to a violent war. To some extent the war was a
continuation of the quarrel between the Houses of
Anjou and Aragon for Sicily, as that in its turn had
been a continuation of the older dispute between the
Guelphs and the GhibeUines.1
Italy had become the battlefield of Europe. In
the closing years of the fifteenth century Charles VII.
of France had overrun Italy,2 and had conquered
Naples and lost it again. In the second decade of
the sixteenth Francis I. invaded Italy in order to win
the Duchy of Milan. In 1525 Charles V. of Spain
conquered Francis I. and took him prisoner at Pavia,
and although he liberated his captive, after making
stringent terms with him, the war was renewed in
the following year.
In 1521 Pope Leo X.3 allied himself to Charles V.
But his successor and relative, Pope Clement VII., took
the side of Francis I., and just when Cellini spoke of
the " whole world being in warfare," that most Catholic.
king and emperor, Charles V., was sending a mixed
army of Lutherans and Catholics to invade and pillage
the city of Rome, with the Pope himself inside it.
But this had not been the beginning of sieges and
sorrows for Rome and for the Pope.
Little more than a few weeks earlier, Clement VII.
had been besieged by the great Ghibelline family of
Colonna, under Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, the ally of
1 Such was Freeman's opinion. See his General Sketch, p. 255.
8 It was during the consequent confusion that the Florentines
seized the opportunity of turning out the Medici.
3 Another ofthe allies of Charles V. was Henry VIII. of England,
and it was in the same year in which Leo X. joined the alliance
that he gave Henry VIII. the title of "Defender of the Faith" for
his defence of the Church against Luther.

28 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the emperor. On that occasion the Pope quickly came
to terms with his enemy, but shortly afterwards, by the
help of the Orsini, he attacked the Colonna, burned
several of their villages and deprived Pompeo Colonna
of his cardinal's hat. Cellini had been among the
bravi hired by Alessandro del Bene, who appears to
have made him captain of the little force which he
engaged to defend his palace, after the fashion of
Roman noblemen in times of war or tumult. When
the second and great siege of Rome began, under the
Constable of Bourbon, Alessandro took Cellini and
the rest of his little band of warriors to help in the
defence of the city walls, where Cellini asserts that he
himself killed the Constable with a bullet from his
arquebuse. When the Papal forces were driven back from the
walls by the besieging army and had been withdrawn
into the Castle of St. Angelo, the Captain Pallone de
Medici, says Cellini, "claimed me as being of the
Papal household, and forced me to abandon Ales
sandro, which I had to do much against my will ".
The allies of his holiness treated his people little
better than did his enemies. Some troops, sent to
Rome at his request by Giovanni de' Medici, made
such disturbances in the city, says Cellini, " that it was
ill living in open shops," and before long the Pope
found their behaviour so intolerable that he disbanded
and dismissed them. On the other hand the Duke
of Urbino, who was expected to attack the Imperial
troops on the Pope's behalf when on their way to
Rome, failed to do so ; but whether from laziness, or
from cowardice, or from hatred to the house of Medici,
has never been clearly demonstrated.

The Sack of Rome. 29
Concerning this sack of Rome the Archbishop
Capecelatro writes : " A drunken, furious horde . . .
slew, and sacked, and pillaged, and destroyed houses
and palaces ; they imprisoned and tortured the citizens,
men, women and children ; they profaned the churches
with ostentatious sacrilege ; the Blessed Sacrament,,
the relics of the saints, all holy things were desecrated
and scattered about ; priests and bishops were treated
with every insult and indignity and cruelty, and
other unutterable outrages not to be thought of
without a shudder ".1 And these iniquities were
perpetrated by the troops of a potentate who prided
himself upon his devotion to the Church, to the Holy
See, and to the Holy Father.
Meanwhile a desultory fire upon the soldiers of
the emperor was kept up from the tower of St.
Angelo ; and Cellini was there employed as an
artilleryman. His swagger about his feats in that
capacity is in itself, to leave aside other internal
evidence, enough to compel incredulity as to half, or
more than half, the statements in his autobiography.
"If I were to relate in detail all the splendid
things I did in that infernal work of cruelty," says he,
" I should make the world stand by and wonder."
Most of his readers may be more ready to believe
his admission that on one occasion Cardinal Orsini
recommended that he should be hanged for firing
a cannon contrary to orders.
One of the anecdotes of his feats reads funnily
in these days of modern artillery. In the Prati —
the meadow below the Castle of St. Angelo — Cellini
1 Life of St. Philip Neri, p. 81.

30 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
observed a man dressed in red, at a distance allowing
his features to be recognised, and determined to have
a shot at him. For this purpose he selected a cannon
called "a gerfalcon — a piece of ordnance larger and
longer than a swivel, and about the size of a demi-
culverin ''. A demi-culverin, it may be observed, was
a long and slender nine-pounder. Cellini "aimed it
exactly at the man in red, elevating it prodigiously,
because a piece of that calibre could hardly be ex
pected to carry true at such a distance". Of course
the cannon ball hit the man ! " One could see the
fellow cut in two fair halves."1 Cellini adds, "few
were the shots of mine that missed their mark".
Notwithstanding Cellini's feats of arms, the condi
tion of the Papal army within the fortress became
desperate ; therefore the Pope was anxious to secure
the valuable Papal gems, and, for this purpose, he
sent for Cellini, entrusted him with the tiaras and
other Papal jewels, and ordered him to take from
them all their precious stones. This he did very
carefully, and, having wrapped them separately in pieces
of paper, he sewed them in the clothes of the Pope
and of his Cavalierino. Then he melted down the
settings, which produced gold weighing about 200
lbs., and this he took to the Pope, except about ij
lb., which he quietly pocketed, because he was not
satisfied with the payment given to him by the Pope
for his trouble. It is but fair to say that, some time
1 A distinguished English regiment lately had, and probably still
has, a MS. book, termed " The Lie Book," in which every uncredited
story told by its officers was immediately written down with the name
of the teller. Such a book might have been serviceable in the Castle
of St. Angelo.

Death of Cellini's Father. 31
afterwards, he confessed this to the Pope himself and
received absolution.
The terrible sack of Rome came to an end at last,
peace was signed ; and soon afterwards Cellini went
to Florence. As the plague was raging in that
city, Cellini's father urged him to go to Mantua until
it abated. Cellini acted upon his father's suggestion ;
but, when he returned to Florence, he found that in
the meantime his father had died of the plague.
It is said that 40,000 people died of that dread
disease in Florence in 1527.1
1 Symonds in his Life of Cellini, p. 81, footnote. He gives Carpani
as his evidence.

32

CHAPTER III.
TWO MURDERS.
It may be observed here, for the benefit of readers
unacquainted with Cellini's autobiography, if such
there be, that the merest sketch can be given in these
pages of the many incidents and details so graphically
described in that entertaining volume. In its compila
tion Cellini employed, as his amanuensis, a youth named
Michele di Goro Vestri, to whom he dictated the bulk
of it ; parts, again, he dictated to another secretary,
and some of it he wrote with his own hand. Now it
is remarkable that the general style of the book is not
at all suggestive of dictated work. It runs on in the
free and easy manner of a very chattering sort of
talker, a manner to which pauses, and questionings
such as "Have you written that yet?" and "How
does the last sentence read ? " would be fatal. Indeed
a reader taking up the book, without introduction,
would be much more likely to consider it too
rapidly written, than to imagine that it had been
produced by the slow and embarrassing medium of
dictation. Its style, on the contrary, is quite consistent with
written recollections of autobiographical conversation ;
and, if such it be, it reflects great credit upon Michele
di Goro Vestri. If that amanuensis possessed the
ability which such a supposition would accord to him,
the question might arise whether so gifted a writer

,i , i

Alessandro de' Medici. 33
may not have made Cellini's good stories a little
better with the help of his own imagination.
It is true that the style of the autobiography has
much in common with that of the Treatises, which
Cellini certainly wrote himself ; but, while many parts
of the Treatises are as smart as anything in the
autobiography, they are far less embroidered with
gossiping details. To a considerable extent their
difference of subject would account for this ; but,
even when due allowance is made on this score,
there appears to the present writer to be some
slight variation between the mannerisms of the two
works. In any case Cellini must have seen the autobio
graphy after it was written, since he submitted it to a
literary friend for revision— a treatment which that
friend declared would spoil its force and crispness —
so that Cellini is responsible for its contents, whether
true or false, and whether his own or another's.
When Rome had been sacked there were great
rejoicings at Florence among the revolutionary party.
After Cardinal Giulio de' Medici had given up the
government of Florence to become Pope Clement
VII., he had put aside the legitimate branch of the
Medici family in favour of the reputed illegitimate
descendants of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Alessandro
de' Medici was called the son of Lorenzo II., who had
succeeded his father Lorenzo the Magnificent in the
governorship of Florence ; and this Alessandro, a boy
of eleven or twelve, was by Clement VII. appointed
Governor of Florence, under the rule of the Cardinal
of Cortona. Roscoe contradicts, as " very improbable,
the ill-natured rumour that Alessandro was not the
C

34 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
son of Lorenzo 1 1., but of Giulio de' Medici, who
afterwards became Pope Clement VII.".
When the Florentine revolutionists learned that
the Pope was besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo,
the most notable citizens, arrayed in their civic robes,
paid an official visit to the Cardinal of Cortona and
compelled him to quit the city with the two young
bastard Medici under his charge.1 After their de
parture, Capponi was elected ruler of Florence and
the people expected to have their wrongs speedily
righted. They found their condition, however, to
be in no way improved. If the Medici had taxed
them heavily, taxes and compulsory loans were no
less grievously imposed under the new rule.
More than thirty years earlier, under the influence
of Savonarola, municipal legislation had attempted
officious interference with private liberty as an
antidote to luxury and vice; and, although these
by-laws of the city had been somewhat relaxed
under the Medici, many still remained in force, and
others were now imposed by the new government.
The dress, food, entertainments, and even the
domestic arrangements of the Florentines were
regulated by laws ; and what made these laws more
odious was that they limited the clothes, ornaments,
food and luxuries of the citizens according to their
stations in life.
Cellini arrived in Florence to find the Medici fled.
Although his father was dead, his brother and sister
begged him to remain in Florence instead of returning
to Rome ; and he was encouraged in his art by the
1 Sismondi's Italian Republics, p. 343.

Siege of Florence. 35
praise bestowed upon his work by Michael Angelo,
the sculptor, who was then at Florence and was at
work on the magnificent statues in the Sagrestia
Nuova of San Lorenzo.
Just at this time Pope Clement VII. declared
war against Florence, and his late enemy, Charles
V., sent an army against that city in the Pope's
name. Cellini tells us that he was now going " about
with the highest nobility of Florence, who showed
a unanimous desire to fight for the defence of their
liberties". Orders were given to Cellini to serve
in the militia for this purpose, and he apparently
let it he understood that he proposed to be a zealous
defender of the freedom of his native city ; but
whatever may have been his proclivities as a citizen,
as a goldsmith he reflected that the Pope was his
best customer ; therefore after receiving two letters
intimating that his holiness would give him employ
ment, he slipped away quietly and returned to Rome.
" When I got the second letter," says he,1 " I made
off as fast as I could, for of a truth those terrible
radicals \terribilissimi popolani] then in power would
have hanged me had they found it on me."
It was well for him that he left Florence. After
an obstinate and distressing siege, the Florentines
capitulated. Many of the leading citizens were
executed. Michael Angelo, who had erected the
most notable outwork in the suburbs, on the height
of San Miniato, was only pardoned by the Pope on
condition of working for him in Rome. While
Michael Angelo was still undergoing the privations,
1 Treatises, p. 67.

36 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
toils, and dangers of the siege of Florence, Cellini
was peaceably and comfortably established at his
artistic work in Rome. The Pope, whom he had found
in bed with a slight indisposition, immediately gave
him some orders for work to be executed in the
handicraft for which he will probably be ever best
known, namely, that of a goldsmith.
It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that
in that particular workmanship he stands unrivalled.
Yet even in saying this it is well to be temperate.
Cellini lived in an age of great metal-workers. The
so-called " Jane Seymour's Cup," by the painter, Hans
Holbein, who was almost of the same age as Cellini,1
is a proof, near home, that Cellini was not alone
at a maker of fine plate. Some of the work of a
similar kind by W. Jannitzer of Nuremberg, at the
same period, is very beautiful. Cellini was closely
rivalled, again, in the making of fine armour — an art
of which he was very proud — by the Milanese, of
whom he was exceedingly jealous, as we shall see
in the present chapter. A splendid embossed steel
breastplate, by the Milanese armourer, Paolo de
Negroli (circa 1530-43), which was sold from the
Magniac collection at Christie & Manson's in 1892,
for 420 guineas, may be remembered by many
readers. Even of one of the gold or silver jugs, for which
Cellini is generally admitted to be pre-eminent,
modern critics 2 have written : " It is over-ornamented,
and such as might have been expected from the
1 Holbein was born two years earlier.
2 Messrs. H. B. Wheatley and P. H. Delamotte, in Art Work in
Gold and Silver.

PLATE IV.

Alinari Photo.
Ewer.
In the Pitti Palace, Florence.
Ascribed to Cellini, or his School.

Albert Diirer. 37
character of the man. He was a blusterer with but
little consideration for any work but his own."
Cellini's remarks,1 however, concernmg another
goldsmith are not uninteresting. After telling us
that he could not " possibly recount all the Florentines
who were adepts in the goldsmith's art," he mentions,
among other foreigners, Albert Diirer, adding, " he
too was a goldsmith, nor was he satisfied with niello
only, he resorted in addition to his engraving, and
did extraordinarily well in that line ". It was the art
of niello which had led to the discovery of that of the
production of engravings on paper, and this discovery
had been made only about half a century before the
birth of Cellini.
Cellini himself describes niello work at some
length.2 It consisted in covering the incisions, or
intaglio work, or engravings, as we may please to call
them, on gold or silver plate, with the fine grains of
an enamelling substance, for which Cellini recom
mends a mixture of silver, copper, and lead, with
sulphur, and then exposing the plate to a heat
sufficient to melt the enamel until it had filled the
incisions. When the plate had cooled, the surface
was rubbed smooth, and the designs appeared in a
different colour from that of the plate.3 A goldsmith
named Finguerra found that the best way of trying
the effect of the incisions before filling them with the
enamel was to rub into them a mixture of oil and
lamp-black, and then to lay over the plate a piece of
damp paper, which took the impression. So good was
the effect of these impressions upon paper, that it led
1 Treatises. Translated by Mr. R. Ashbee, pp. 5, 6.
2 Ibid., pp. 7, 8. 3 Ibid., pp. 7, 8.

38 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
to the practice of cutting designs on metal for the
sole purpose of taking paper copies from them. After
saying that, in engraving, Albert Diirer was so skilful
" that no one can hold a candle to him," Cellini adds :
" Audrea Mantegni, our great Italian painter, tried it
too, but couldn't do it,1 so the less said about it the
better". Respecting Cellini's finer goldsmith's work we
have to judge almost entirely from a number of
pieces, scarcely one of which can be pronounced with
certainty to have come from his own hand, or even
from his own design. Of these there are several at
Florence, catalogued as " School of Cellini " ; and in
private collections there are many more, either " attri
buted to Cellini," or boldly fathered upon him without
question. No treatise goes into greater details con
cerning this matter than M. Plon's excellent work on
Benvenuto Cellini?' Among the English collections he
ruthlessly discredits the Queen's Nautilus Cup, the
nation's graceful vase with subjects from Ovid, Lord
Warwick's handsome goblet, and the Beresford Hope
ewer, now the property of Baron Gustave de Roth
schild ; and he only admits the possibility, with
something of a probability, of Cellini's workmanship
in the beautiful pieces belonging respectively to Lord
Salisbury and Lord Cowper.
Cellini had not been very long in Rome when an
event occurred which led him into trouble.
Some Roman constables, in the fulfilment of their
1 Vasari was of a very different opinion. See Lives of the
Painters, ii., 271.
1 Benvenuto Cellini, Orfivrc, Medaillcur, Sculpteur, par Eugene
Plon, Paris. E. Plon et Cie, 1883.

Murder. 39
duty, were taking a prisoner through the streets.
The prisoner's friends attempted to rescue him,
and a constable, in repelling the attack, wounded to
the death one of these unlawful combatants. Now
the wounded man happened to be a friend of Cellini's
brother, Cecchino, who, on hearing what had hap
pened, sought the constable, and, without warning,
" ran him right through the guts, and with the sword's
hilt thrust him to the ground ". Then Cecchino at
tacked another constable, an arquebusier, who "fired
in self-defence," as he was perfectly justified in doing,
and gave his opponent a wound from which he died.
The constable therefore could not be blamed for
killing Cecchino Cellini ; but, as Pope puts it : —
Not unappeased he pass'd the Stygian Gate,
Who leaves a brother to revenge his fate.
Benvenuto Cellini brooded over the death of his
brother; and, although he tried to distract his
thoughts by hard work, he found himself " watching
the arquebusier who shot his brother as though he
had been a girl he was in love with ". This con
dition of mind prevented him from sleeping and
spoiled his appetite ; therefore he determined to put
a stop to it. He shall give his own account of the
means he adopted to that end.
" It had just struck twenty-four, and the arquebusier
was standing at his house door with his sword in
his hand, having risen from supper. With great
address I stole up to him, holding a large Pistojan
dagger, and dealt him a back-handed stroke, with
which I meant to cut his head clean off; but as he
turned round very suddenly the blow fell upon

40 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the point of his left shoulder and broke the bone.
He sprang up, dropped his sword, half-stunned with
the great pain, and took to flight. I followed after,
and in four steps caught him up, when I lifted my
dagger above his head, which he was holding very
low, and hit him in the back, exactly at the juncture
of the nape-bone and the neck." The result was
fatal. Cellini sought refuge in the palace of the Duke of
Parma, in whose household his brother had lived ;
and the duke seems to have made out, and possibly
he may have even believed, that Cellini slew the
arquebusier in a hand-to-hand fight about the death
of his brother.
This affair, in some form or other, came to the
ears of Pope Clement. Just before it took place,
Cellini had been going daily to the Pope about
some work which he was executing at his orders ;
but, for eight days after he had killed the arquebusier,
the Pope did not once send for him. When at last
Cellini was summoned into the presence, " the Pope
cast so menacing a glance towards him that the
mere look of his eyes made him tremble". After
some remarks about his work, the Pope said in a
tone full of meaning : " Now you are cured, take
care how you live," which was evidently intended
to be understood : " I will not openly admit that I
am aware of your offence ; but, now that it has been
overlooked, take care that you do not commit
another ".
Cellini was frightened, but not reformed ; for an
other murder will have to be recorded against him.
A certain Milanese jeweller named Pompeo " was

Stampmaster at the Mint. 41
in favour with the Pope " and was nearly related to
his Holiness's first chamberlain and " most favoured
servant". This man and Cellini quarrelled. The
quarrel first arose over their rival designs for a clasp
for one of the papal copes, that of Cellini having been
given the preference. Thenceforth Pompeo hated
Cellini. Shortly afterwards the Pope made Cellini Stamp-
Master to the Mint, for which he designed many
beautiful coins. The Pope also gave him an order
for a splendid golden chalice,1 but Cellini professed
inability to get on with the work for want of gold,
declaring the quantity supplied by his Holiness to be
insufficent. The truth was that no such want retarded
his progress, and that he only pretended a want of
gold because he was vexed with the Pope for giving
another order to a Milanese jeweller named Tobbia
instead of to himself. Therefore, on receiving a com
mand from one of the Papal officials to hurry on with
the chalice, he replied that he could not " make bread
without flour," and he tells us that when this was
repeated to the Pope his Holiness "flew into a
bestial passion". This of course Cellini must have
heard at second- or third-hand.
Now his enemy Pompeo happened to be at that
moment in the Pope's presence; and, in order to
revenge himself on Cellini, he said to the Pope : " If
your Holiness were to deprive Benvenuto of the mint,
perhaps he would take it into his head to finish the
chalice ".
The Pope acted upon this suggestion, and Pompeo
1 It seems uncertain whether this was in reality a chalice or a
monstrance for holding the Host.

42 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
went to Cellini and informed him of what had
happened. It was now Cellini's turn to hate Pompeo.
" Tell his Holiness," replied Cellini, " that he has
deprived himself and not me of the mint."
Who can wonder that Pompeo should have faith
fully conveyed this message to the Pope ? But Cellini
seems to have been surprised, for he says : " The
graceless and unlucky fellow went off like an arrow
to find the Pope and report this conversation!"
Naturally the Pope was angry, and he sent Pompeo
to Cellini ordering him to give up the chalice, in
whatever state it might then be, as he intended it
to be finished by another goldsmith.
"This thing is not like the mint, which it was in
his power to take away," said Cellini. " Five hundred
crowns which I received from his Holiness I am
ready to return ; but the chalice is mine, and with it
I shall do what I think best."
Three days later the Pope sent out two chamber
lains with orders either to bring back the chalice or
to arrest Cellini. The artist refused to give it up,
saying : " I have brought it forward with great
trouble, and I do not want it to go into the hands of
some ignorant beast who will destroy it with little
trouble ".
The chamberlains then arrested Cellini and took
him through the streets of Rome to the governor.
There he was alternately threatened . and coaxed to
deliver up the chalice ; and messages were taken
backwards and forwards between the Pope and his
goldsmith. Neither would yield ; and at last the
fallowing compromise was arranged : Cellini was to
put the chalice into a box and seal it ; then he was to

Binding and Loosening. 43
send it to the Pope, who would thus get his way by
receiving it ; the Pope was to promise not to break
the seal but at once to return it intact to Cellini,
who would thus get his way also, as his Holiness
would neither see nor handle the chalice.
The box, according to Cellini, came back from the
Vatican opened, with a message from the Pope that
he had "authority to bind and to loose things of far
greater consequence than this," and an assurance
that if Cellini would but finish it in reasonable time
he should have plenty of gold to make it with. This
story, be it remembered, must be regarded as Cellini's
extravagant tattle, and not as history ; but, if it were
true, the Holy Father must have regarded the whole
matter of the sealed box and the " loosening " in the
light of a joke, whereas it was looked at from a very
different point of view by Cellini, who tells us that he
exclaimed : " I thank God that now I have learned
and can report what the faith of Popes is made of".
And thus apparently the farce ended.
Not so the ill blood between Cellini and Pompeo ;
nor was Pompeo Cellini's only enemy. One day a
quarrel was going on in the street between Cellini
and a man called Benedetto, who had till then been
"a great friend of" his. Cellini "stooped and took
up a lump of mud — for it had rained — and hurled it
with a quick and unpremeditated movement at his
face. Benedetto ducked his head, so that the mud
hit him in the middle of the skull. There was a stone
in it with several sharp angles, on one of which striking
him, he fell stunned like a dead man ; whereupon all
the bystanders, seeing the great quantity of blood,
judged that he was really dead."

44 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Pompeo happened to be passing, and he went
straight to the Pope and said : " Most blessed Father,
Benvenuto has this moment murdered Tobbia ; I saw
it with my own eyes ".
Tobbia, it will be remembered, was another Mil
anese goldsmith to whom the Pope had given an
order withdrawn from Cellini. " On this the Pope in
a fury ordered the governor, who was in his presence,
to arrest and to hang Cellini at once, in the place
where the homicide had been committed." This
may sound an abrupt proceeding to modern ears ; but
it must be remembered that summary punishment was
not uncommon in those times, and that the Pope knew
how lately Cellini had committed another murder.
He was not going to let him off a second time.
Having borrowed " the finest and the best " horse
in Rome, and having armed himself with an arquebuse,
"wound up in readiness to fire, if need were," Cellini
made off to Naples. On his way thither he fell in
with his friend Solosmeo 1 the sculptor, who told him
that the Pope had sent one of his chamberlains with
1 One bond of friendship between Cellini and Solosmeo was their
common hatred of the sculptor, Baccio Bandinelli. Vasari (vol. iv., p.
264) says that, on one occasion, two cardinals were sitting at supper
when Bandinelli came to see them about some of his work. They
expressed a wish to hear Solosmeo's opinion of it, and, for that
purpose, they sent for him. Meanwhile they made Bandinelli con
ceal himself behind a curtain. When Solosmeo arrived they plied
him with wine, and asked him confidentially what he thought of
Bandinelli. Solosmeo abused, both the man and his work in un
measured terms, until Bandinelli, unable to bear it any longer,
rushed from his hiding-place in a fury. "What trick is this, my
lords ? " asked Solosmeo, and, adding, " I will have nothing more to
do with priests," he ran from the room, to the intense amusement
of the cardinals.

Murder, Again. 45
his condolences to the house of Tobbia ; and that the
chamberlain had come back and told the Pope that
he found the " dead man " in perfect health, and hard
at work. Turning to Pompeo, who was standing by,
the Pope had said : " You are a good-for-nothing
rascal ; but I promise you well that you have stirred
up a snake which will sting you ; and it will serve
you right". Then the Pope told the young cardinal,
Ippolito de' Medici, to take care of Cellini.
Cellini had not been long at Naples before he re
ceived a letter from the cardinal ordering him to
return at once to Rome, and on reaching it to present
himself at the cardinal's palace. This mandate Cellini
obeyed, and he was graciously received by Ippolito,
who told him, however, to keep out of sight for the
present, because the life of the man whom he had
nearly killed was still in danger. In the meantime
Cellini was to set to work upon a medal for the Pope.
On a certain ill-starred day, some time later, Cellini
was sitting in the street with some friends when
' Pompeo went by. As he passed he stood still for
some seconds, looked at Cellini, and "laughed de
risively ". Few things are so irritating as an insulting
smile, and Cellini, on observing it, rose from his seat
and followed Pompeo at a little distance. By-and-bye
Pompeo went into an apothecary's shop, and, as he
came out, Cellini drew a very sharp little dagger and
tried to strike him in the face with it ; but Pompeo
turned his head away to avoid the point and received
the thrust beneath the ear. Then his assailant stabbed
him again and he " fell stone dead ". Cellini professes
not to have " meant to kill him ; but as the saying
goes, knocks are not dealt by measure".

46 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
And thus there was an end of Cellini's enemy
Pompeo, the Milanese goldsmith. Of the conse
quences of this murder more will be told later.
Before closing this chapter another instance may be
given 1 of Cellini's dislike of the Milanese goldsmiths,
in his expression of delight that Henry VIIL, King
of England, should have been punished for his folly
in dealing with one. That king gave a Milanese
jeweller 9000 golden scudi for an emerald which was
found, several years afterwards, to be a sham. It
evidently gave Cellini great pleasure to record this
fact, and, as several passages in his works exhibit his
dislike of our nation, he was probably as much pleased
at our English king being cheated as he was in
gibbeting a Milanese jeweller as a cheat.
He may have had another reason for being pleased
at Henry the Eighth's misfortune; for Henry, instead
of encouraging the manufacture of beautiful church-
plate, robbed the monasteries and churches of their
gold and silver work to enrich himself with those
metals by converting them into coin. As a modern
writer 2 puts it : " The metal-work, the silver and gilt
shrines . . . lamps, crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices
. . . monstrances, pyxes, cruets, ewers, basins, the
jewelled clasps for missals, antiphonaries and copes,
all these works of art which, in Italy, were stimulating
the genius of a Cellini, in England passed into the
royal melting-pot, to the value of some ^850,000 of
present money ".
1 Treatises, p. 27.
2 The Rev. S. Bowden, in The Religion of Shakespeare, p. 8.

47

CHAPTER IV.
QUARRELS AND INCANTATIONS.
Pope Clement VII. knew Cellini to be a murderer
and a thief. As Cellini himself admits, he had stolen
some fifty pounds worth of gold when entrusted
with the Papal jewels in the Castle of St. Angelo.
It was but natural, therefore, that his Holiness should
look upon him with some amount of suspicion.
Some time before the events recorded at the end
of the last chapter, Pope Clement had sent a quantity
of precious stones to Cellini to be mounted in plate,
and a burglar, knowing of this, broke into Cellini's
shop at night to steal them. He had pocketed a
few unimportant trifles belonging to Cellini and
was in the act of breaking open his safe when a
large dog, which served Cellini both as a watch-dog
at home and as a retriever on his shooting expedi
tions, flew at the housebreaker and put him to flight
before he had found the Papal jewels.
The Pope, who had been reproached for entrusting
such valuable gems to Cellini, heard that his shop
had been broken into, and thought it not unlikely
that Cellini had got up a pretended burglary in order
to get the precious stones placed elsewhere on his
own account, with the intention of pretending that
he had been robbed. Cellini, hearing of the Pope's
suspicions, set the gems as quickly as he could and
went, to the Vatican.

48 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
On his arrival, his Holiness " shot a furious glance
at" him and exclaimed, "What have you come to do
here ? What is wrong ? "
" Here are all your precious stones, and not one
of them is missing," replied Cellini, displaying the
piece in which he had set them.
Not very long after this event, Cellini, when
walking through the Piazza Navona, perceived that
some constables were conveying a prisoner under
arrest. Cellini's dog flew at this prisoner and tried
to tear him to pieces. It was all that his master could
do to drag the dog away, and when he had done so
Cellini said : —
" I feel certain that this must be the thief
who broke into my shop ; for my dog recognises
him." Then be released the dog, who once more flew at
the prisoner. Shrieking for mercy the fellow cried
out that he would confess the robbery and restore
the things he had stolen if Cellini would but take
away the dog that was biting him. Then the
robber produced the few things which he had taken
from Cellini's shop; and for this crime, and for the
other on account of which he had been arrested, he
was hanged in the Campo di Fiore.
The Pope suspected Cellini on another occasion.
Some false money, stamped with Cellini's own dies,
was being circulated in Rome. The master of the
mint, who hated Cellini — Cellini was hated by not
a few — told the Pope he had proofs that Cellini was
the false-coiner. Clement sent for Cellini, "and
leading cautiously in conversation to the topic of
the coins, said to him at the fitting moment : —

False Money. 49
" ' Benvenuto, should you have the heart to coin
false money?'"
In reply Cellini told the Pope that he made three
crowns officially before dinner every day by setting
dies to coin real money, and that this was much more
than could be made in the same time by coining false
money. His holiness was quite satisfied by Cellini's answer
and gave orders to his officers to search elsewhere
for the culprit, orders which were carried out with
such effect that the real culprit was soon caught, and
hanged opposite the mint.
A great many coins were made for Clement VII.
by Cellini. Of one of these he says1: "This coin
brought me much honour, for I put great labour
into it. As the Pope put more gold into it than its
value warranted, it soon was melted down again."
Of the reverse side of another coin he says that the
design represented "St. Peter, just at the moment
he has plunged into the sea at the call of Christ,
and Christ stretches out His hand to him in most
pleasing wise ".
It would be useless to enter here into Cellini's
instructions as to the making of coins ; for he him
self ingenuously says :2 " True it is I could give you
hundreds of little wrinkles yet, but I don't intend
to do it, because I assume I am speaking to those
who have some knowledge of the art, and for those
who haven't it would be dreadfully boring to listen ".
One of the pieces of work executed for Clement
VII. which brought Cellini most celebrity was the
1 Treatises, p. 68. ^Ibid., p. 76.
D

50 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
large clasp for a cope. Now Cellini had 1 " so devised
it that God the Father was seated on the big
diamond," in the middle of this clasp, and He " was
surrounded by a number of jolly little angels ". This
remark of Cellini's may give the reader some notion
of the reverence and taste with which he approached
sacred subjects. " The Pope," he goes on to say,
"would scarce let three days pass without sending
for me, and each time would he see first one, and
then another angel baby peep forth, and this made
him marvel greatly."
When the clasp was finished and delivered, the
Pope said : " Were I but a wealthy emperor, I
would give my Benvenuto as much land as his
eyes could survey ; but I am a needy, bankrupt
potentate ".
Perceiving, therefore, that he had littie to expect
in direct payment for his work, Cellini asked his
Holiness for a mace-bearer's place, which happened
to be vacant. The Pope gave him the appointment,
which brought him in nearly 200 crowns a year,
and kindly dispensed him from carrying the mace in
processions. On another occasion Cellini was less fortunate in
his request. He was, at the moment, engaged on
an exceedingly elaborate chalice for the Pope, and
he asked him for a post in the Piombo.2
" That post in the Piombo," said his holiness,
" is worth more than 800 crowns a year, so that if I
gave it to you you would spend your time in
1 Treatises, p. 50.
2 The Piombo was the office in which leaden seals were appended
to Bulls and instruments of State.

Sebastian del Piombo. 51
scratching your paunch, and your magnificent handi
craft would be lost."
" Cats of a good breed mouse better when they are
fat than when they are starving," replied Cellini.
" Princes who provide men of talent with com
petences are watering the roots of genius. But since
you will not give it to me, your holiness will do
well to bestow it upon some man of genius instead
of on some ignoramus, who will spend his time
scratching his paunch, if I may be allowed to quote
your Holiness's own words."
Immediately after finishing this speech Cellini
made his bow, " and went off in a fury," leaving the
Pope in little better humour.
"That devil Benvenuto will not brook rebuke,"
said his Holiness. " I was inclined to give the ap
pointment to him, but he must learn not to speak
so haughtily to a Pope."
Bastiano Veneziano 1 then asked for the post, which
the Pope gave him, saying to one of the Papal
officials : " Let Benvenuto know that it was he who
1 He went, in consequence, by the name of Sebastian del Piombo.
He had been a pupil of Giorgione, and he was employed by Michael
Angelo to work on his designs (see Kugler's Handbook of Painting,
book v.). A beautiful portrait of Cardinal Pole, at St. Petersburg,
and the picture of Raphael and his fencing-master in the Louvre,
both formerly attributed to Raphael, are now believed to be by
Sebastian del Piombo. His celebrated picture in the National
Gallery of the Raising of Lazarus, parts of which were drawn by
Michael Angelo, needs no description for English readers. The Pope
was right. After obtaining the appointment, Sebastian did little
but "scratch his paunch". Vasari says (iv., 72): "This man had
so much pleasure in gossiping and babbling that he would waste
whole days therein " Yet he admits (67) that " Sebastian did
surpass all others in painting portraits ".

52 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
got the post for Bastiano, the painter ; but that he
shall have some good appointment for himself by-
and-by. Meanwhile tell him to behave himself
and to execute my orders."
The following evening the official in question1 met
Cellini and told him "in the most friendly manner"
what his holiness had said.
" I shall work harder than ever for the Pope,"
answered Cellini, "but without being rewarded. I
am certain to get nothing from him."
This reply was probably repeated to Clement VII.,
for he did not send for Cellini, or take any notice of
him during the next two or three months. When the
Pope did send for the artist to learn how the chalice
was getting on, - Cellini asked for an advance of
500 crowns.
"Go on with the work till it is finished," said the
Pope. " I will finish it if your Holiness will pay me for
it ! " said the goldsmith, who again left the presence
in a bad temper.
Soon afterwards Clement VII. went to Bologna to
meet the Emperor Charles V. Two meetings took
place at Bologna between Pope and Emperor. At
the first, the Pope, wearing the cope fastened by
Cellini's famous clasp, in the centre of which blazed
the splendid diamond of Charles the Bold, crowned
the emperor with both an iron and a golden crown
1 This was Bartolommeo Valori. He had been Pope Clement's
commissary to the Prince of Orange during the siege. After having
been a most devoted adherent to the Medici, he joined Filippo
Strozzi in opposing their rule, and together with his son and his
nephew he was beheaded in 1537.

Alinari Photo.

Pope Clement VII. and the Emperor Charles V.
By Vasari, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

Henry VIII. 53
in the church of S. Petronio. It was a glorious
occasion, but its glories were tarnished to Clement
VII. by the news which there reached him. This
news was that King Henry VIII. of England had
determined to divorce himself from Katherine of
Aragon in spite of the Pope. Within a few months
Clement VII. excommunicated Henry VIII. So
far as the turmoil of the " Reformation " was con
cerned, things were in a still worse condition when
Clement VII. met Charles V. at Bologna, on the
second occasion, in 1532.
During his absence, the Pope left Cardinal Salviati
as legate in Rome, giving him instructions to keep
Cellini " always going," so that the chalice might be
finished on his own return.
" That beast of a cardinal," says Cellini, sent for
him to bring his work for inspection. Cellini went,
but without his work.
" Where is that onion stew of yours ? " asked the
cardinal. " Oh, most Rev. Monsignor," replied Cellini, " my
onion stew is not ready ; nor can I finish it unless you
give me the onions with which to make it."
Turning " uglier by half than he was by nature,"
the cardinal threatened to send Cellini to the galleys
unless he did his work.
" I snap my fingers at your galleys," responded
Cellini ; " and what is more, I tell you that, owing to
what you have said, I will not set hand to the
chalice." On the return of the Pope, Cellini received an
order to go to him, and he declares that he found
him "in the hottest rage imaginable".

54 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
" In God's truth, I tell thee," said his Holiness,
" thou who makest it thy business to hold no man in
honour, that, were it not for decency and order, I
would have thee, together with thy work, chucked out
ofthe window."
Cellini then informed the Pope that he had been
prevented from working during his absence by in
flammation of the eyes ; and this brought about a
truce between master and man.
At about this time Cellini fell in love with a
beautiful Sicilian girl named Angelica — I have hither
to spared the reader the artist's dreary love affairs,
or rather, it should be said, his most tedious im
moralities — and Cellini determined to run away with
the daughter, "unknown to her mother"; but the
mother "getting wind of this," forestalled him, and
ran away with her daughter, unknown to Cellini.
When he heard of their departure, he followed them
to Civita Vecchia, and "did a multitude of mad
things to discover her; enough that he was on the
point of losing his wits or dying ". After two months
Angelica wrote to Cellini, saying that she was in
Sicily and extremely unhappy. Cellini by this time
was indulging himself " in all the pleasures man can
think of, and had engaged in another love affair,
merely to drown the memory of his real passion ".
Now " it happened through a singular variety of
accidents'' that he became intimate with a Sicilian
priest, who was an adept in necromancy, an art, be
it remembered, most strictly forbidden by his Church.
Whether this priest concealed his necromancy from
his ecclesiastical superiors and continued his sacerdotal
functions we are not told. Had they known of it, he

Necromancy. 55
would certainly have been suspended or disfrocked.
Cellini having expressed a desire to witness an ex
hibition of it, the Sicilian said : —
" If you have the heart to dare it, I will amply
gratify your curiosity," and he made an appointment
for an incantation.
Accompanied by another dabbler in the black art,
they went to the Colosseum at night ; and the
Sicilian, having arrayed himself in necromancer's
robes, made circles on the ground and lighted a fire,
into which he threw drugs, some of which emitted
precious perfumes and others fetid odours. Then
he began mysterious incantations. Presently he led
his companions within one of the circles, and, when
they had stood there for the brief space of an hour
and a half, the magician announced that the Colos
seum was full of devils, and he appealed to Cellini
to ask them a question. Cellini did ask them a
question, but the devils made no response.
The Sicilian said that they would do much better
another night, if they could have a " little boy ''
with them. For this purpose Cellini selected one
of his shop lads, and he also invited his friend
Angiolo Gaddi.1 The same ceremonies were per-
1 Son of Taddeo Gaddi. Angiolo painted the walls of the chapel
of the Holy Girdle at Prato, as well as the choir of S. Croce at
Florence. His works of art display a love of allegory, which may
go some way to account for his inclination to mystery and necro
mancy. Yet he was so far practical as to prefer money to art. " He
painted," says Vasari (i., 253), " more because he desired to do as his
forefathers had done, than from any love of the art, he having given
up his mind to commerce, from which he gained still larger profits."
Indeed his family became so rich and powerful as to be " among the
most noble families in Florence " (Vasari, i., 229). Two of its members

56 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
formed as on the previous night ; and, between the
"awful incantations" of the sorcerer in his robes,
the mysterious fires and the " fetid odours," the little
boy, tightly held by Cellini, was frightened almost
out of his senses ; nor was he consoled by hearing
the necromancer announce in a trembling voice that
a thousand-fold more devils had arrived than he had
asked for, among them being some of "the most
dangerous of all the denizens of hell ".
On hearing this, the poor little lad shrieked out
in terror that a million fierce men were swarming
round them and threatening them, and that "four
huge giants were striving to force their way inside
the circle". Even the allegorical painter, Angiolo
Gaddi, " was more than half-dead with fear ".
" Ask the devils something," cried the sorcerer.
"When shall I be reunited to • Angelica ? " ex
claimed Cellini.
" In the space of one month you will be where
she is," replied the sorcerer — not the devils.
The little boy now cried out that the whole
Colosseum was in flames. " Meanwhile the necro
mancer kept doing his best with mild and soft
persuasions to dismiss the demons," and he called
upon his companions to fling more assafetida upon
the burning coals.1
became cardinals. Their tombs are in the Gaddi chapel, in Santa
Maria Novella.
1 Burning strong-smelling drugs was an important part of an in
cantation. About a hundred years later, another clerical necromancer,
the Rev. J. Evans, an Anglican clergyman, get into trouble with the
devils, because " he did not at the time of his Invocation make any
Suffumigation, at which the spirits were vexed ". Like Cellini's
friend, he drew a circle and made his visitors stand within it.
Wood's Athena Oxoniensis, vol. i., p. 580.

Angelica. 57
Suddenly a nasty little incident, described in dis
agreeable detail by Cellini, made him laugh ; and, on
hearing his master's merriment, the boy said that " the
devils were taking to flight tempestuously ". Then
the necromancer packed up his diabolical paraphernalia
and they all made their way home together, the
little boy declaring that two of the demons kept
" gambolling in front of them, skipping now along the
roofs and now upon the ground". And each one
of the party " dreamed all that night of devils ".1
It was shortly after these incantation scenes that
Cellini had left Benedetto for dead in the street and
fled to Naples. Who should he see there but his
Angelica ? She greeted him " with infinite demon
strations of the most unbounded passion ". As to
what followed, I refer my readers to Cellini's own
pages ; but, in order to complete the incantation story,
I may add that " while drinking deep of this delight,
it occurred to Cellini's mind how exactly on that day
the month expired, which had been prophesied within
the necromantic circle by the devils ".
When*the letter arrived from Cardinal de Medici
calling upon Cellini to return to Rome, he made up
his mind to take his Angelica with him and to leave
her mother at Naples. The mother made no ob-
1 Roscoe accounts for the appearances by saying that probably they
were the phantasmagoria produced by a magic lantern "on volumes
of smoke from various kinds of burning wood ". But Sir David
Brewster in his Letters on Natural Magic, pp. 74, 75, points out that
the magic lantern was not invented till a hundred years later. In his
opinion the appearances of the devils " were actual optical phantasms,
or the images of pictures or objects produced by one or more concave
mirrors or lenses," and reflected upon the dense smoke made by
throwing perfumes upon burning wood.

58 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
jection provided Cellini would give her fifteen ducats.
He " told the old harridan that " he would very gladly
give her the ducats, if she would give him the
daughter. Then Angelica begged him to buy her
a " gown of black velvet, because the stuff was cheap
at Naples". This reminded the mother that she
also wanted a dress, and Cellini, perceiving that,
between mother and daughter, this love affair promised
to be very expensive, " having kissed Angelica,"
bade farewell to both of them. Thus they parted,
Angelica "with tears, and I with laughter," says the
unfeeling Cellini, who started at once for Rome.
Although generous — at least according to his own
account — to his relations, Cellini seems to have been
perpetually pressing his employers for money ; and, if
he is to be believed, they seldom paid him. When
he had returned to Rome and been summoned for
orders to the Vatican, he pleasantly reminded
Clement VII. how that Pope had lately given orders
that he should be hanged, "which made" the Pope
"blush a little, as it were, for shame". Now this
may be true; for it will be remembered that the
Pope had condemned Cellini under a misapprehension,
believing that he had just murdered Tobbia. When
Cellini had taken his leave, the Pope said before all
who were present that he was about to give Cellini
enough money " to live wealthily without the need of
working for any one but himself".
This good intention was never carried out. The
next time that Cellini took some work to show
Clement VII. he found him in bed and very seriously
ill. Even with the aid of lights and spectacles the
Pope could not see the medals or the dies. Three days

Milanese Metal-workers. 59
later the man whom Ranke calls " the most ill-fated
pontiff that ever sat on the Papal throne " was dead ;
and thus Cellini says he was left with all his labour
lost. Nevertheless he went to St. Peter's " and kissed
the feet of the dead Pope, not without shedding
tears ".
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was.
common for anarchy to reign in Rome during a
vacancy of the Papal see ; and it was pending such a
vacancy that Cellini murdered Pompeo, the Milanese
goldsmith. In our day it is difficult fully to realise
how far the general condition of lawlessness, which
then prevailed on certain occasions, was looked upon
as accounting for, if not exactly excusing, crimes of
violence. One of these, as I have said, was the vaca
tion of the Papal chair, when such was the wild
riotousness prevailing that it was usual for Roman
gentlemen to garrison their palaces with hired
warriors, as a defence against the attacks of free
booters. There appears to have been much ill-feeling be
tween the Roman and the Milanese metal-workers ;
and, instead of its being regarded as a cruel murder,
Cellini's slaughter of the famous Milanese goldsmith
at once became the subject of a party dispute. Cellini
tells us that two cardinals fiercely contended for the
honour of giving him shelter, a piece of information
which, like many of his statements, it may be wise to
take cum grano satis.
A few days afterwards1 Cardinal Farnese was
.elected Pope and took the name of Paul III. When
1 13th October, 1534.

60 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
he had time to attend to minor matters he was
informed that the famous goldsmith, Cellini, was in
hiding on account of his having killed Pompeo of
Milan. The Pope replied that he had heard nothing
of the death of Pompeo, but much of the provocation
which he had given to Cellini ; and, as acts of
clemency became a new monarch, he, rather rashly
perhaps, ordered a safe-conduct to be made out for
Cellini on certain conditions.1
Standing beside the Pope was his confidential
secretary, Ambrogio Recalcati, who was a Milanese,
and he warned the Pope against granting pardons too
freely, so early in his Papacy.
Ceilini states that the Pope then said : " You know
less about such matters than I do. Men like Ben
venuto, unique in their profession, stand above the
law ; and how far more he, then, who received the
provocation I have heard of? "
If this speech, which Cellini only professes to have
heard through a third person, was ever made, Paul
III. probably intended it as a piece of banter for his
very intimate secretary, and had no idea of its being
taken in earnest
1 The full text of this document will be found in M. Plon's Cellini.

PLATE VI.

Minn i /'¦',•.•',>.

l'on; Pai-i III.
Hy Titian, in the Museo Nationalc. Naples

6i

CHAPTER V.
FLORENCE AND ROME.
Alexander Farnese, like Clement VII., Leo X.,
and Julius 1 1., had that love of art and of elegant
literature which was characteristic -of the period, and
he may be called the last of the Renaissance Popes.
He was liberal, he loved ease and magnificence, and
he was just the sort of Pope from whom artists like
Cellini might expect ample patronage.
Of Paul III. Ranke says1: "Seldom has a Pope
been so beloved in Rome as he was," and elsewhere2
he calls him " a man full of talent, intelligence, and
penetrating sagacity ". No moral scandal tarnished
his fame, as a, Pope; but he is said to have been
somewhat wild in his youth, and, if Ranke is to be
believed, he acknowledged a son and a daughter,
born long before he was elected to the Papacy at the
age of sixty-six.
Cellini states that the Pope's son, Pier Luigi, had
a favourite — whether a servant or a friend he does
not tell us — who married a daughter of the murdered
Pompeo, and that this daughter, in order to revenge
her father's death, persuaded her husband to persuade
Pier Luigi to persuade the Pope to bring about the
ruin, if not the death, of Cellini. This many-jointed
plot, if it ever existed, must have been very likely to
1 Vol, i., p. 245. 2 Ibid., p. 276.

62 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
lose force in the course of its transmission from one
of its agents to another ; and how far Cellini could
have known about it with any certainty is extremely
doubtful. He maintains that Pompeo's daughter and her
husband were guilty of the atrocious action of hiring
assassins to murder him ; but it must be remembered
that in those wild times, to avenge a parent's death
was commonly considered an act of filial piety, and that
the method of the accomplishment of that duty was
not too keenly scrutinised. Cellini writes in horror
of the wickedness of Pompeo's daughter in attempt
ing to get him assassinated as a punishment for
murdering her father ; but he seems to have thought .
nothing of having assassinated with his own hand
the constable who, in the execution of his duty and
in self-defence, had killed his brother.
Cellini represents Pier Luigi as doing all he could
to injure him with the Pope. He not the less
acknowledges that when, some time later, he visited
Piacenza, and Pier Luigi, then Duke of Castro, was
in power there, this supposed mortal enemy, instead
of seizing the opportunity to destroy him, welcomed
him " with unbounded marks of esteem and affection,"
and sent afterwards for his refreshment at his inn,
"abundance to eat and to drink of very excellent
quality ".
Cellini also tells us that when, during his imprison
ment, of which we shall hear more presently, he was
condemned to death, Pier Luigi's wife1 went to the
Pope and threw herself upon her kness before him in
the presence of several cardinals, and pleaded Cellini's
1 She was a daughter of Luigi Orsini, Count of Pitigliano.

Pier Luigi. 63
cause with such warmth and effect as to obtain a
commutation of the sentence.
As to Pier Luigi 1 himself, his reputation was of the
worst, and Varchi represents him as an unnatural
monster, who contrived in a diabolical manner to com
bine sacrilege with the most horrible of immoralities.
On being presented to the new Pope, Cellini begged
to have the office of Stamper to the Mint restored to
him. Paul III. replied that Cellini must first obtain
pardon for his homicide on the Feast of the Assump
tion, after public penance, when the Capirioni, or
warders of the city of Rome, were accustomed to
obtain freedom for twelve outlaws.
Having been privately warned that his victim's
daughter was determined to get him punished either
by the law or by a breach of it, Cellini thought it
prudent to retire to Florence until the Feast of the
Assumption should come round.
On his way thither he stayed one night at a small
inn, at which the host annoyed Cellini by insisting
upon being paid his bill before he went to bed. In
revenge, before he left his room the next morning,
Cellini with a sharp knife cut the bedding of four beds
to ribbons. He had the gratification of knowing that
he " had done a damage of more than fifty crowns ".
But he considered that he had let his host off very
lightly ; for during the night he at one time deter
mined to burn the house down, and at another to
" cut the throats of four fine horses belonging to the
innkeeper, in the stable ".
1 When Duke of Parma, Luigi was murdered by his* own courtiers
in 1547, and, as spme suppose, with at least the connivance of
Charles V.

64 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Much had happened in his native city since Cellini
had last visited it. The Florentine republic had
breathed its last in the year 1532 and, after the capitu
lation of the city mentioned in a former chapter, the
Florentines had unwillingly elected Alessandro de'
Medici, then only about twenty years of age, as the
head of their state.
Alessandro began his reign with a meretricious
display of generosity and justice, which dazzled while
it deceived his subjects and gave him a momentary
popularity ; but he had neither a sense of right and
wrong, nor a desire to do his duty. Although
personally brave, and kind to the young, he was
licentious and self-indulgent ; he did not hesitate to
outrage the most noble families or to scale the walls
of convents in the gratification of his passions ; he
violated women, he tortured men ; and he was said
to have been guilty of the murder of his own mother.1
He was also reputed to have been responsible for the
murder of his cousin, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici.2
Alessandro received Cellini "with extraordinary
kindness, and pressed him to remain in his service,
giving him orders at once to strike dies for his
coinage, and presenting him with the finest and best
arquebuse he ever saw or ever had ".
At that time Ottaviano de' Medici, a distant
relation of Alessandro's " to all appearance had
got the government of everything in his own hands,"
and he and Cellini were soon quarrelling. Cellini
asked him why another artist was allowed to mix
1 Napier's Flor. Hist., vol. v., pp. 2, 8, 37, 38, 47 and 48. Also
Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, pp. 366, 367.
2 Symonds's Cellini, p. 82, footnote.

PLATE VII.

Alinari Pho'o.

Alessandro de' Medici.
By Bronzino, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Lorenzino de' Medici. 6^
" his stupid dies " with his own, whereon Ottaviano
" like the donkey that he was," replied : " Because we
choose to have it so ".
" I do not choose to have it so," responded Cellini.
" And if the duke will have it so ? " went on
Ottaviano. " So will I not have it," said Cellini.
" Well, you will have to swallow it, even if you.
burst," exclaimed Ottaviano.
The dispute, however, proceeded no further ; for
that very day Cellini received "a full safe-conduct
from the Pope," with advice to go to Rome at once
and obtain " the pardon of Our Lady's feast in mid-
August " ; and he went at once to bid farewell to Duke
Alessandro, whom he found in bed " suffering the
consequence of a debauch ".
He showed the duke the wax model for his medal,
of which the portrait was finished but the reverse
untouched. Beside Alessandro was standing a dark-
complexioned and small, but active and well-
proportioned man, eyeing him " with very evil
glances ". This was his distant relative, Lorenzino
de' Medici. His aspect was usually grave, and when
he smiled it was as if by an effort.
" Messer Lorenzino," said Cellini to Alessandro,
" will give me some exquisite subject for the reverse,
as he is a very learned person endowed with the
highest genius."
" Lorenzino, you shall give him the reverse," said
the duke.
" I will do so as quickly as I can," replied
Lorenzino, " and I hope to do something which will
make the whole world wonder." E

66 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Alessandro, "who held him sometimes for a fool
and sometimes for a coward, turned about in bed, and
laughed at his bragging words". Five months later
Lorenzino carried out his intention of making the
whole world wonder, by stabbing Alessandro to death.
In his written apologia he stated that Alessandro
was an execrable tyrant, whose enormities exceeded
those of Nero. After spending eleven years in exile,
Lorenzino was himself assassinated.1
Cellini, when he had taken leave of Duke Aless
andro, went to Rome, and in company with some
other outlaws obtained pardon for his homicide, on
the Feast of the Assumption. In order to obtain it
he ought by the rules to have given himself up on
the previous day and spent the night in prison, but
at his earnest request the Pope dispensed him from
that indignity.
Soon afterwards Cellini fell ill with a violent fever,
during which he was visited by his two friends,
Franzesi the poet, and Giovanni Gaddi, a brother of
Angelo Gaddi, and, like that brother, an artist ; but
Giovanni was much more celebrated as a patron of
artists than as an artist in person.
Cellini rather severely, and probably unjustly, calls
him " a great connoisseur of the arts, although he had
no acquaintance with any"; but Vasari seems to
imply that he was a practical artist ; for in writing of
the Gaddi family he says'-: " Gaddo, Taddeo,
1 See Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, p. 366. Loren
zino de' Medici was the author of the comedy " Aridosio," which is
still considered one of the ornaments of the Italian language.
2 Vol. i., p. 229. W. M. Rossetti, in the Ency. Brit., writes of
him as having been " a painter of promise ".

Giovanni Gaddi. 67
Agnolo, and Giovanni, have adorned many venerated
churches by their talents and the exercise of their
arts". When Giovanni Gaddi was visiting the invalided
and feverish Cellini, he greatly annoyed him by
handling his various belongings and admiring them
as if he contemplated purchasing them in the case of
Cellini's death, saying : " That is a fine thing ! That
is yet finer!" Worse still, Franzesi the poet, per
ceiving Cellini's vexation and irritability, observed
that recollections of Dante's Inferno were evidently
disturbing his mind.
" Drive that miserable Mattio Franzesi from my
side!" exclaimed Cellini to Giovanni Gaddi; and,
when this had been done, he turned in a rage upon
Gaddi himself, and, " cast bad words at him ; to wit,
that he came to rob him, and not from any motive of
charity, and insults of that kind ; " thus ridding
himself of painter as well as of poet.
When he was sufficiently recovered, Cellini thought
he would try the effect of his native air, and returned
to Florence, where he stayed with his sister. Since
his last visit to that city, some ill-disposed person —
Cellini says it was Vasari, at the instigation of Otta
viano de' Medici — had told Duke Alessandro that
Cellini had been abusing him and had bragged that,
when the duke's enemies attacked Florence, he would
be the first to leap upon its walls. When, therefore,
Alessandro heard that Cellini had returned to
Florence, he said : " Benvenuto would have done
much better to die, because he is come to put his
head into a noose, and I will never pardon him ".
All this was repeated to Cellini, and, as soon as he

68 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
was well enough, he forced his way boldly into the
palace and cleared his character before the duke,
who said nothing more severe than : " Take heed to be
an honest man ; and try to regain your health ".
But Cellini never forgave Vasari. He declares
that he had most hospitably received Georgio Vasari
as a guest in Rome, where he committed a great
offence. Cellini, being short of room, made him share
a bed with one of his workmen. In the course of
the night, something tickled Vasari and, when in
tending to scratch himself, he accidentally scratched
his bedfellow ! For this the bedfellow " was reso
lutely bent on killing him " ; but Cellini " made the
quarrel up, and afterwards got Georgio [Vasari] into
Cardinal de' Medici's household, and continually
helped him ". Yet, says Cellini, the ungrateful fellow1
told tales, and untrue tales, about him, to the duke.
Whether he was right or wrong in his suspicions,
they were not altogether unnatural ; for Cellini knew
that Ottaviano de' Medici hated him, and, even by
his own account, Vasari was an intimate friend of
Ottaviano. " The Magnificent Ottaviano de' Medici,"
says Vasari,2 " took me into his protection in such
sort, that ever after, during his life, I was held by
him in the place of a son."
Respecting the Roman story Vasari's account
varies greatly from Cellini's. So far from Cellini's
having taking Vasari in as a needy stranger, and
'Everybody was not of Cellini's opinion. "Who would not
become the friend of Vasari," said the Padre Della Valle, " if it were
only for the sentiments of gratitude which he so manifestly enter
tained for all who had offered him kindness?"
2 Vol. v., p. 506.

Vasari. 69
having subsequently used his influence to get him
into the service of the Cardinal de' Medici, Vasari
states that the cardinal passed through Arezzo,
where Vasari had just finished some frescoes in a
convent, and took him to Rome " in his service,
where by the courtesy and favour of that noble " he
was enabled to devote himself for many months to
the study of design.
No two contemporary artists ever wrote more world-
renowned, and at the same time entertaining,
volumes than Vasari's Lives of the Painters and
Cellini's Autobiography. Vasari's book is immeasur
ably superior to his works of art, and some authorities
consider that Cellini's pen surpassed his chisel 1 ;
although this is a question upon which opinions
doubtless differ. The two men cannot be said to
have been literary rivals ; but it is certain that they
disliked if they did not actually hate each other.
Cellini went back to Rome, where he worked on
Duke Alessandro's medal, and he sent to Florence
to beg that Lorenzino de' Medici would let him have
"the reverse of the medal" as soon as possible.
Lorenzino "replied that he was thinking night and
day of nothing else, and that he would finish it as
soon as he was able".
Presently news came of the murder of Duke
Alessandro by Lorenzino.
" This is the reverse of that vile tyrant's medal
which your Lorenzino de' Medici promised you,"
said a foe2 of the Medician family, who had been
banished from Florence, to Cellini.
1 See Garnett's Italian Literature, p. 177.
2 Francesco Soderini.

70 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Another enemy of the Medici1 then said: "We
dislike your dukes, and won't have any more of
them ; although you have been trying to immortalise
them with your medals ! "
" You blockheads ! " retorted Cellini. " I am only a
poor goldsmith who works for whoever pays me. But
I will make this one answer to your silly railleries ;
that before two or three days, at the longest, have
passed by, you will have another duke, much worse,
perhaps, than the duke you have just got rid off."
The next day the man who had declared he would
have no more dukes went to Cellini's shop and said
to him : —
" There is no need to spend money in couriers,
for you know things before they happen".
Then he informed Cellini that Cosimo,2 the son
of Giovanni de' Medici, had been elected duke.
In the year 3 of Alessandro's murder an important
event took place that was unnoticed by Cellini. The
ex-soldier, Ignatius of Loyola, and a few like-minded
friends had determined to serve their God under a
discipline as strict as that of soldiers, and they came
to Rome in order to obtain the approval of the Pope.
Paul III. received them very graciously. Their
scheme was then in too elementary a stage to receive
definite Papal confirmation ; but the Pope appointed
two of their number to teach theology in Rome ; and,
1 Baccio Bettini, an intimate friend of Cellini's and a considerable
patron of the fine arts.
2 Cosimo was only a distant relation of Alessandro's, being his
fifth cousin. He was much more nearly connected with Lorenzino,
Alessandro's murderer, to whom he was a second cousin.
3 1537-

St. Ignatius and St. Philip. 71
three years later he established their institute under
the name of the Society of Jesus.1
Although Cellini more than once hints that the
morality of the priests in Rome was not what it
might have been, he does not tell us how much the
Society of Jesus did to reform it. But, if the advent
of St. Ignatius and his associates to Rome, shortly
after the murder of Duke Alessandro, was to have
such far-reaching consequences for good among the
Italian priests, that of a solitary layman, three years
earlier, was also destined to have an enormous influ
ence, both upon the clergy and upon the laity of
Rome. Yet, as in the case of St. Ignatius, so in that
of St. Philip Neri, Cellini is silent.
St. Philip Neri, first as a layman and afterwards
as a priest, endeavoured to reform the Romans with
gentleness and cheerfulness. " He was gay, genial,
and irresistibly winning, neither insult nor wrong
"could dim the brightness of his joy."2
" St. Philip," says Cardinal Newman,3 whose follow
ing description of the times ofthe Renaissance is worth
quotation, " lived in an age, as traitorous to the interests
of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can follow it.
He lived at a time when pride mounted high and the
senses held rule ; a time when kings and nobles never
had more of state and homage, and never less of
personal responsibility and peril ; when medieval
winter was receding, and the summer sun of civilisation
was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of
luxurious enjoyment ; when a new world of thought
and beauty had opened upon the human mind, in the
1 Butler's Lives ofthe Saints, vol. vii., 472, 473.
2 F. S. Bowden's Miniature Lives, i., 293.
3 Idea of a University, p. 234 et seq.

72 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
discovery of the treasures of classic literature and
art, dazzled by the enchantress, and drinking in the
magic of her song ; he saw the high and the wise, the
student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and
sculpture, and music, and architecture, drawn within
her range, and circling round the abyss : he saw
heathen forms mounting thence, and forming in the
thick air — all this he saw, and he perceived that the
mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with
science, not with protests and warnings, not by the
recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great
counter-fascination of purity and truth." Unlike other
reformers, " he preferred to yield to the stream, and
direct the current, which he could not stop, of science,
literature, art, and fashion, and to sweeten and to sanc
tify what God made very good, and man had spoilt ".
Popes and cardinals might send for Cellini, whilst
they were eating their dinners, to give him orders for
gold or silver plate, or they might visit his work
shop to watch the progress of the orders they had
given him ; but how little were they influenced by
such a man ! and what did he know of their hearts
and their lives, in comparison with the humble,
empty-handed Father Philip, who never sought the
friendship of the great, yet was taken into the most
intimate friendship of popes, cardinals, bishops, princes
and nobles, at the same time that he was of all men
of Rome the most popular among the poor ?
Cellini was an artist St. Philip was the friend
of artists ! Great painters were among his penitents,
he was devoted to music, and he ministered to
Palestrina in his last moments. In studying Cellini's
view of Italy, let us not forget St. Philip's.

73

CHAPTER VI.
IN PRISON.
PAUL III. began by attempting to observe a complete
neutrality between the French and the Imperial
factions ; he had reasons for mistrusting both ; but, as
time went on, he found impartiality impossible ; for
indifference to the claims of either of them threatened
to entail the enmity of both ; and we find him
adopting the worst of compromises between impar
tiality and prejudice — that of siding first with one
party and then with the other.
First he sought an alliance with Charles V., and
when the emperor went to Rome, after his expedition
to Tunis, the Pope received him with extraordinary
magnificence. A little time beforehand he had or
dered Cellini to make for his imperial guest a golden
crucifix ; and everything had been arranged for its
production, when the poet Latino Juvenale, who, says
Cellini, "had a pretty big dash of the fool in his
composition," came to the goldsmith's house and said :
" It is our part to invent, and yours to execute. Before
I left the Pope last night we thought of something
far superior to a crucifix."
" Neither you nor the Pope can think of anything
better than a subject in which Christ bears a part ; "
answered Cellini ; " so you may go on talking your
courtier's nonsense till it is finished."
The poet went away in a rage, without saying

74 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
another word, and he determined to take vengeance
on Cellini for his impertinence, a determination which,
as we shall presently see, he did not fail to carry out.
His suggestion, however, was enforced by the Pope,
who placed in Cellini's hands an illuminated Hour-
book, which had cost 2000 crowns, together with
jewels valued at 6000 crowns, and ordered him to
prepare a golden cover for the book, inlaid with
jewels, instead of making the crucifix.
On the arrival of the emperor, Cellini was ordered
to present the book to him, and when he had done
so, the emperor " continued talking a whole half-hour,
touching on divers topics artistic and agreeable ".
Charles V. then ordered 500 crowns to be given —
Cellini says, to himself. Unfortunately, another
official of the Pope's, afterwards a bishop and a
cardinal,1 had presented the emperor with two of
"the most beautiful Turkish horses that ever came
into Christendom," just before Cellini had presented
the book. When the emperor's servant, who had
been ordered to fetch the 500 crowns, brought them
and inquired for the personage for whom the emperor
intended them, the giver of the horses stepped forward
and took them, to the exclusion of the giver of the
book. Cellini complained of this to the Pope, who
promised him his " share," which seems to show that,
unlike Cellini, the Pope did not consider that the
emperor had intended the whole 500 for the
goldsmith. Cellini states that Latino Juvenale took an op
portunity of saying to the Pope : " Benvenuto is a
1 Durante Duranti.

Back-bitten. 7 5
person of very remarkable genius ; but he ought to
consider what language it is right to use when speak
ing of a Pope. He has had the audacity to say
that Pope Clement was the handsomest and most
gifted sovereign who ever reigned ; but that luck was
always against him ; whereas there is nothing good in
your Holiness except your luck ; that the tiara seems
to weep for rage upon your head, and that you look
like a truss of straw dressed up in a man's clothes."
These words, " reported by a man who knew most
excellently well how to say them," gained credence
with the Pope, who had, however, too much tact to
betray his annoyance ; and he turned it off with a
laugh. Ever afterwards, however, Cellini was out of
favour with Paul III. He found it difficult to obtain
an audience ; when he got one he was coldly received,
and, if he asked anything of the Pope, his holiness
replied abruptly that he should do as he thought fit.
For the splendid book cover which he had made as
a present for the Emperor, and for some other work
done for the Pope, Cellini complains that he was
very badly paid. Altogether things appeared to be
going against him in Rome, and he made up his mind
to leave it, without the Pope's permission, and tq
pay a visit to France ; partly, says he, " because I
saw that the Pope did not hold me in the same''
esteem as formerly, my faithful service having been
besmirched by lying tongues ; and also because I
feared lest, those who had the power might play me
' some worse trick ".
His slipping off without leave seems to have raised
the suspicions of the Roman authorities, as we shall
very soon see.

76 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
After going to Venice to make a1 medal-portrait
of that great man of letters, Bembo, who was after
wards a cardinal, Cellini went to Paris, where he
went to visit the painter Rosso, whom he believed
to be his friend. Rosso received him coldly, told
him that he had done a foolish thing in expecting
to find employment in Paris, and, according to Cellini's
story, did all in his power to prevent his obtaining
an audience from the king.
As usual, in the case of those with whom Cellini
quarrelled, he lays stress upon the man's base
ingratitude ; for he declares that when Rosso was
in Rome he had treated him with great kindness.
But in an earlier part of his autobiography Cellini
himself owned that Rosso had been " very glad to
see " him, had " embraced and kissed " him, and had
received him very hospitably when he went into
the country on his long-haired pony to recruit his
strength after his attack of the plague ; so it is very
doubtful whether Rosso lay under any obligation to
Cellini. At the date of Cellini's arrival in France the king
was travelling in the country. Cellini followed the
court, and received a very gracious audience from
his majesty. He also made the acquaintance of
a very powerful patron at the court of Francis I.
in Ippolito d' Este (brother to the Duke of Ferrara),
at that time Archbishop of Milan and afterwards a
cardinal. Then Cellini had the ill-luck to take a
1 Cardinal Bembo was a sort of monarch among the literary men
of his day. His History of Venice is his best known work. His
literary style was excellent, and he was an admirable imitator of
that of others ; but he had little or no originality.

Arrested. 77
fever, and, when he had sufficiently recovered to
travel, he left a country where he could see no pros
pect of immediate employment, and returned to Rome.
There he received orders to supply jewellery for the
Duchess of Bracciano, whose husband afterwards
murdered her. This and other orders made him so
busy that he employed eight men, and worked with
them all day and much of the night. But no orders
appear to have been sent to him at this time from
the Vatican.
Then came a letter from Archbishop Ippolite d*
Este, saying that Francis I. desired Cellini to return
to France and to enter his service. Cellini replied
that he would " set off upon the spot ".
But this was not so easy ! Cellini had lately
quarrelled with one of his workmen, who had tried
to run away, owing his master money, and Cellini
had sued him and got him imprisoned. In revenge,
according to Cellini's account, the man had informed
the authorities that his late master had stolen a
number of the papal jewels when he had been
ordered to take them out of their settings by Clement
VII. during the siege of Rome. On this charge
Cellini was arrested and imprisoned in the Castle
of St. Angela1
Of course Cellini indignantly denies this charge.
He even states that when the list of the papal jewels
was examined, not one of them was found to be
missing, and that, when he was tried, he made a
splendid defence, although his judges did not acquit
him. Perfectly innocent he may have been ; yet, on
his own confession, he had stolen some of the gold
1 This took place in 1537.

78 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
when he had taken the same jewels from their fittings;
and it is curious that, some time afterwards, when he
left the court of France to return to Italy, he should
have been accused of taking with him plate belonging
to the king. In each case he may have been guilt
less ; but the coincidence is singular.
The Constable of the fortress of St. Angelo was
a Florentine and " a worthy man," who showed
Cellini the greatest courtesy and allowed him to go
where he would in the castle and let him have any
thing he desired for the purpose of his goldsmith's
work. Unfortunately this excellent Constable was
subject to periodical fits of temporary insanity ; at
"one time he thought he was an oil-jar, at another
time a frog". Suddenly, during Cellini's incarceration,
" he imagined that he was a bat, and when he went
abroad to take the air he used to scream like bats
in a high, thin tone ; and then he would flap his hands
and body as though he were about to fly ".
Worse still, he fancied that Cellini also was a bat ;
and that, being a bat, he would try to fly away ;
therefore, instead of giving Cellini extraordinary
liberty as heretofore, the Constable gave orders
that he should be securely locked up.
In those times it was the custom either to treat
a lunatic like a brute-beast, or to punish him like a
criminal, or to leave him completely free, however
dangerous, to do what he pleased ; but it is extra
ordinary that, even as long ago as the first half of
the sixteenth century, a man occasionally deranged
should have been allowed to hold so responsible a
post as that of custodian of the principal prison and
fortress of Rome.

Escaped. 79
So long as Cellini had been on parole, no thought
of flight crossed his mind ; but now that he was in
close confinement he concentrated his thoughts on a
method of escape.
He stole — the word is his own — a " big and heavy "
pair of pincers from one of the Swiss Guard, who
used to amuse himself by carpentering, and he hid it
in his straw mattress. In the nights he drew the
nails which fastened the hinges to his door and then
filled up the holes with sham nail-heads made of
modelling-wax mixed with rust. He also cut his
sheets into long strips. After several nights of pre
paratory labour he loosened the hinges of the door
and escaped from his cell about two hours before
daybreak. A series of adventures followed. First he had to
climb the walls, and then to fasten the end of his long
cord, made of strips of sheeting, to a projection.
With this he descended from a "vast height". But
he was not yet free ; for the Constable had had two
more walls built beyond. In this predicament Cellini
found a pole which he laid against the first of these
walls and swarmed up it, and he tied a length of some
reserved strips of sheeting to the top of this pole and
thus let himself down on the other side. Then he
met a sentinel, whom he frightened off with his
poignard ; and, somehow or other, he scrambled over
the last wall, getting such a fall in doing so that he
broke a leg, got a wound on the head, and lay stunned
" for more than an hour and a half, so far as he could
judge ". Some mastiffs then attacked him and bit him
badly, until he wounded one of them with his dagger,
when it ran away, with its companions after it.

80 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
In his miserable plight Cellini crawled on all fours
towards a palace where he could count on shelter,
and one much frequented by Florentines, that of the
widow of Duke Alessandro, who had now married
Duke Ottaviano Farnese. On his way thither, how
ever, he was recognised by one of the servants of
Cardinal Cornaro, who carried him to his master's
palace. The cardinal befriended him and went to the
Pope to plead his cause. When Paul III. had heard
the account of his escape, he said : " His exploit was
very clever ; yet when I was a young man I also
escaped from the fortress at that very spot ! "
This was true, and it had happened when he was
imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo for some
youthful escapade,1 at the wish of, or at least with the
consent of, his mother. But Cellini objects that,
whereas he had escaped with the greatest difficulty
and danger by means of strips of sheeting, Paul III.
had been let down comfortably in a basket by a
guard whom he had bribed. Now it so happened
that Cardinal Cornaro had asked the Pope for a
bishopric for one of his friends ; and, when he began
to plead the cause of Cellini, the Pope interrupted
him by saying : " You want the bishopric ; I want
Benvenuto. Let me have Benvenuto and I will
put him in those rooms which open on to my
private garden, and his friends can come and see
him there."
It may well be asked how Cellini could possibly
have heard of such a conversation and so private a
1 See Ranke, i., p. 181. But Cellini says that he was imprisoned
on a charge of having forged a brief, and states that Alexander VI.
had " resolved on cutting off his head ".

Second Imprisonment. 81
transaction. It sounds a most improbable story, and
Cellini was the last man likely to have heard the
truth about it. According to Cellini, the cardinal
agreed to the proposal, and packed him off to the
Pope, telling him pleasantly to keep up his spirits.
Throughout the history of his imprisonment Cellini
makes grave charges, which he does nothing to sub
stantiate, of treachery, lying, and intended murder,
against Pope, cardinals, bishops, and others. The
account offered in these pages is gathered from the
incidents described, without adopting the inferences
of evil motives suggested by Cellini. Those who wish
to adopt them had better read Cellini's narrative for
themselves. At first Cellini was very well treated in his second
imprisonment ; but fresh charges appear to have been
made against him. New evidence respecting his
murder of Pompeo was submitted to the Pope, as
well as a charge of an attempt to murder a cardinal,
which Cellini utterly denies. It must be remembered,
however, that Cellini had by his own showing
murdered two men, had very nearly murdered a
third, and was now lying a prisoner on a charge of
stealing papal jewels, theft being then a capital crime.
We cannot therefore be much surprised at hearing
from Cellini himself that he was transferred to one
of the worst criminal prisons in Rome and that his
execution was contemplated.
Cellini was eventually restored to the care of the
Constable of the Castle of St. Angelo, who had not
recovered from his temporary mania. So alarmed
had the Constable been at Cellini's escape that he
now had him imprisoned in a deep dungeon, and
F

82 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
locked in by four doors, to prevent " the bat " from
flying away a second time.
During his incarceration Cellini professes that
religion was his only comfort. He read the Bible
"from the commencement". We hear much in this
country of the poor papists not being allowed the
Bible in their own language ; but, even before the
birth of Cellini, there had been eight editions of
the Bible in Italian.1 It is a pity that Cellini did
not profit more by his studies of Scriptures ; for,
in their midst, he tried to commit suicide. Yet
he declares that he saw visions, and that future events
were revealed to him, adding : " ever since . . .
an aureole of glory [marvellous to relate] has rested
on my head. This is visible to every sort of men
to whom I have chosen to point it out ; but those
have been very few."
In his 2 Renaissauce in Italy the late J. A. Symonds
calls Cellini "a devout Catholic," whose "religion
had but little effect upon his life " ; and he states
that in those days "the separation between religion
and morality was complete in Italy".3
Neither Cellini nor any one else whose religion
had little effect on his life could be a devout Catholic !
There is nothing devout in sinning against God and
man. Cellini may have had faith. Very possibly,
like the devils, he believed and trembled. Indeed he
may have held the theory sarcastically propounded
by Dryden : —
A lively faith will bear aloft the mind.
And leave the luggage of good works behind.
1 Clifton Tracts. MIL, p. 470.
* Ibid., p. 451.

PLATE VIII.

TJirronymvis- Rg/st-Scula Ranice

Cardinal Newman. 83
" It being considered," says Newman,1 " that a vast
number of sacred truths are taken for granted as
facts by a Catholic nation in the same sense as the
sun in the heavens is a fact, you will see how many
things take place of necessity, which to Protestants
seem shocking, and which could not be avoided
unless it had been promised that the Church should
consist of none but the predestinate ; nay, unless it
consisted of none but the educated and refined."
A bad Catholic who has become irreligious in his
conduct may have lost his charity and his contrition
without having lost either his faith or his hope.
Such a man, as Newman puts it, will turn " the
truth to his own purpose, his bad purpose". Thus
in the days of chivalry "tournaments were held in
defiance of the excommunication of the Church, yet
with a show of devotion. We know the dissolute
character of the medieval knights and of the trouba
dours ; yet that dissoluteness which would lead
Protestant poets and travellers to scoff at religion
led them not to deny revealed truth, but to combine
it with their own wild and extravagant profession.
The knight swore before Almighty God, His Blessed
Mother and — the ladies. . . . The crusaders had
faith sufficient to bind them to a perilous pilgrimage
and warfare ; they kept the Friday's abstinence, and
planted the tents of their mistresses within the
shadow of the pavilion of the glorious St. Louis."
As a modern example of the same sort of people
and conditions, Newman imagines an "old woman,
who first genuflects before the Blessed Sacrament and
1See his Difficulties of Anglicans., vol. i., lecture ix.

84 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
then steals her neighbour's handkerchief or prayer-
book . . . she kneels because she believes, she steals
because she does not love ; she may be out of God's
grace, she is not altogether out of His sight ". " But,"
asks Newman, "does England bear no thieves?"
When men like Cellini acted wickedly, and yet re
tained their faith, the action came, not from their
religion, but from the bad use they made of their free
will. A realisation of this truth is necessary for the
formation of a fair judgment in studying the character
and the times of such men as Cellini.
When we contrast his verses written in prison as to
what he would do if liberated : —
Credo I'd sing, Salve Reginas pour
And Paternosters ; alms I'd then bestow
Morn after morn on blind folk, lame, and poor,
with his subsequent conduct, the more modern lines
When the devil was ill, the devil a monk would be ;
When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he,
inevitably suggest themselves.
Cellini gives us long descriptions of his sufferings,
which were chiefly owing to the insanity of the Con
stable in his mad fear lest " the bat " should fly
away once more. The Constable's illness increased,
until he died ; but, shortly before his death, his brain
cleared and he became in his right mind again.
Then he put Cellini into a comfortable prison and
showed him kindness as at first. With the restora
tion of the senses, however, came death to the
Constable. Cellini states that the already mentioned Durante,
Prefect of the Camera, bribed a warder to poison him

The Cardinal of Ferrara. 85
by putting powdered diamond into his food. He says
further that the goldsmith who had been ordered to
pound up a diamond, given him for this purpose,
kept the diamond and used a beryl, which he
erroneously fancied would serve the same end.
Here again we may say that Cellini was the last
man likely to learn the truth, if any, of the story.
An impartial reader will find it very difficult to
form an opinion of the conduct of either Paul III.
or his son, Pier Luigi, respecting the imprisonment
of Cellini, from the ex parte statements of the prisoner
himself. It may be best to leave these questions
not only undecided but unargued, merely remarking
that Pier Luigi was a scoundrel and had some in
fluence with his father, and then passing on to say
that the Pope set Benvenuto Cellini free, at the
request of Ippolito d' Este, then the Cardinal of
Ferrara, acting on behalf of Francis I., who desired
to have the services of so fine an artist in France.
Paul III. was then inclining towards an alliance
with France, and was prepared to do much to please
Francis I. ; but it is probable that he was also glad
to find an excuse for getting rid of such a turbulent
and doubtful character as Cellini, whom he did not
like to hang, yet was afraid to set at liberty.
The Cardinal of Ferrara took Cellini to his own
house, probably the villa, with its extensive gardens,
which he then possessed upon the west side of the
Quirinal hill.
By Cellini's own account he would never have
escaped alive from the Castle of St. Angelo had it
not been for the good offices of the Cardinal of
Ferrara ; yet almost ever afterwards he made com-

86 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
plaints of this cardinal. First he objected to the
long delays in his journey to France. The cardinal
left Cellini for many months at his palace at Ferrara,
" a very handsome place," where he provided Cellini
with all things necessary for his work. Considering
that the Cardinal had removed him from a prison to a
palace, Cellini had little cause for grumbling. Never
theless he was "sorely dissatisfied," and he amused
himself by shooting the tame peacocks in the park
with a gun loaded with noiseless powder.
On his way to Ferrara, Cellini had used his gun for
another purpose. He had quarrelled with a post
master, who accused him of over-riding one of his
horses. Each disputant insulted the other. The
postmaster pointed his pike at Cellini, while Cellini
pointed his arquebuse at the postmaster. And then,
says Cellini, his arquebuse "went off of itself" and
killed the postmaster. All this happened on a Good
Friday.

87

CHAPTER VII.
PARIS.
TOWARDS the end of the last chapter it was hinted
that Cellini was too ready to find fault with the man
who had saved his life. None the less is it fair to
observe that Ippolito d' Este, Cardinal of Ferrara,
while an admirable judge of art and literature, was
much fonder of patronising men of art and letters
than of paying them.
His treatment of Ariosto is sufficient proof of this.
Having perceived his talents, he secured his services
by making him a gentleman of his household ; but
when Ariosto dedicated to him his greatest work, the
Orlando Furioso, all the thanks the cardinal gave him
was to say : —
" Where have you been for all that rot ? " J
When the Cardinal went to Hungary in 1518,
he pressed Ariosto to accompany him. The poet
refused, inquiring whether his Eminence imagined
that by paying him so poor a pension as seventy
crowns a year he had purchased a slave, and telling
him that he was welcome to withdraw that boon. His
Eminence forthwith took him at his word.
Perhaps this cardinal may be best known to modern
travellers for the famous Villa d' Este, which he built
at Tivoli. As to the beauty ofthe ilexes and cypresses
1 Garnett's Italian Literature, p. 141.

88 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
which adorn its gardens there can be but one opinion ;
but its clipped hedges and stiff plantations, and the
artificial waterfall known as the Girandola, have come
in for a good deal of adverse criticism.
While at Ferrara, Cellini made a medal bearing a
portrait of the cardinal's brother, the Duke of Ferrara
— " unconquered Duke of Alphonso," as Ariosto calls
him — who had just come to terms with the Pope about
some matter of dispute respecting Modena, in which
his Holiness had had somewhat the best of the bargain.
On the reverse of the medal, accordingly, Cellini
modelled a figure of Peace, and the duke ordered
him to inscribe on it the words " Pretiosa in conspectu
Domini," to typify that " his peace with the Pope had
been dearly bought ".
This duke was the husband of the famous — some
would say infamous — Lucrezia Borgia, concerning
whom opinions differ. Ariosto took a favourable
view of her character, and wrote of her : —
What of the fruitful stepchild shall I say
Who in succession next to her I see,
Lucrezia Borgia ? who, from day to day,
Shall wax in beauty, virtue, chastity.
— Rose's translation of Orlando Furioso, canto xiii., 6g.
At last the summons to go to the king in France
arrived from the cardinal. Cellini found Francis I.
at Fontainebleau ; but he was just starting on a
journey, with a train of 12,000 horse. To Cellini,
who was ordered to follow the court, the incon
venience was intolerable, but he was somewhat
comforted by the kind reception accorded to him by
the king, who told the artist that he would find fully
as much work as he could manage ready for him.

An Abortive Pilgrimage. 89
One evening the Cardinal of Ferrara sent for
Cellini and said that the king wished to come to a
clear understanding with him respecting the terms on
which he should be employed.
" If his majesty gives you 300 crowns a year, you
will be very well off; and for the rest, trust yourself
in my hands," said the cardinal.
" If I had known that 300 crowns, or twice 300
crowns, were what I was to be offered, I would never
have put a foot out of Italy," replied Cellini. " But I
shall always feel grateful to you for saving my life,
wherever I may be and how long soever I may live.
The terms, however, I cannot accept ; so I shall at
once leave France. And now farewell. I will pray
for you ! "
" Go, then ! It is impossible to help people against
their will," said the cardinal.
A bystander observed : " The king will never find
his equal. The cardinal is trying to cheapen him as
if he were a load of wood." The speaker was Ala
manni, an Italian poet, clever, cultured and cold in
his writings ; but warm-hearted and generous in his
disposition. As good as his word, Cellini mounted his horse
to leave France for ever, and he started in the direc
tion of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre.
When he had already ridden as far as two miles in
that particular direction, a messenger from the king
overtook him and ordered him to return at once into
his majesty's presence.
" You have been sent by the cardinal, and for this
reason I will not come," said Cellini.
" If gentle usage will not bring you back, those will

90 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
presently be here who will carry you, bound hand
and foot," answered the king's messenger, adding :
" When his majesty does send a man to prison, it is
never for less than five years."
At this Cellini wheeled his horse round briskly and
followed. When they passed the king's lodgings, the Cardinal
of Ferrara was standing at their door.
" Our most Christian monarch," said he to Cellini,
" has of his own accord assigned you the same income
as that which he gave to Leonardo da Vinci, namely,
700 crowns a year ; he will pay you in addition for
every piece of work that you may do for him, and
you will be presented, at once, with 500 crowns to
cover the cost of your journey to France."
"A noble offer from a noble king ! " answered Cellini.1
Francis I. was a great and a liberal patron of art
and literature. Cellini writes of his " consummate
taste and his delight in everything rare and master
ful ". Moreover, as Bayle quaintly says of him:2
" He had that frank and undisguised generosity which
is so rarely found in persons of exalted station ".
He was genial and good-humoured, with many
good sides to his disposition. Although not exempt
from charges of cowardice, he showed considerable
valour on some occasions. When taken prisoner
he made the famous speech : " All is lost but
honour ". Yet, when he had been set free, he
regained all, but lost honour, by breaking his faith.
He was called the Father of Letters ; an apter title
for him would have been the Fool of Women. In
1 Cellini entered the service of Francis I. in 1540,
^Geu. Die, Historical and Critical, vol. v., p. 324.

Francis I. of France.
Engraved by Massard, after the Picture by Titian.

Francis I. 91
his Histoire de France Mezerai says ] of his court :
" Infamy then grew into credit, prostitution was the
path to favour, and by this means men got to be
favourites, and continued such. In a word, posts and
employments were bestowed merely at the caprice of
women." Francis I. had married Leonora, the sister of his
late rival, Charles V. But marriage appears to have
been an ordinance little respected by this French king.
Francis gave Cellini one of his castles 2 for a resi
dence and a workshop, but, although he went thither
escorted by an official of high rank, he did not
enter it without a violent resistance from its former
occupier, the Provost of Paris.
Cellini had not to wait long for work. The king
ordered him to make twelve candelabra for his table,
in the form of silver statues representing an equal
number of gods aud goddesses ; and each candle
stick was to be the exact height of his majesty.
While at work upon Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Vulcan,
and Mars, Cellini found time to finish a little vase
and oval basin ordered some months earlier by the
cardinal, who took them to the king and made him
a present of them. " In return," the king " bestowed
upon the cardinal an -abbey worth 7000 crowns a
year." Cellini implies that this abbey was given
simply as a return for the small vase and basin, but
no sensible reader can be expected to draw such a
monstrous inference. So rich a gift must have been
presented for other, and far more valuable services.
1 Tom. iii., p. 446.
2 Le Petit Nesle, on the site now occupied by the Palace of the
Institute.

92 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
The king then expressed his intention of rewarding
Cellini for the vase and basin.
This the cardinal begged him not to do, saying :—
" Sire, I beg you leave that to me ; I will allow
him a pension of at least 300 crowns when I have
taken possession of the abbey ".
As to his fulfilment of this promise Cellini re
marks : " He never gave me anything, and it would
be tedious to relate all the knavish tricks of this
prelate ".
From the king, however, Cellini received much
kindness. One day Francis sent word to Cellini
that he was going to vespers at the Sainte Chapelle
and that Cellini " was to be at vespers too ".1 After
the service, the king showed Cellini a beautiful drink
ing bowl of filagree work, and, when he admired it,
asked him very pleasantly if he knew how it was
made. Cellini writes : —
" Sacred majesty," quoth I, " I can tell you exactly
how it is done, even so much that you, being the man
of rare ability that you are, shall know how just as well
as the master himself that made it knew".
Then followed a long, intricate, and highly technical
explanation, after hearing which the king said " that
now, owing to my description, he really thought he
could do it himself".
Cellini's large workshops in the castle, and a liberal
allowance given him by the king for the payment of
smiths to work under him, enabled him to get on
rapidly with the candelabra.
One day all the men in the house were busily at
1 Treatises, p. 12.

A Royal Visit. 93
work, many hammers striking metal were making a
deafening din, Cellini himself was battering away on
a plate of silver which he was shaping into Jupiter's
body, while one workman was knocking some of the
same metal into the form of Jupiter's head, and
another man was beating another piece to provide
that deity with legs.
Just at that moment, a boy happened to make
some blunder, whereupon Cellini gave him a kick
from behind which " sent him spinning several yards "
until he fell against a visitor who had just entered.
Cellini, on looking up, saw, to his horror, that the
stranger, against whom he had kicked the boy, was
the King of France, who was as much amused as
Cellini was confounded. Behind his majesty stood a
formidable array of royalties and courtiers — the King
and Queen of Navarre, the Dauphin and Dauphiness
(the celebrated Catherine de' Medici), the Cardinal of
Lorraine, the Duchess d'Etampes, then the king's
mistress, and others.
Francis at once began a conversation with Cellini,
in which he recommended him to employ workmen
for all hard and rough work, and to limit his own
labours to modelling and fine chiselling, as otherwise,
said, the King, he would lose his health by severe
labour. Cellini replied that, if he were to give up
hard manual toil, he would become ill, and that,
instead of gaining, his finer work would lose from his
want of healthy exercise.
The next day the king sent for Cellini whilst he
was at dinner. Readers of Cellini's autobiography
cannot have failed to notice how often kings, popes,
cardinals and other great men sent for Cellini to talk

94 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
to him about his work for them, when they were
at their meals. On this occasion the Cardinal of
Ferrara was dining with the king. After compli
menting Cellini upon his skill, Francis told him that,
having already a beautiful vase and bowl of his
workmanship, he wished for a salt-cellar to match
them. Now, before leaving Rome, the Cardinal of Ferrara
had given orders to Cellini to make a salt-cellar, and
he had then asked Alamanni, the poet, as well as a
literary man named Cesano, to suggest designs, from
which Cellini was to make his choice.
Their suggestions, says Cellini, were " good enough
to describe in words, but not to execute in metal";
and he politely informed the cardinal that he pre
ferred the children of his own brain to those sprung
from the brains of others. At this the handsome
Alamanni smiled, and, in his gentle voice, with his
charming manner, said many witty things in Cellini's
praise. The ugly Cesano, on the contrary, " spoke as
he looked ".
When Cellini had modelled his own design, Cesano
persuaded the cardinal that it would take the lives of
ten men to complete such an elaborate piece of work,
whereat Cellini said in a temper : —
" Most reverend monsignor, and you gentlemen
overflowing with learning, I hope to finish this work
for one who is worthy of it". The cardinal was
as angry as Cellini, and neither of them forgot the
incident. When, therefore, Francis I. told Cellini that he
wanted a salt-cellar, he eagerly ran home and fetched
the wax design which the cardinal had refused, and,

The Salt-Cellar. 95
as he placed it before the king, he looked towards the
cardinal and said : —
" I told your eminence that I should execute this
design for one who was worthy of it". Nettled at
this remark the cardinal said to the king : —
" Sire, this is an enormous undertaking. I am only
afraid that we shall never see it finished."
" Princes who put heart and courage into their
servants render the greatest undertakings quite
easy," retorted Cellini.
The king then took Cellini into a private room and
arranged for the carrying out of the design. On his
way home, carrying 1000 golden crowns which the
king had given him for material with which to make
the salt-cellar, Cellini was attacked by robbers in
league with the treasurer, who had counted out the
1000 crowns with very suspicious deliberation and
delay ; and he barely reached his house in safety with
the gold.
The salt-cellar, which was about a foot high and of
solid gold, entirely worked with the chisel and in part
enamelled, delighted the king when it was eventually
finished. It is now at Vienna. As a piece of work
manship it is magnificent ; but the constrained posi
tion of the nude female figure representing Earth,
sitting with her back at an angle of 45 degrees, and
with nothing to lean against, is very wearisome to the
eye. (See plate x.) \Ii,\T^,h<v'~ "¦
Two other celebrated works designed by Cellini for
the King of France were a large bronze1 to fill a
1 In describing the clay used for the casting of this bronze
(Treatises, p. 113), Cellini says: "You take such clay as is used
by the ordnance-makers for their moulds. It may be found in many

96 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
semicircular opening above the door of the Palace of
Fontainebleau, and an immense fountain, in which
a figure of Mars was to stand 54 feet above the
ground. The " devilries of war " between the emperor and
king had been stirred up again, and Francis I.1 was
much harassed by the consequent anxieties which
they caused him. It was hoped that the exhibition
of the models for the works just mentioned might
prove a distraction to him, and he was persuaded to
look at them.
The king became quite cheerful when his thoughts
were turned from war to art by Cellini's beautiful
models, and his delight was intense when the artist,
in showing him the model of the fountain, said : —
" I have attempted to portray your majesty, your
very self, in the great central statue ; for you are truly
a god Mars, the greatest hero on the earth, and the
only hero who never draws his sword except in the
cause of piety and justice ".
" Verily," exclaimed his majesty, " I have here
found a man after my own heart ! "
" My good fortune in pleasing such a king is far
greater,'' said Cellini.
As to Cellini's sincerity we may observe that he
expresses great regret at not having been " wide
awake enough to play the like comedy with Madame
places, but preferably near rivers. . . Also you will find it in hills
and grottoes, particularly round Rome and Florence, and in France
at Paris. The clay from the latter city is the finest I ever saw. . . .
You mix it with cloth frayings, about half as much of the latter as you
have clay." The bronze in question is known as "The Nymph of
Fontainebleau ". 1 This was in 1542.

"Tell Him to Wait." 97
d'Etampes". For when the king told her that
evening all that had transpired, and that Cellini
had privately shown him his beautiful designs, she
was intensely annoyed at his not having previously
shown the.m tr-her, or even sought her favour and
assistance in f-i matter, and she said angrily : —
" If Ben ver, "to had shown those things, which you
say are so JiTe^ fo me, it might have been better for
him in the future." This speech was reported to
Cellini, who thought it prudent to regain if possible
the great lady's favour. This he attempted by
personally taking for her a beautiful little vase which
he had made at her request. When he reached her
house 1 he was informed that she was at her toilette ;
and, after sending to let her know that he had come,
he was told that the duchess had said : " Tell him to
wait ".
Cellini endeavoured to clothe himself with patience,
which of all things, he declares, he found most difficult.
On and on he waited ! The dinner hour came. It
went, and still no summons to the presence of the
duchess was brought to him. At last, "maddened
by hunger," he " could no longer hold out, but flung
off, sending her most devoutedly to the devil ".
In his wrath Cellini took the little vase (see plate
xi.) to the Cardinal of Lorraine and made a present of
it to him. The cardinal was delighted and whispered
something to his treasurer, who, when Cellini was
about to leave the house, brought him 100 crowns
and offered him a glass of wine.
" For Heaven's sake, Mr. Treasurer," said Cellini,
1 Francis I. had built a magnificent palace for her in the Rue de
l'Hirondelle. See Bush's Queens of France, vol. i., p. 299.
G

98 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
"give me a mouthful of bread, for I am fainting for
want of food. I have fasted since early morning at
the door of Madame d'Etampes. I went to give her
that vase, and took care that she should be informed
of my intention ; but she, out of mere petty spite, to
vex me made me wait. Now I am famished. Being
by nature rather bilious, fasting upsets me. At any
rate, thank goodness, I have bestowed my present
on some one more worthy of it than that woman for
whom I had destined it."
The whole story was told to the king, and Madame
d'Etampes was well laughed at for her share in it.
This made her the mortal enemy of Cellini. Of
Madame d'Etampes it is proposed to say something
in the following chapter.

99

CHAPTER VIII.
MADAME D'ETAMPES.
The beautiful Mademoiselle de Pisselen de Heilli,
daughter of William de Pisselen,1 Lord of Heilli, had
been a maid of honour to the Queen Regent, mother
of Francis I. With this maid of honour the king
fell in love ; and, even at the age of forty-six, when
Cellini came to Paris,2 and Francis had been married
fifteen years, he was still at her feet. With the object
of rendering her position at court less equivocal,
he had found her a husband, or at least a nominal
husband, in a ruined gentleman whom he made Duke
d'Etampes, in order to give his lady an exalted title.3
The high position accorded to Madame d'Etampes
may be inferred from the fact that she was allowed
a carriage. At first sight this inference may appear
far-fetched ; but, at about the time when Cellini was
in France, or at any rate, not very long before it,
only two carriages were to be seen in Paris, those
of the Queen and of Madame d'Etampes. Carriages
within that city had been forbidden by the sumptu
ary laws of Charles IX. Even many years after the
death of Cellini, Henry IV., in writing to Sully, told
1 William de Pisselen had thirty children.
2 Madame d'Etampes was then thirty-two.
s The Duke of Etampes was made Governor of Brittany and sent
thither to govern it, while his wife remained at court.

ioo Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
him that he could not go to see him because the
queen was using " the carriage "-1
Madame d'Etampes was a woman of a very vindic
tive spirit, and she is said to have contrived the
ruin of Chancellor Poyet because he took the side
of a rival to one of her own protege's. A further light
may be thrown on her character by the generally
accepted historical evidence that, when she perceived
the health of Francis I. to be failing, she tried to
curry favour with his enemy, Charles V.,2 by inform
ing him of the most secret transactions of the French
court and council. (See plate xii.)
She soon began to show her spite against Cellini.
Having been laughed at before the court for losing
his vase, she determined to repay him with interest
for this affront.
Cellini had given a suite of apartments in his castle
to his great friend, the celebrated doctor, Guido Guidi,
a grandson of the famous artist, Ghirlandajo. This
friend of Cellini's had been appointed by Francis I.
to be his own private physician. He is called by
Cellini " the most cultivated, the most affectionate,
and the most companionable man of worth " he ever
knew. But, besides this friend, he had other lodgers ;
and, when he found occasion to turn them out, they,
having heard of his strained relations with Madame
d'Etampes, went to her and complained of his conduct.
1 Ambroise Pare and his Times, by Stephen Paget.
2 When Charles V. visited Paris in 1540 she advised Francis I.
to make him a prisoner until he would revoke the Treaty of Madrid.
This the French king repeated to the emperor, who thenceforth
endeavoured to gain favour with Madame d'Etampes and even to
obtain her love. (Bush's Queens of France, vol. i., p. 302.) She is also
said to have sold court secrets to Henry VIII. (Ib., p. 303.)

PLATE XII.

{-try ^AAr/r-A^e (///tiwyieJ.

Primaticcio. 101
They painted him " like the very fiend " to the
king's mistress, and the king's mistress painted him
" still blacker to the king ". She said : " I believe
that devil will sack Paris one of these days ". Francis
was inclined to deal severely with Cellini ; but his
sister, the Queen of Navarre, as well as the Dauphin,
espoused Cellini's cause so cleverly that the king
passed the matter off with a laugh. One reason, if
not the only reason, of the opposition to Madame
d'Etampes by the Dauphin in this instance, may
very possibly have been that Madame d'Etampes's
greatest enemy was the Dauphin's favourite, Diane
de Poitiers.
But, says Cellini, " the rage of this vindictive woman
kept continually on the increase " ; and she conceived
the idea of revenging herself by getting the king to
take away from him the order for the fountain at
Fontainebleau. It will be remembered that Cellini's first offence
against Madame d'Etampes had been in exhibiting
the model for this fountain to Francis, without first
showing it to his mistress. To bring about her end,
Madame d'Etampes recommended the king to employ,
for the fountain, Francesco Primaticcio,1 of Bologna,
a member of the noble family of Primaticci. Cellini
admits that he was "an excellent master of design" ;
although he denies that modelling was " in his line of
art". Madame d'Etampes and Primaticcio pestered the
king for the order: "they kept hammering at him
night and day," and their leading argument was that
1 Primaticcio was a famous worker in stucco and a painter of
frescoes.

102 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Cellini would never make the twelve candelabra — he
had not yet finished one of them — if he had to execute
such an enormous piece of work as the great fountain
as well. Finally they prevailed, and the order was
transferred to Primaticcio. When Cellini heard of
this he " marched off with his good sword at his side ''
to the house of that artist
" Only this morning," said he to Primaticcio, " have
I heard that you have filched the order for the fountain
from me. I earned it by my talents, and you have
robbed me of it by your tongue."
" Ifit is the king's will, what have you to say against
it ? " replied Primaticcio.
" Let us each make models, and let the king then
choose between us," suggested Cellini.
" The work, having been given to me, is already
mine, and I do not choose to put mine own to
hazard," answered Primaticcio.
" If you will not take the right course, I will take
one like your own, that is to say, an ugly and a
disagreeable course — I will kill you like a dog ! "
exclaimed Cellini angrily.
" So long as I act honestly I have no cause for
fear," said Primaticcio quietly.
The following day Primaticcio sent for Cellini and
told him in a very friendly way that he had been
thinking the matter over, and had come to the con
clusion that Cellini ought not to be deprived of the
order for the fountain, and that he should say no
more about it.
In addition to his threats against Primaticcio, Cellini
was making himself notorious in Paris for deeds of
actual violence. Having lost a lawsuit to a protigi

Jean Grolier. 103
of Madame d'Etampes, he attacked him one evening
with " a great dagger," wounding him so severely in
the legs that he lost the use of both of them.
" It is I who rule the world, yet a little fellow like
Benvenuto Cellini has the impudence to snap his
fingers at me," said Madame d'Etampes. Determined
to annoy him, she took the opportunity of "a moment
of amorous weakness " in the king to wheedle him
into consenting to allot to the man who distilled per
fumed waters for her complexion a portion of the
castle which he had already given to Cellini.
The distiller was formally installed in the castle by
the king's treasurer, Jean Grolier, a very great noble
man and a celebrated collector of books and anti
quities ; but the notaries who assisted in putting the
distiller in possession admitted, when pressed by
Cellini, that an induction of this kind was rather a
ceremony of custom than an action of legal import
ance and force.
" This hint," says Cellini, " was enough for me,
and next morning I had recourse to arms ; and
though the job cost me some trouble, I enjoyed it.
Each day that followed I made an attack with stones,
pikes and arquebuses, firing, however, without ball.
When I noticed one day that his defence was feeble,
I entered the house by force and expelled the fellow,
turning all his goods and chattels into the street.
Then I betook me to the king, and told him that I
had done precisely as his majesty had ordered, by
defending myself against every one who sought to
hinder me in his service. The king laughed at the
matter, and made me out new letters-patent to secure
me from jfurther molestation."

104 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Cellini gives a lengthy and detailed account of his
immoralities and adventures with a woman called
Caterina. On his own showing his conduct was
infamous. It is extraordinary that he should brag
and swagger over behaviour which even libertines
would not hesitate to condemn. Caterina appears to
have been the model who sat for the nude figure of
the Nymph of Fontainebleau. (See plate xiii.)
His own account of the manner in which he treated
her, when she displeased him, is incredibly shocking
and disgraceful. The word incredibly is used with a
special meaning. It is difficult to believe that even a
trained ruffian — for such, as well as a trained genius,
was Cellini — would deliberately record such accusa
tions against himself, were the record absolutely or
largely true. Rather does the story incline one to im
agine, as do various other passages in his autobiography,
that he was prompted by a literally diabolical vain-
gloriousness either to invent or grossly exaggerate
such feats of abominable scoundrelism as he proudly
attributes to himself. Such an idea borrows proba
bility from the fact that exactly the same trait was
noted in a later and greater historical personage, who
had some curious points of contact in character with
Cellini. The present writer does not accept the theory
that Cellini was an unmitigated liar. With the sayings
of such it is not difficult to deal. Cellini's statements
present those most perplexing problems, exaggerated
truths, distorted facts, good stories made better and
shady scenes painted blacker than the reality. Worse
still, he gives at least one reader the impression of
sometimes being faithfully and carefully accurate, and
at others deliberately and maliciously inaccurate. Yet

Braun et Cie Photo. [By permission of MM. Plon et Cie.)
The Nymph of Fontainebleau.
By Cellini, in the Louvre.

Antiques from Rome. 105
are not such characters common enough in modern
smoking-rooms, clubs and general society ; and how
few writers of amusing letters are quite guiltless of
exaggeration and scandal-mongering !
The language used in this book concerning Cellini's
immoralities, and the cruelties which sometimes ac
companied them, may sound strong ; but a perusal
of his own descriptions of them would convince most
readers that it is neither prudish nor unjustifiable.
For the present we will dismiss the subject of his
profligacy to consider one of his many quarrels.
Primaticcio persuaded the king to send him to
Rome to take casts of the masterpieces of antiquity,
having as his object a desire to depreciate Cellini's
figures by contrasting them with those of the ancient
Greek sculptors. So at least Cellini tells us. But
Vasari1 says that Francis I. sent him there to pur
chase antiques in marble, and that of these, either in
entire figures or in heads or trunks, he bought 125 ;
while, at the same time, he made Barozzi da Vignola 2
and others take casts from the most famous Greek
statues in Rome, casts which he brought to Paris
to be copied in bronze. Vasari adds that Primaticcio
induced Vignola to go to France with him to superin
tend the execution of the bronzes, and that so per
fectly was this carried out as to render " polishing
almost needless". It is interesting to learn that,3
while Cellini accuses Primaticcio of having persuaded
the king to send him to Rome, in order to bring
1 v., 372.
2 An architect who was employed in building St. Peter's after the
designs of Michael Angelo.
3 See footnote to Foster's Vasari, v., 372.

106 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Cellini's work into disfavour, Malvasia accuses Cellini's
former friend, but then enemy, Rosso, of having in
duced the king to send Primaticcio to Rome, with the
object of ridding himself of a rival.
Be all this as it may, it is clear that Madame
d'Etampes determined to make use, to Cellini's dis
advantage, of the bronzes taken from the Roman
antiques. The candlestick in the form of a statue of Jupiter
was now finished, and Cellini asked the king where
he should bring it to show to his majesty. Madame
d'Etampes, who happened to be present, suggested
that no place could be more appropriate than the
king's own statue-gallery. Her object in making
this apparently complimentary proposal was to get
Cellini's Jupiter placed among the bronzes taken from
the choicest Roman antiquities, which she was well
aware had just been set up there by Primaticcio.
When Cellini took his Jupiter to the gallery, and
found the magnificent bronzes from the antique
erected on their pedestals, he perceived the trick
and exclaimed : —
" This is like running the gauntlet ; now may God
assist me ! "
Fortunately for Cellini the king paid his visit to
the gallery at night ; and Cellini had so contrived his
candlestick that the great wax candle it held should
throw its light upon the silver figure and show it off
to the very best advantage. He placed the candle
stick upon a movable stand, and, hidden behind
it, he put an apprentice, whom he instructed as to
how and when he was to move it.
The king was accompanied by Madame d'Etampes,

Jupiter. 107
the Dauphin and Dauphiness, the King of Navarre
and others ; and the first thing that caught their eye,
as they entered the great gallery, was the glittering
silver statue of Jupiter illuminated by the immense
wax candle standing among the metal flames of the
thunderbolt in Jupiter's right hand ; and, as they
gazed at it, the figure moved gently forwards, as if
alive, into a position in front of the antiques.
The king, taken in by this meretricious effect,
proclaimed the silver statue to be the finest thing he
had ever seen.
" One would think you had no eyes," cried Madame
d'Etampes, mad with anger at being thus out-tricked.
" Don't you see all those fine bronzes from the antique
behind this modern trumpery ? "
" Benvenuto's work does not merely rival, it sur
passes the antique ! " replied the king.
" It will look very different by daylight," retorted
the duchess. " And look ! Cellini has had to veil
part of it to conceal its faults."
He had indeed deftly wound a piece of gauze round
the loins of the figure to heighten the effect and to
give a life-like appearance, but no sooner had the
duchess spoken than he snatched it off and tore it to
pieces, in a rage. This was construed by Madame
d'Etampes into an intentional affront, and she was
furious. Both artist and duchess began to speak at
once ; and the king, at the outbreak of the storm,
ordered Cellini to be silent.
"... Poor women have a tongue,
Men can stand silent and resolve on wrong. — Dryden.
But, while he hurried away Madame d'Etampes, he
said, so that Cellini might hear him, that he had

108 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
brought from Italy the greatest artist that ever lived.
The duchess " grumbled with redoubled spite " as
she was led away, and Cellini says of himself:
" Not being allowed to speak, I writhed my body in
a rage". But political eclipsed personal quarrels ; for, shortly
afterwards,1 war again broke out between Francis I.
and Charles V. and the emperor marched towards
Paris, actually advancing within twenty leagues of it.
It became necessary, therefore, to see carefully to the
defences of the capital, and Francis I. consulted Cellini
as to its fortifications. Cellini suggested plans, and the
king gave orders to a great official to see that they
were carried out Now this official — " this animal,"
as Cellini calls him — was a creature of Madame
d'Etampes, who told him to get Bellarmato 2 to give
his advice in designing the fortifications, and not to
attend to Cellini. This made Cellini very angry,
and he threw up the work in a rage. He deals a
passing blow at the duchess by remarking that she
was believed to have betrayed the French king.
Presently a peace was arranged, and Francis I.
began to take his ease in Paris.
" That cursed woman, Madame d'Etampes," says
Cellini, abused him to the king to such an extent
that his majesty, to appease her, promised to have
nothing more to do with him. Some one about the
court went to Cellini in his workshop and told him
of the king's promise, which so infuriated him that
1 In August, 1544.
2 A very celebrated military architect, who had been banished from
Italy for political reasons. He designed Havre harbour ; and he must
have been infinitely better qualified than a goldsmith to fortify a city.

The English. 109
he threw his tools to the opposite side of the building
and there and then began preparations for leaving
France. Then he went to the king, who gave him
a gracious smile, and said that he would go at once
to his workshop and see his beautiful things.
This promise his majesty did not keep ; but he
went there the next day, after having heard " that
biting tongue " of the duchess call Cellini one of the
worst and most deadly enemies of the crown of
France, and having assured her that his only motive
in visiting Cellini " was to administer such a scolding
as should make him tremble in his shoes ".
In a measure he kept his word ; for he remonstrated
seriously with Cellini for delaying and putting on one
side works expressly ordered, and working instead
upon objects, beautiful in themselves, but neither
ordered nor desired by the king. At the same time
he said many kind things ; and he bade him farewell
with the very friendly and familiar phrase — " Adieu,
mon ami ".
Although the King of France had made peace with
the emperor, he was still at war with the English, and
Cellini observes that " these devils " were keeping him
in constant anxiety.1 Francis, therefore, had other
matters engaging his attention besides works of art,
and for several months he sent Cellini neither money
nor orders. For want of something to do, that artist
made two large vases with his own silver ; and, when
they were finished, he took them to a place several
days' journey from Paris, at which he knew the king
to be staying. Francis was much pleased with the
vases ; but, when Cellini begged to be allowed, now
1 In 1544 Henry VIII. took Boulogne.

no Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
that wars were going on and causing a slackness in
artistic work, to go to Italy for a time, the king " shot
a terrible glance" at Cellini, and said in an angry
voice : —
" Benvenuto, you are a great fool. Take these vases
back to Paris for I want to have them gilded."
Not long afterwards the king, in the presence of
Madame d'Etampes and one of his principal generals,
was talking about Cellini, and he expressed a wish to
keep him in France. The general observed that he
knew a very simple method of doing that ; and, on
being pressed by the king to describe it, he said
with a smile : —
" I would hang that Benvenuto of yours by the
neck, and then you would keep him for ever in your
kingdom ".
" He richly deserves it ! " cried Madame d'Etampes,
to please whom this speech had been made.
" I have no objection whatever to your hanging
him, if you will find me as good an artist to take his
place," said the king.
This conversation appears to have been repeated to
Cellini. As the old proverb has it — " If enough mud
be thrown at a person, some of it will stick to him " ;
and, much as Francis I. appreciated Cellini's work,
he was probably beginning to tire somewhat of the
man, with his evil repute, his violence, his ill-temper,
his eccentricities, and his habit of working at what
pleased himself, rather than at what pleased his em
ployer. Cellini, on his part, perceived that he was
falling out of favour, and this, with the want of
orders, hastened him in his determination to leave
France.

Leaves France. in
He then went to the Cardinal of Ferrara and ob
tained from him a quasi-permission to leave the
country ; and after waiting three weeks he started for
Italy, taking the two silver vases with him. Messengers
from the court overtook him, demanding the vases and
certain silver which it was said was the king's. All
these he delivered up. Of attempting to carry off any
thing belonging to his employer he acquits himself,
and perhaps we may as well accept his own verdict ;
but it cannot be forgotten that this was not the first
time such an accusation had been made against him.
It only remains to be said here that, in spite of
certain of his grumblings, Cellini was better paid
by the King of France than by any other of his
employers. He may not always have got what the
king had promised ; but he certainly received very
large sums. It is interesting to observe how a pro
fessedly Catholic king could rob the Church, when we
read of Francis I. giving orders that Cellini should
have the emoluments ofthe first abbey, worth 2000
crowns a year, that might fall vacant ; or, failing
that, the emoluments of two or even three abbeys
which would make up the amount.
In three years after Cellini had left France, Francis
I. was dead. Then, as was wickedly said, Diane de
Poitiers ascended the throne with Henri 1 1., and
Madame d'Etampes's only hope of safety lay in living
in retirement upon the immense wealth which she
had amassed during her prosperity. Having then ob
tained high ecclesiastical dignities for her brothers and
sisters, she now turned round and became a sancti
monious Calvinist. Mezerai : says rather severely :
1 Hist, de Hen., ii., i., p. 34.

112 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
" The Duchess d'Etampes had led publicly for one-
and-twenty years a dissolute life ; and Calvinism
appeared to her the most proper of all sects to still
the remorse of conscience ; because, on one side, it
took away the necessity of confession ; and, on the
other, declared that all men were equally the enemies
of God, and were distinguished from one another only
by an imputative righteousness ".
Well ! It may be so. On the other hand no
religion is so open-armed to the repentant sinner, or
so readily, or so easily smooths the path to a better
life, as that which Madame d'Etampes deserted.

"3

CHAPTER IX.
FLORENCE.
AFTER the events described in the last chapter, and
some time in the year 1545, Cellini went to Florence,
which then became practically his home for the
remainder of his life. He arrived there at about the
time of the convocation of the Council of Trent, am
affair of which he makes no mention, and one which
probably interested him little, if at all.
During his absence he had constantly assisted his
sister, whom he now found with six daughters, the
eldest marriageable and the youngest at nurse. To
these nieces Cellini was most generous. Cosimo de'
Medici mentions this in a letter to Queen Catherine
de' Medici, adding, " I have been no less satisfied
with his virtuous conduct towards them than with the
beauty of his works of art ".1
Eight years had elapsed since Cosimo de' Medici
had been elected Lord of Florence, and he was even
now only twenty-five. Calm, reserved and unpre
tentious, though dignified in manner, in natural dis
position he was bold, ambitious, despotic, tyrannical
and deceitful. When, at the early age of seventeen,
he was suddenly raised from an obscure position
to the heights of sovereignty, and that a tottering
sovereignty, he at once gave up all juvenile tastes
1 See Plon's Cellini, p. 109.
H

114 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
and amusements, and concentrated his energies upon
the exceptional difficulties of the government of
Florence. He conducted his rule in a spirit of pro
found unscrupulousness, diabolical dissimulation, and
ruthless revenge.
If Cosimo de' Medici was not perfect himself, he
made some show of enforcing perfection in others.
He forbade all Florentine women, of whatever
rank, to wear jewels, except in chaplets or rosaries,
although he seems afterwards to have relaxed this
law ; and he made sumptuary regulations respecting
almost every article of clothing, according to the
position in life of the wearer. On the other hand, as
we have already shown, rules regulating the dress, the
entertainments, and even the food of the Florentines,
were no new thing. Nor were their private customs
so perfect as to need no legislation. For instance,
that of betting upon the sex of their expected chil
dren had become so common among the Florentine
mothers that exchanges of babies sometimes took
place ; and Duke Cosimo can scarcely be blamed for
officious severity in having declared such bets to be
illegal unless made with the consent of the husband
in the presence of a judge.
Whatever may have been the merits or demerits
of Duke Cosimo as a ruler, he had the most important
of all qualifications in the eyes of Cellini. He was a
patron of art ! Although but ill-educated, he inherited
the taste, or at least the reverence, for science,1 art
' Cosimo and his son and successor, Francis, are said to have in
vented the bombshell between them, but they did not sufficiently
develop their invention to make it explode when they wished it to do
so; and when they suggested to Philip II. and Don John of Austria

The Pitti Palace.

ri5

and literature which, through several generations, had
been innate in the family of the Medici. He employed
Bronzino, Vasari, Buontalenti, Giovanni da Bologna ;
he strove hard to induce Michael Angelo to join his
service at Florence, and he instituted the Florentine
Academies both of Painting and of Literature. The
historian Varchi, who wrote of Cellini —
1 Among the mighty dead he had no peers,
Nor shall earth see his like,
although a devotee of the very liberty which Duke
Cosimo spent his life in zealously suppressing, was
employed by that tyrant in writing history. The
duke also commissioned Ammirato to write a general
history of Florence. Among other undertakings
Duke Cosimo made the Boboli Gardens and built a
great part of the Pitti Palace.2 It was wise, there
fore, in Cellini to place his services at the disposal
of such a potentate, when he had fallen out of favour
with the Pope and with the King of France ; it may
have been wise, too, to hint that, unless lavishly paid,
he would leave Florence for Paris, there to work,
again, for Francis I.
Duke Cosimo received Cellini very kindly and
said : —
" I am ready to pay you far better than you were
paid by the foreign king, of whom your generous
nature prompts you to speak so gratefully."
that it should be used in war, the Spanish engineers thought it more
likely to injure those who used it than their enemies (see Napier's
Florentine History, v., p. 262).
1 Symonds's Cellini, p. 167.
2 The Pitti Palace was begun by that great enemy of the Medici,
Luca Pitti, about the year 1435. It was sold in an unfinished state to
Eleonora, wife of Duke Cosimo, in 1559.

116 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
And then he proceeded to order from Cellini a large
bronze statue of Perseus, to stand in the famous Loggia
dei Lanzi.1 Close to its future site, Michael Angelo's
David already typified the victory of the humble
over the tyrant, while Donatello's Judith represented
justifiable regicide. Both of these great works were
distasteful to Duke Cosimo, who wished to counteract
their symbolic influences by erecting near them a
statue of Perseus, holding in his hand the head of
Medusa, to signify his own victory over the Gorgon
of republicanism, rebellion, and tyrannicide.
In a few weeks Cellini had finished a wax model
for the Perseus, probably the waxen figure now in
the Bargello. This so pleased the duke that he gave
Cellini orders to carry out the work. To this Cellini
acceded rather too readily, and without making suffi
cient stipulations for the materials, assistance, and
conveniences requisite for such an enormous and
difficult undertaking. He had not yet discerned that,
owing to the mercenary blood inherited by Cosimo
de' Medici, he " was more a merchant than a duke,"
and Cellini made the mistake of treating him " as if
he were dealing with a prince, and not with a man
of commerce ".
Cosimo committed the arrangements for securing
a house, in which to carry out the work, to his major-
domo, Pier Franscesco Riccio, who had formerly been
his tutor. Cellini calls this fellow a " donkey," and
1 When he first assumed the government, Cosimo thought it
prudent to have a foreign regiment as a protection against the
Florentines; and for this purpose he raised a body of Swiss, or German
Landsknechts. The Italians called them Lanzi, and, as one of their
guardhouses was near the Loggia, they were often to be seen in it ;
and thus it came to bear their name.

Difficulties. 117
Varchi represents him as a conceited fool. Riccio
passed the matter on to Garini, " a flimsy little
fellow, with tiny, spider's hands, and a small gnat's
voice," who for a long time did nothing.
Cellini now began to lose courage. His prepara
tions were moving at a snail's pace ; he saw that
" many thousands of ducats had recently been
squandered upon ugly pieces of bad sculpture turned
out by that beast of a Buaccio Bandinelli " 1 and news
had come from France that things were going very
much against his interests in that country.
In the face of great difficulties Cellini persevered
and made some progress ; but he could only get little
boys to help him ; for the " brute," Bandinelli, who
greatly resented the advent of Cellini as a rival,
prevented workmen from coming to his assistance.
After some time Cellini tried to teach a youth of
eighteen, who had been acting as his groom and
gardener, to work in his shop, and " by degrees he
learned the art ".
To goldsmiths and castors of bronzes, as well as
to sculptors, skilled workmen are obviously of the
utmost importance ; and Cellini warns his profes
sional readers to leave certain processes of gilding
to their men. " Now, though of a truth," says he,2
" the prime merit of every craft is your being well
able to practise it yourself, yet none the less it were
better to leave these processes of gilding to those who
are specialists, for it is, as I said, very unhealthy to
practise. Know how it's done, that's all."
1 As a. play upon Bandinelli's name of Baccio, Cellini calls him
Buaccio, or the great Ox.
2 Treatises, p. 104.

118 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
Owing to overwork, Cellini suffered temporarily from
pain in the loins, and had to take things some
what easily. He availed himself of this opportunity
to model a more than life-sized bust (see plate xiv.)
of the duke, which pleased its subject immensely.
Cosimo now told Cellini to make his workshop at
the palace ; as he wished to be able to amuse him
self by looking in when he felt so disposed ; and there
Cellini was supplied with every convenience, including
excellent furnaces for casting in bronze.
Meanwhile unpleasant letters and messages came
from France. First there had been a regular outcry
of " stop, thief ! " when Cellini had gone off with the
vases which the king had bespoken. Then the king
had inquired why Cellini, who was supposed to have
gone to Italy on a visit only, did not come back
to Paris to work for him according to his engage
ment. When told that Cellini was doing well in
Italy, the king had said : " I shall not recall him ; let
him stay where he is ''. Next a message 'came from
the king that, if Cellini did not intend to return to
France, it behoved him to send a detailed and very
accurate account of his works and receipts, while in
that country, because some very ugly rumours, which
his majesty was loth to believe, were rife concerning
them. Cellini replied that, if the king summoned
him, he would fly to France to give an account of his
conduct. The king however never did summon him,
probably deciding, on mature consideration, that, of
the two evils, the return of such a firebrand would
be greater than the loss of his workmanship.
The account given by Cellini, in his Treatises, of
the circumstances attendant on his leaving France

PLATE XIV.

Alinari Photo.

Bust of Cosimo de' Medici.
By Cellini, in the Museo Nazionale, Florence.

A Dull Fool. 119
and not returning thither, scarcely tallies with that
given in his autobiography. As to this matter, only
one quotation shall be made here from the Treatises}
" When they heard in France that I was working in
Florence for the Grand Duke Cosimo, his majesty
took it very ill indeed, and said on several oc
casions : ' Didn't I tell Benvenuto that he was a
dull fool?"'
Long afterwards, when both Francis I. and his
successor Henri II. were dead, the widow of the
latter instructed Baccio del Bene, who was an envoy
to Florence entrusted with the negotiations of a loan
for France, that he should endeavour to bring back
Cellini, in order that that artist might adorn the tomb
of her late husband. Baccio mentioned the matter to
Duke Cosimo, who, not wishing to lose the services of
Cellini, told him that that artist had given up work.
Meeting Cellini, Baccio repeated what the duke had
said, whereupon Cellini yielded to one of his violent
fits of temper, in which he heartily abused the duke.
The next time that Baccio met his excellency, " the
good-natured gentleman," says Cellini, " repeated to
the duke what I had answered ". Much dissatisfac
tion followed, and the upshot of the affair was that
the queen dropped the negotiations through fear of
offending Duke Cosimo.
I will pass lightly over a very ugly incident in the
life of Cellini. This was an accusation against him
of a most detestable offence by the mother of his boy
apprentice. So compromising was Cellini's position,
that he thought it wise to fly from Florence and to
seek a refuge in Venice. There he received " the
1 Treatises, p. 144.

120 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
warmest welcome which could be imagined " from
Lorenzino, the murderer of Alessandro de' Medici, and
the two assassins made "good cheer "together.
While at Venice, Cellini paid a visit to " the admir
able painter, Titian," and altogether he appears to
have spent a very pleasant time in that charming
city, until letters from Florence assured him of the
protection of the grand duke, when he ventured to
return thither.
This portion of Cellini's life was much affected by
his quarrels with Bandinelli,1 the son of his first
master, Michael Angelo, the Florentine goldsmith.
Their first recorded quarrel came about in this
manner. At the time when he was chiefly engaged
in working for Clement VII. in Rome, Cellini had
just received an order from his holiness, when Ban
dinelli came up and said : —
" When these goldsmiths aspire to such fine work
as that, we ought to make drawings for them ".
This greatly irritated Cellini, who replied that he
did not want Bandinelli's drawings for his workman
ship ; but hoped soon with his workmanship to show
that there was a good deal wanting in Bandinelli's
drawings. I hope that I have not shown any undue partiality
to Benvenuto Cellini, and I ha%-e endeavoured to do
justice to his enemies ; but it is only fair to say that
Vasari, who was not a particular friend of Cellini,
says much against Baccio Bandinelli.2 The man
1 Perhaps Bandinelli may be best known to English visitors to
Rome for his restoration of the right arm of the Laocoon in the
Vatican Galleries.
2 Vol. iv., pp. 232-93.

Andrea del Sarto. 121
" lived in a perpetual succession of lawsuits " ; he
was " detested for his boastful prating, his continual
evil speaking of others, and his hatred of Michael
Angelo " ; he was " very quarrelsome and jealous
of the works of other artists," and he was always
trying to persuade the authorities to take work away
from others and to give it to himself. Vasari tells
us that Bandinelli made a counterfeit key of the room
in the Bargello, in which hung a famous cartoon by
Michael Angelo, and that, stealthily entering this
chamber during the Florentine riots, he " cut the
cartoon into numerous pieces ".
Vasari mentions, among Bandinelli's meannesses,
his having asked Andrea del Sarto to paint his por
trait, with the object of gaining some hints as to
that painter's manner of working and of finding out
what colours he used. Knowing the man's character,
Andrea del Sarto suspected his motives, put some
of every colour he possessed upon his palette, and
would not allow Bandinelli to see the canvas until
the portrait was finished.
Bandinelli's very susceptible jealousy was greatly
excited at the employment by the Grand Duke of a
mere goldsmith like Cellini on a highly important
work of sculpture, such as the projected Perseus.
He therefore endeavoured to persuade Cosimo that
Cellini would not even know enough of the craft to
put together the pieces of such an enormous bronze
as that contemplated. The duke was so far in
fluenced by the advice of Bandinelli as to withdraw
part of the allowance which he had thus far granted
for workmen employed upon the Perseus ; and Cellini,
by his own account, had to defray a large portion of

122 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the subsequent expenses of its production out of his
own pocket.
In order to counteract the evil machinations of
Bandinelli, Cellini conceived the idea of bribing the
Grand Duchess by presenting her with some very
small but exquisitely wrought silver-gilt vases. With
these she was much pleased, and she accepted the
workmanship, though she insisted on paying the
value of the metals. Then Cellini begged her to per
suade the duke to be less ready in believing what he
heard from the evil tongue of Bandinelli.
One day Cellini rode to Fiesole to see a natural son
of his, whom he had put out at nurse there. On his
way back towards Florence, he met Bandinelli, who
was going to visit a farm which he held not very far
from the city. In an instant the idea occurred to
Cellini that this would be a splendid opportunity of
murdering Bandinelli, and he would have availed
himself of it, had not the sight of the entirely un
armed man, riding " a sorry donkey," caused him to
reflect that an assassination under such conditions
would not redound to his own honour. So he con
tented himself with saying : " Fear not, vile coward !
I shall not condescend to smite you."
The Grand Duke consulted Cellini respecting a
broken antique statue, representing the trunk of the
body of a boy, which had been sent to him by
Stefano Colonna, a distinguished general, who had
served successively in the Spanish, French, and
Florentine armies.
" Your grace," said Cellini, " this is a statue in
Greek marble, and it is a miracle of beauty ! If your
excellency permits, I should like to restore it, giving

Baccio Bandinelli. 123
it a head and arms and feet, and I will add an eagle,
in order that we may christen it ' The Lad Ganymede '.
It is certainly not my business to patch up statues,
that being the trade of botchers who do it in all con
science villanously ill ; yet the art displayed by this
great master of antiquity cries out to me to help him."
While Cellini was explaining the beauties of the
fragment to the duke, Bandinelli entered. " Your
grace," said he, "this exactly illustrates the truth of
what I have so often told your excellency, namely,
that the ancients were wholly ignorant of anatomy,
and that, therefore, their works abound in mistakes."
" Benvenuto," said the duke, " speak a word in
defence of my statue."
" Your grace must please to understand," replied
Cellini, "that Baccio Bandinelli is, and ever has
been, bad by nature ; therefore everything he sees,
however good it may be, looks bad to his ungracious
eyes. I, who incline to the good, see the truth with
a purer vision."
During this speech, says Cellini, "Bandinelli writhed
and made the most ugly faces which could be imagined
by the mind of man, his face itself being by nature
hideous beyond measure ". The duke, on the contrary,
was much amused, and the two sculptors, each in a
towering passion, followed him to a seat, on either
side of which they took their stands.
The conversation then turned upon Bandinelli's
Hercules and Cacus, the commission for which he had
contrived to get transferred from Michael Angelo
to himself. On being placed beside Michael Angelo's
David, the statue had been greatly ridiculed. Ban
dinelli now admitted that a hundred sonnets, " full of

124 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
the worst abuse which could be written by the ignorant
rabble," had appeared about it. And then he abused
the critics, much after the fashion of modern artists
and authors when their works do not meet with
unqualified praise.
A hundred sonnets had been written in honour
of Michael Angelo's works in the sacristy of St.
Lorenzo's, retorted Cellini, remarking that both
sculptors got their deserts.
" What is wrong with my work ? " inquired Ban
dinelli. " You shall not hear my own opinion, but that of
the best critics in Florence," replied Cellini, who was
annoyed by observing that Bandinelli was mimicking
him. " They say that, if the hair were shaved from
your Hercules, there would not be skull enough to
hold his brains ; that it is difficult to decide whether
his features are those of a lion, a man, or an ox ; that
the position of the head and neck are as graceless
as they are inartistic ; that his sprawling shoulders
resemble the pommels of an ass's pack-saddle ; that,
instead of the muscular development of human limbs,
you have represented the lumpiness of a sack full
of melons ; that his loins resemble a pair of lanky
pumpkins ; that his legs do not seem to belong to his
body ; that no one can tell upon which of them he is
standing ; that his arms are the work of a sculptor who
has never studied a naked model ; that the Hercules and
the Cacus have got the calf of one leg between them ;
that one of the feet of Hercules is underground while
the other seems to be resting on hot coals ; and that
he is leaning forward in a most ungraceful attitude."
On this Bandinelli, in a fury, assailed Cellini with

A Quarrel. 125
the grossest of all possible insults. Cellini retorted
with a piece of sarcasm which changed the duke's
frowns into merriment. Indeed he and his attendants
laughed immoderately, while Cellini, with the appear
ance of pleasantry, was inwardly raging at the thought
that "the foulest villain who ever breathed" should
have dared in the presence of so great a prince to cast
an insult of that atrocious nature in " his teeth ".
Many sharp repartees passed between the disputants,
" much to the entertainment ofthe" Grand Duke, until
Cellini told " the dirty, stupid scoundrel " that unless
he behaved himself he would " most certainly rip the
wind out of his carcase ". " Prepare thyself for another
world, Baccio, for I mean to be myself the means of
sending thee out of this." 1
" Let me know a day beforehand," replied Bandi
nelli, " that I may confess and make my will, so as
not to die a brute such as thou art." This retort is
recorded by Vasari. Cellini does not mention it.
Then "the words that passed between us were
awful," says Cellini. The duke, in fits of laughter,
tried to reprove and to silence the combatants.
" I humbly crave your grace's pardon," said Cellini
in apology. " But one fool makes a hundred ; and the
follies of this particular fool have for the moment blinded
me tb the glories of your most illustrious excellency."
Cellini attacked Bandinelli with his pen as well as
with his tongue. In one of his sonnets he admitted
that he himself had massacred men, but that their
bodies lay decently hidden beneath the earth, whereas
Bandinelli, said he, had massacred marbles which were
still standing and, to his infinite shame, still visible.
1 Vasari, iv., pp. 281, 282.

126

CHAPTER X.
THE PERSEUS.
By dint of hard labour and by means of hiring work
men with his own money, Cellini got on with his
Perseus, in the face of great difficulties, until the
mould was ready for the bronze. He had made
several experiments with the various Florentine clays
in making moulds for bronzes. The bas-relief of a
dog (see plate xv.) had been one of them ; the large
bust of the grand duke had served for another ; and
now the figure of Medusa, which was to lie beneath
the feet of Perseus, had come out so admirably that
he felt confident of being equally successful with the
great and ambitious bronze figure of Perseus himself.
The duke was not so certain on this point. He
had been listening to Bandinelli, and, primed with
his objections, he argued the matter with Cellini. " I
profess myself a connoisseur, and I thoroughly under
stand the laws of the art of bronze casting," said he.
" Yes. Like a prince — not like an artist ! " retorted
Cellini. The wrangle continued. The duke feared
that the head of the Perseus could not come out in
the bronze. Cellini, on the contrary, was confident
as to the head, but feared for the foot
" I verily believe," said the duke to his attendants,
" that this Benvenuto prides himself on contradicting
everything that I say," and he went away shaking
his head.

Alinari Photo.

A Greyhound.
Bas-relief in Bronze, by Cellini, in the Museo Nazionale, Florence.

t->a
<

Caked. 127
Cellini was left discouraged, and the loss of all
hope that he might induce the duke to renew sub
sidies for the expenses of the Perseus made him fear
lest his own private resources should not last out
the work. Happily they just did so !
The casting of the Perseus caused Cellini consider
able anxiety.1 At last the mould was sunk in its
pit, with its many little earthenware tubes to act as
air vents. Then Cellini turned to his furnace which
was " filled with numerous pigs of copper and other
bronze stuff". So careful was he that he did most
of the work himself. His labours were greatly in
creased by his workshop taking fire, and by a storm
of wind and rain preventing the furnace from working
properly. At the last moment, when everything was ready,
Cellini was suddenly attacked by fever, and, unable
to work longer, he turned to his ten or more work
men and asked them to proceed with the casting
after the manner in which he had often instructed
them, saying : " The metal will soon be fused. You
cannot go wrong." Then he went into his house and
threw himself on his bed, exclaiming : " I shall not
be alive to-morrow. I feel that I am dying."
He then describes what his men did in the mean
time. " Well ! instead of doing what they were told,
they began larking about and neglected the furnace,
so that the metal commenced to curdle, or, as it
is called in the craft, to cake. Never a one knew a
remedy for this blunder."
Cellini was lying in severe " physical pain and
1 This account of the casting of the Perseus is taken partly from
the Life of Cellini and partly from the Treatises.

128 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
moral dejection," with his housekeeper weeping at
his side, when one of his men entered his chamber
and, in a doleful voice, like one who announces their
last hour to men condemned to die upon the scaffold,
spoke these words : —
" O Benvenuto, resign yourself to the worst, the
furnace must have been badly made, for the metal
has caked ! "
With a " howl," Cellini " leapt from his bed and
literally frightened away that grievous fever with the
biting words he shouted at those fellows. The maids,"
his lad, and all who came to help him, "got kicks
or blows of the fist." Rapidly dressing, he rushed
to the workshop, where he found that, but too truly,
the metal had curdled. Having sent across the road
for a load of oak wood, stacked by the house of a
butcher, he thrust it into the grate beneath the
furnace. This was contrary to all the laws of casting,
as elder, willow and pine were the only woods gener
ally used for that purpose ; but Cellini perceived the
only hope to lie in obtaining " the greatest possible
heat," for which old, dry oak was well suited. While
he was doing this the rain fell in torrents, and he
ordered carpets and other hangings to be put up as
a protection. By means of piling on wood and stirring
with pokers and iron rods, Cellini and his men made
a tremendous fire ; and then he " ordered half a pig of
pewter to be brought, which weighed about 60 lb., and
flung it into the middle of the cake inside the furnace ".
Presently the curdled mass began to liquefy, and
Cellini knew that he "had brought the dead to life
again ". Vigour, says he, filled his veins, and the
pains of fever and the fear of death were forgotten.

An Explosion. 129
"All of a sudden an explosion took place, attended
by a tremendous flash of flame, as though a thunder
bolt had formed and been discharged among us. All
were terror-struck, I myself above the rest. When
the din was over and the dazzling light had subsided,
we began to look each other in the face. Then I
discovered that the cap of the furnace had blown up
and the bronze was bubbling over."
Cellini was overjoyed, and he had the mouths of
the mould immediately opened to allow the molten.
metal to run into it. Then he was alarmed at observing
how slowly it flowed, and he rightly inferred that this-
was owing to all the alloy having been consumed by
the use of a fire far fiercer than any permitted by the
precepts of bronze-casters. To use such a fire was
necessary as a desperate remedy ; but such a diver
gence from the rules of the craft brought its attendant
penalties. All threatened once more to be spoiled.
Cellini's pigs of pewter were exhausted, but not so
his ingenuity. In his dilemma, he sent for all the
pewter platters, porringers and dishes in his house, to
the number of about 200, and he threw them one by
one into the furnace and its channels. To his intense
relief, the metal by degrees began to flow more and
more freely, until it completely and successfully filled
the mould. Then he thanked God ; the fever just
"went to the devil," and master and men sat down
together to eat and to drink with hearty appetite.
It would yet be some time before the various por
tions of the great work would be finished and ready
to be put together and erected ; but Cellini felt that,
in casting the figure of Perseus, the main difficulty
had been overcome. After allowing it two days to
I

130 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
cool, he carefully and anxiously uncovered his bronze
and found it all that he could wish.
The Grand Duke was at Pisa, and thither Cellini
hurried to inform him of his success. Cosimo and the
Grand Duchess gave him a most gracious reception.
Having practically mastered his great work, and
observing that the duke was pleased with him, he
took the opportunity of begging for leave to go for a
short time to Rome, and this was granted to him
without demur.
Shortly before this time Cellini had received a letter
from Michael Angelo complimenting him upon a bust
which Cellini had lately made of Bindo Altoviti, the
Tuscan consul at Rome.
" My dear Benvenuto," it began, " I have known
you for many years as the greatest goldsmith of whom
we have any information ; and henceforward I shall
know you for a sculptor of like quality."
This letter Cellini showed to the Grand Duke, who
said, " If you can persuade Michael Angelo to return
to Florence I will make him a member of the Forty-
eight," an assemblage which corresponded to a senate.
When Cellini reached Rome, he stayed with the
Tuscan Consul, to whom he lent some money at 15
per cent. ; yet, despite this " miserable bargain " for
the lender, the ungrateful borrower was " never good
humoured, but always surly ". Cellini lost no time
in trying to tempt Michael Angelo into going to
Florence ; but the great man said that, being em
ployed in building St. Peter's, he could not leave
Rome. To this Cellini replied that Michael Angelo
might trust the work to his foreman, and he expatiated
upon the liberality and rich promises of the Grand Duke.

Michael Angelo. 131
" And you ! " said Michael Angelo, with a sarcastic
smile. " To what extent are you satisfied with him ?
No ! I cannot leave Rome."
This answer proved to Cellini that Michael Angelo
was " acquainted with the greater part of his annoy
ances ".
Julius III. was now Pope, and Cellini hastened to
kiss his feet and to offer him his services ; for, as
he tells us, after all his difficulties and troubles at
Florence, he would gladly have taken up his quarters
at Rome again. But he adds, " I soon perceived that
the ambassador had countermined me ". This am
bassador was the envoy of the Grand Duke of
Tuscany. Well indeed might he warn the Pope
against a man of such murderous and immoral
propensities as Cellini ! But he may also have
thought that the Grand Duke would object to losing
his services.
No other Pope patronised Cellini. Those who
reigned during the last fifteen years of his life were
rather men of gold than patrons of goldsmiths.
Marcellus II., who sat on the papal throne for about
three weeks only, was both excellent as a private
individual and well-intentioned as a pope. Con
cerning his successor, Paul IV., even Ranke allows
that, if he was wanting in tact and prudence and was
too severe in his rule, he was blameless as a man
and zealous as a Christian ; and, although the same
historian accuses the next Pope, St. Pius V., of " sour
bigotry," he admits his " singleness of purpose, mag
nanimity, and profound religious feeling".
Even of Clement VII. and Paul III. Cellini
does not show us the brightest sides ; and of their

132 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
successors, who were not men to his taste, he tells
us nothing. Of all ecclesiastics he preferred rather
to say a bad word than a good one ; and he seemed
to be of the opinion of Butler, in thinking that —
... in the wicked there's no vice
Of which the saints have not a spice. — Hudibras.
Yet many readers consider his autobiography the
interesting evidence of an eyewitness to the depravity
of the popes, cardinals, bishops, and clergy of his day.
He was a witness, it is true ; but a witness who gave
evidence solely for the prosecution. In the docu
ments bearing upon the life of his contemporaries,
St. Philip and St. Ignatius of Loyola, constant
mention occurs of Italian priests of extraordinary
sanctity. This treatise, however, is concerned rather with art
and artists than with priests and piety ; and it may be
more to its purpose to point out a great reform which
took place before Cellini's death in art as connected
with religion. During the first half of the sixteenth
century, melodies, which had begun life in popular
ballads, sonnets, lays, madrigals and romances, were
introduced into the music of high masses to such an
extent as to excite ridicule in the very presence of
the sacred mysteries of the altar. Against such an
abuse a strong and wholesome reaction set in, which
culminated when Palestrina was appointed composer
to the papal choir in 1565.1
Cellini soon left Rome and returned to Florence,
confident of enjoying the favour of the Grand Duke,
1 Capecelatro, ii., pp. 84-94.

PLATE XVI.

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Alinari Photo.
Eleonora di Toledo, Wife of the Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici.
By Bronzino, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Eleonora de Toledo. 133
tnd of receiving rich rewards for his success with the
Perseus. Cosimo was then at Castello, whither Cellini went
to find him. To his astonishment, the Grand Duke
received him very rudely, and intimated that he might
go about his business. Much hurt and discouraged,
Cellini went back to Florence, racking his brains to
conceive what could have brought about this sudden
and unexpected change in the duke's demeanour.
He came gradually to the conclusion that his enemy,
the major-domo, must have been traducing him ; be
that, however, as it may, the duke before long took
him into favour again.
So far, so good ! But it was one thing to be in
favour with the Grand Duke, and another to be in
favour with the Grand Duchess ; although, as a rule,
losing the patronage of the duchess entailed losing
that ofthe duke. Eleonora de Toledo (see plate xvi.),
the wife of Duke Cosimo, was a very charitable woman,
and Vasari goes so far as to call 1 her " a lady excellent
above all that had ever lived, and whose infinite
merits render her worthy of eternal praise ". But, if
richly endowed with virtues, she was no less richly
dowered with Spanish pride ; and the crowd of Spanish
courtiers, with whom she surrounded herself to the
partial exclusion of the Florentine dames, rendered
her somewhat unpopular in her husband's capital and
country. "The Florentine nobility were not the less
obliged to throw themselves at her feet; for, owing
to her paramount influence over the Grand Duke, her
favour became the principal channel of promotion
1 Vol. v., pp. 469, 470.

134 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
and advancement; and she participated to a large
extent in the administration of the Grand Duke's
country. Eleonora is said to have been an inveterate gambler
and to have lost immense sums at play ; and, in order
to please her, the Grand Duke himself gambled very
freely. But, if he usually yielded to her requests in
the end, he did not always consent to them at the first
asking. While Cellini was at work upon his Perseus, the
duchess had taken a great fancy to a necklace of very
large pearls, which she wished the duke to purchase
for her, and the idea struck her that a jeweller so
famous as Cellini, and so much in the duke's favour,
would be her best advocate in the matter. She
had indeed been for some time most kind in giving
Cellini commissions ; although he " saw very little of
her money ". Showing the pearls to him, she said :
" I should like the duke to buy them for me ; so I
beg you, my dear Benvenuto, to praise them to him
as highly as you can ".
Cellini tried to dissuade her from asking the duke
to make the purchase, because his professional experi
ence enabled him to detect very grave faults in the
pearls ; some of them being neither round nor well-
matched, while others were faded.
To his objections the duchess would not listen. She
had a fancy for the pearls, and the pearls she would
have. Their price was 6000 crowns, and, if Cellini could
persuade the duke to pay this price, she would pre
sent Cellini with a commission of 200 crowns. " I
have a mind to possess those pearls," said she, " so

A Necklace of Pearls. 135
prithee, take them to the duke, and praise them up
to the skies ; even if you have to use some words
beyond the bounds of truth, speak them to do me
service. It will be well for you ! " she added
meaningly. On his own showing, Cellini managed the affair
very clumsily. First he lied freely to the duke in
praising the pearls far beyond what he considered
to be their value. Secondly, when the duke said that
he did not intend to buy them because he did not
think them worth their price, Cellini lied still more
strongly by declaring them to be the finest pearls
ever put together. Thirdly, when hard pressed by
the duke, he blushed and faltered, and finally he
confessed that, instead of being worth 6000 crowns,
they were not worth more than 2000.
" I shall make a mortal foe of the duchess by
telling you this ! " said Cellini.
" If you have confidence in me, you need not stand
in fear of anything whatever," replied the duke.
Presently the duchess came up and begged her
husband to buy the pearls because Cellini had said,
" He never saw a finer row ".
A wrangle followed, at the end of which the duke
said to her, in Cellini's hearing : —
" My lady ! my Benvenuto here has told me that,
if I purchase this necklace, I shall be throwing my
money away".
At this the duchess looked very spitefully in the
direction of Cellini, and gave him a threatening nod.
And, after all, she got her pearls.1 She went to
1 Possibly these may have been the very pearls which appear in
her portrait. (See plate xvi.)

136 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
another jeweller, Bernadone, a mortal foe of Cellini,
promised him a much higher commission than that
which she had offered to his rival, and sent him to
the duke.
" Ah, my dear lord, for heaven's sake buy this
necklace for the poor duchess who cannot live with
out it," pleaded the goldsmith.
" Get away with you, or blow out your cheeks for
me to smack them," said the duke angrily.
And Bernadone did blow out his cheeks and
Cosimo did smack them until the tears came into the
victim's eyes.
" Lo ! my lord," whined the goldsmith, " I am a
faithful servant, who will gladly bear any ill-treat
ment, provided only that my poor lady gets her
heart's desire."
" Get away, with God's curse upon you," said the
Grand Duke. " Go make the bargain, I am willing
to do what my lady, the duchess, desires."
In her anger against Cellini, the duchess forthwith
began to patronise his rival, Bandinelli. The upshot,
therefore, of the affair was that the duchess obtained
her pearls, Bandinelli obtained a friend, and Cellini
¦obtained an enemy. For the moment, however, the
duke was on even better terms than usual with
Cellini. Some little antique bronze statuettes, covered with
earth and rust, had been found near Arezzo, and it
amused the Grand Duke to clean them with small
goldsmith's chisels. He held and guided the chisels,
while Cellini hit them with a little hammer ; and thus
they spent several pleasant evenings. To reach the
chamber in which the duke did this work, Cellini had

"Trifles of Gold." 137
to pass through the private passages and apartments
ofthe Palazzo Vecchio. Meeting him in those regions
annoyed and inconvenienced the Grand Duchess,
and on one of these occasions she told him that he
had " grown to be a great nuisance ".
When Cellini had finished the small bronze figures
which adorn the pedestal of the Perseus, he arranged
them in a row for his patron's inspection. The
duchess was as much pleased with them as was the
duke. " Do not let these exquisite little figures be wasted
upon the pedestal in the piazza," she exclaimed.
" Fix them in one of my apartments in the palace,
where they will be honoured and appreciated."
Cellini objected ; but the duchess would not yield,
while the duke expressed no opinion.
The next day, Cellini, having ascertained that
the duke and the duchess had gone for a long ride
together, had the little figures carried to the Loggia
de Lanzi, where the pedestal was already standing,
and he soldered them firmly with lead into the niches
prepared for them.
" Oh, when the duchess knew of this, how angry
she was ! " says Cellini. So irate was she that she
managed to put a stop to the joint restorations of
statuettes by her husband and Cellini.
When the Perseus had been erected, the duke
greatly annoyed Cellini by asking him to partially
uncover it, before " some trifles of gold, varnish, and
various other little finishings " had been added to it.
Once more Cellini cursed the unhappy day on which
he had left France for Florence. But the moment
after the statue had been uncovered, "a shout of

138 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
boundless enthusiasm in commendation of" the work
went up from the crowd of critics, who had been
anxiously awaiting their first view of it.
It was then the fashion to affix sonnets, in praise
or dispraise, to newly exposed statues ; and twenty
" overflowing with the highest panegyrics " were nailed
to the door of the scaffolding about the Perseus before
the day was over. What pleased Cellini most were the
verbal eulogies of Pontormo and his pupil, Bronzino.1
Pontormo was as kindly and pleasant-mannered and
modest as Bandinelli was ill-natured, disagreeable,
and conceited ; nor did Bandinelli fail to say his
unkind word on this occasion.
" I am glad that poor Cellini should have this tri
fling and temporary gratification," said he, " for, when
the whole of the Perseus is seen, the critics will be
ready enough to point out its defects.
When, however, the great day of the unveiling took
place,2 the enormous crowd assembled in the piazza
belauded it with one voice, and the day was spent in
extolling the merits of the statue (see plate xvii.) and
of the sculptor. To crown the happiness of Cellini,
the Grand Duke announced that he was about to
reward him in a manner that would astound him.
A full criticism of the Perseus is unnecessary in
these pages, and it may be sufficient to observe that
some authorities greatly prefer the figure in the small
waxen design for it made by Cellini, now in the
National Museum at Florence; while others admire
still more the spirited little bronze in the same
museum, believed by some 3 to have been made for
1 Vasari, iv., pp. 371-8.
2 27th April, 1554. s See Plon, p. 338.

plate xvii.

Alinari Photo.

Florence.

The Statuette. 139.
the Grand Duchess as a consolation for her disappoint
ment in not obtaining the small figures at the base
of the large bronze in the Loggia. There is no
evidence, however, absolutely authenticating this
beautiful statuette.

140

CHAPTER XI.
THE END.
Prepared by the duke's own message to be aston
ished, Cellini would not have been surprised however
large the present that might be sent to him.
Nevertheless he was destined to be both surprised
and astonished ; for the ducal secretary, Giacopo
Guidi, afterwards Bishop of Penna, came to Cellini and
said, "The duke wants you to tell him how much
you ask for your Perseus".
Dumbfounded and exasperated, Cellini replied that
it was not his habit to put prices on his work, that the
duke had promised him a reward, and that that
sufficed. The secretary peremptorily ordered him to
name his price, observing that, unless he did so, his
excellency would be gravely displeased. After con
siderable pressure Cellini said that, if he were to
receive 10,000 crowns he would be underpaid. Upon
this the secretary began to abuse him, and Cellini
"gave it him back again".
The next day Cellini went to the duke, who opened
the conversation by remarking that " with 10,000
ducats cities and great palaces are built ".
" Your excellency can find multitudes of men who
could build cities and palaces," replied Cellini ; " but
you will not find one man in the world who could
make another Perseus." And forthwith he left the
duke's presence in high dudgeon.

Distrust of the Duchess. 141
The Grand Duchess heard of this unpleasant inter
view, and, a few days later, she summoned Cellini to
her presence. Then she began by recommending him
to place his disagreement with the duke unreservedly
in her own hands, promising to manage the affair to
his entire satisfaction ; but, having hitherto regarded
her rather as an enemy than as a friend, he felt no
confidence in her professions of goodwill, and was
foolish enough to pretend that the duke's favour was
all he cared for, that money was nothing to him, and
so on. The duchess smiled and said : —
" Benvenuto, you would do well to act as I advise
you ". Perceiving, however, that he showed no
symptoms of trusting her, she went away highly
offended. " It turned out," says Cellini, " that I had done the
worst for myself, because, albeit she had harboured
some angry feelings towards me, she had in her a
certain way of dealing which was generous."
Her reason for wishing to negotiate the affair was
that she knew that Bandinelli valued the Perseus at
even a higher price than the 10,000 ducats which
Cellini had suggested, and she would generously have
pressed her husband to give it, if Cellini had exhibited
any faith in her overtures. Events, very shortly
afterwards, made this clear to Cellini.
Cosimo was very irate about his recent interview
with Cellini. " For less than two farthings," said he
to a courtier, " I would throw Perseus to the dogs,
and so our differences would be ended."
And now Cellini did another foolish thing. Having
refused to entrust the settlement of the payment for
the Perseus to the Grand Duchess, he placed the matter

142 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
in the hands of one of his familiar acquaintances,1 who
was related to the duke on the mother's side. This
well-meaning but injudicious friend ended by agree
ing with the Grand Duke that Cellini should be
satisfied with 3500 golden crowns, provided they were
given as a mere acknowledgment, and not as payment,
the duke's favour being understood to be the only
reward that Cellini desired.
Having so often gone through the farce of pretending
that the Duke's pleasure was his only object, Cellini
had no right to complain at being taken at his word ;
but he was, in fact, bitterly mortified by this bargain.
When the duchess heard of it, she said : " It would
have been better for poor Benvenuto if he had en
trusted the matter to me ".
The payment, even ofthe 3500, came in very slowly,
and Cellini complained to Duke Cosimo, who thereat
" flew into the greatest rage conceivable ".
" You let yourself be blinded by mere cupidity,"
said he. " I will have the Perseus valued and will
give you only what the experts think it worth."
" Since there is not a man in Florence who could
make the Perseus, how can there be one who could
value it ? " inquired Cellini angrily.
" There is a man in Florence who could make
such a statue ; and, therefore, he well knows how to
value it," replied the duke. He meant Bandinelli,
and of this Cellini felt pretty certain.
Cellini then said that, were Bronzino a sculptor, he
might possibly produce such a statue, and that if
Michael Angelo were not too old he would be able
1 Girolamo degli Albizzi. He was godfather to one of Cellini's
children.

A Lost Chance. 143
to equal it ; but that, as things were, " no man known
on earth could have produced his Perseus ". At the
same time he pretended to be above all sordid con
siderations of money. To so high-minded a man the
praise of his excellency was sufficient payment, nay
over-payment. Let the Grand Duke keep his money
to spend upon himself !
" Probably you think I have not got the money to
pay you ! " said the duke angrily.
Ignoring this remark, Cellini again protested that
the praise of Duke Cosimo was ample remunera
tion, adding, " With that to console me I shall leave
Florence this instant, never to set foot in it again ".
" You had better not ! " replied the duke in stern
anger. Cellini admits that, at this, he was " half terrified,"
and he followed the duke into the palace. There
he soon learned that Cosimo had commissioned the
Archbishop of Pisa and one of his other officials to
send for Bandinelli and order him to set a price upon
the Perseus.
Cellini indignantly declared that nothing would
induce him to be paid at Bandinelli's valuation of his
work, and of this the Grand Duke was duly informed.
Bandinelli, when questioned by the commissioners,
said : " I have examined the statue minutely, and
know well enough what it is worth ; but, having been
on bad terms with Cellini for some time past, I do not
want to be entangled in his affairs ".
The commissioners told him that the duke com
manded him to value it. Bandinelli then said that
he did not think that 16,000 crowns would be too
high a price for it.

144 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
On hearing this the duke " was mightily enraged " ;
as also was Cellini at having lost so good a bargain
by refusing to accept Bandinelli's valuation.
" I will only add," says Cellini, " that I ought to
have trusted to the duchess's intervention, for then
I should have been quickly paid, and should have
received so much more into the bargain."
It may as well be said here that, so far as can be
ascertained, the last few hundred ducats of even the
3500 which the Grand Duke had agreed to give for
the Perseus were never paid. Cellini, however, does
not tell us that at about this time he was made a
member of the Florentine nobility. This honour
was probably granted to him as part of his re
compense for the Perseus ; and, to a man in his
position, this alone was no small reward. In his
complaints against the Grand Duke respecting the
paucity of his remuneration, it was scarcely honest
in Cellini to be silent about the reception of such a
favour. If Bandinelli were guilty of trying to take away
commissions from others, neither was Cellini innocent
in this respect. The duke had ordered Bandinelli to
make a large statue of Neptune, and an enormous
block of marble had been brought up the Arno for
the purpose. Cellini knew all about this, and he went
to Duke Cosimo and assured him that the method
by which his ancestors had brought the Florentine
art to the highest pitch of perfection had been the
throwing of all commissions open to competition.
" I know very well what you are aiming at," said
the duchess, who happened to be present. " You want
to have that block of marble taken from Bandinelli

The Crucifix.

J45

and to make the Neptune yourself. Never mention
it again in my presence."
"If your excellencies are resolved to leave the
work to Bandinelli, he would be instigated to display
still greater art and science by competition," pleaded
Cellini. " Ask the duke," said the duchess.
" Twenty years ago I had that block of marble
quarried for Bandinelli, and he shall have it,"
observed the Grand Duke. Yet, after a long conver
sation, Cellini actually persuaded Cosimo to coun
termand the order to Bandinelli, and to throw the
execution of the work open to competition. Small
wonder then, that, as Cellini puts it, " the duchess
tossed her head defiantly, and muttered I know not
what angry sentences ".
Now Cellini had for two years been at work on
a life-sized crucifix, the figure being of white, and
the cross of black marble, which he valued at 2000
crowns. Not long after the above conversation,
Cellini tried to bribe the duchess by presenting her
with this crucifix, saying : " All I ask is that your
excellency will not use your influence either against
or for the models which the duke has ordered to be
made of the Neptune ".
She replied, with " mighty indignation" : " So then
you value neither my help nor my opposition ".
" On the contrary, I value them so highly that
I am offering you, princess, what I vajue at 2000
ducats," was Cellini's response.
The duchess very properly refused the proffered bribe,
in what Cellini describes as " a half-angry mood ".
Soon afterwards, Bandinelli died ; and Cellini says,
K

146 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
with evident satisfaction and not a little ill-nature,
that " in addition to his intemperate habits of life,
the mortification of having probably to lose the
marble contributed to his decline ".
The duchess now announced that, even as she had
protected Bandinelli in life, so would she protect his
memory in death ; and that Cellini should neither
make the Neptune nor have the block of marble.
News very soon afterwards came to Cellini that the
order had been assigned to Bartolommeo Animanato,
a sculptor who had worked under Bandinelli.
" Unhappy piece of stone ! " exclaimed Cellini.
" In the hands of Bandinelli it would have fared
badly enough, but in those of Ammanato its fate
will be a hundred times worse."
Yet Cellini, after all, obtained the order for the
unlucky Neptune, only, however, to lose it; for, as
will presently appear, he fell ill, and during his long
illness the Neptune and the marble were both trans
ferred to Ammanato. To finish the Neptune story it
is necessary to say that, some time later, the duchess
for the first time saw Cellini's model for the Neptune,
when she exclaimed, " Upon my life, I never dreamed
it could be one-tenth part so beautiful ! " and she
-expressed' a wish that Cellini should have a block of
.marble quarried to his taste and then execute the work.
Once more Cellini offered the crucifix to the
duchess, not as a bribe this time, and again she
refused it ; but the duke purchased it for 1500 golden
crowns,1 and he promised Cellini plenty of orders and
the means of executing them.
1 He placed it in the Pitti Palace. It is now in the church of
S. Lorenzo, in the Escurial at Madrid.

A Treble Tragedy. 147
Here a last word shall be said of the duchess, with
whom Cellini had so many quarrels. A manuscript
history 1 of the grand duke's family states that, almost
immediately after the events just described, Cosimo
went to Pisa with his wife and his two sons, Cardinal
Giovanni and Don Garzia de' Medici. When out
hunting there, Giovanni and Garzia quarrelled about
a goat, and Garzia gave his brother, the cardinal, a
sword-wound in the thigh, from which he died a few
days later. Cellini says that he died of a " pestilen
tial fever," and this was the story published at the
time. Symonds, contrary to the opinion of Napier in
his Florentine History, believes Cellini's account, and
considers the other version to be popular fiction.
The manuscript proceeds to say that the cardinal
had been Cosimo's favourite son — Cellini calls him
"the duke's right eye, handsome and good" — and
that the duchess recommended her son, Don Garzia,
to throw himself upon his knees before his father and
beg his forgiveness. This advice, it tells us, Don
Garzia followed ; but, instead of forgiving his son, the
duke drew his sword and killed him there and then.
On hearing of this, says the narrative, the grand
duchess took to her bed and died of grief.
It was not until a dozen years later that Cosimo
himself was brought to his end by the more prosaic
means of a somewhat lax life as a widower, chronic
gout, and successive attacks of apoplexy. Historians
may accuse him of having changed the condition of
the Florentines from freedom to slavery. If this be
true, it is equally true that he found them in war and
want, and left them in peace and plenty. He began
1 See Napier's Florentine History, v., pp. 226-30.

148 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
his life, as a ruler, in a Florence feeble and despised ;
he ended it in a Florence respected and even courted
by the greatest potentates in Europe.
It has been found convenient to anticipate in this
chapter ; but we must now return to explain the
nature of the illness which, as has been said, inca
pacitated Cellini while at work on the Neptune, and
was the cause of that work being transferred to other
hands. Two brothers, a priest and a farmer, near relations
of his friend Guido Guidi, the physician, offered Cellini
a life annuity in return for an advance of money.
This offer Cellini accepted ; but the two brothers soon
grew tired of paying the annuity, and endeavoured to
put an end to the contract by giving the annuitant a
poisoned salad. This failed to kill Cellini; but it
took him more than a year to shake off the effects of
the poison. Some good, nevertheless, came of the
evil ; for, says Cellini, the poison " sufficed to cleanse
me of a mortal viscosity from which I suffered . . .
[so] that whereas, before I took it, I had perhaps
but three or four years to live, I verily believe now
it has helped me to more than twenty years by
bettering my condition ".
Although he candidly admits his first imprisonment
in Rome, Cellini conceals from his readers the fact of
his having been twice imprisoned x about two years
after the unveiling of the Perseus. Perhaps the
accusations which led to his incarcerations might
not have tended to his credit, and Symonds says 2
that " passages in his poems and petitions make it
1 See Bianchi, p. 593.
2 Life of Cellini, p. 448.

plate xviii.

Him i sr ni Celi im.
Kngravcd liv Jesi, alter Yasan.

Marriage. 149
probable that on at least one of these occasions he
was accused of criminal immorality".
It may be that, after the death of the duchess, the
Grand Duke took less interest than before in works of
art. At any rate from that date he appears to have
given no more commissions to Cellini. Constant
bickerings, however, continued between them con
cerning payment for work already done ; and, in the
last year of his life, Cellini demanded further payment
for his restoration of the Ganymede, claiming 300
crowns as the proper charge, whereas the experts
would only allow it to be 80.1
Cellini did not think well to mention, in his auto
biography, that he took the tonsure four years before
that book was finished. Whether his reason for taking
it was to show his intention of living a reformed life,
or a desire to proceed further in the ecclesiastical
state as time went on, is unknown. The obligations,
restrictions, and duties of the first tonsure are
exceeding slight and can be very easily remitted, as
indeed they were in the case of Cellini, a couple of
years later.
In 1564, two years after the conclusion of his
autobiography, Cellini married a wife by whom he
had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife's
name was Piera di Salvadore Parigi ; but little or
nothing definite is known about her.
During the last few years of his life (see plate xviii.),
Cellini is believed to have received very few orders, and
to have executed no works of importance. Possibly
increasing ill-health, or more likely increasing ill-
temper, or perhaps the lassitude of years, may have
1 Archivio delle Revisione dei Sindicati, ii., p. 78. See Plon, p. 216.

150 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
been the cause of this cessation from work ; nor is it
improbable that, like many another celebrity, both
before his time and after it, he may have gone out
of fashion. Whatever the cause, he is said to have
relinquished labour for speculation.
There are no interesting details with which to close
an account of the life of Benvenuto Cellini. Even the
important part which he had been appointed to take as
a representative of Sculpture, in the funeral of Michael
Angelo at Sta Croce, he could not assume by reason
of his ill-health. In 1571 (new style) his own funeral
took place,1 in the church of the Annunziata at
Florence, when an oration was delivered " in praise
and honour of his life and works, and of the excellent
disposition of his soul and body ".
To the praise and honour of his life his modern
biographers have small cause to contribute ; but they
may allow that he would appear to have perpetrated
some good works, in the form of generosity, not only
to his own relations, but also to those whom he em
ployed and their wives and their children.
One of the reasons sometimes assigned for the
superiority of ancient over modern art is that, in our
own days of hurry-scurry, artists, like other men,
attempt too many things. The history of Benvenuto
Cellini is far from supporting this theory. He was
a sculptor, an author, a goldsmith, a gunsmith, an
engineer, an enameller, an artilleryman, a swords
man, a sportsman, a bronze-caster, a poetaster, and a
performer upon the cornet-a-piston.
If it be replied that his multiplicity of employments
1 He died on 13th February, 1870, old style ; or in 1571, new
style.

\ \ \ \ \

Views of Art. 151
was probably the cause of his shortcomings as an
artist, it may be retorted that Michael Angelo, the
sculptor, painter, architect, military engineer, and
sonneteer; Leonardo da Vinci, the painter, civil
engineer, architect, and author; Albert Durer, the
goldsmith, painter, and engraver, and other fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century artists, by no means obeyed
the so-called golden rule of " doing one thing well ".
Respecting Cellini's views of art, it is not proposed
to add much here ; but the following short passage
from his own writings is worthy of quotation : — x
" I would take this opportunity, gentle reader, of
bidding you bear in mind that all really great masters
have followed the life, but the point is that you must
have a fine judgment to know how the best of life is
to be put into your work. You must always be on
the look-out for beautiful human beings, and from
among them choose the most beautiful ; and, not only
so, you must from among even these choose the most
beautiful parts, and so will your whole composition
become an abstraction of what is beautiful. So alone
may work be created that shall be evident at once as
a labour of men both exquisite in judgment and
humble in study."
Surely something else is wanting besides all this ;
and it is possible to have the " labour of men both
exquisite in judgment and humble in study," where
some of these attributes are wanting. As an ex
ample, and in violent contrast to Cellini, let us recall
to our minds the works of Fra Angelico, an artist
eminently " humble in study," yet " exquisite in judg
ment ". Now Fra Angelico, with all his merits,
1 Treatises, p. 140.

152 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
cannot truthfully be said to have " followed the life,"
or to have chosen the most beautiful parts from
various subjects in order to compose " an abstraction
of what is beautiful". In comparison with the
l anatomy of Cellini, the anatomy of Fra Angelico
is very faulty. Yet there is a charm in an angel of
Angelico which is altogether absent in Cellini's
Nymph of Fontainebleau, as well as in the uncom
fortably seated nude female of his golden salt-cellar.
And even in his very best work, to whatever extent
he might excite admiration, Cellini was powerless
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart,1
The aim in Cellini's works' was to be either " splen
did " or " exquisite " rather than to be graceful or
delicate. There was a want of refinement in his over
crowded detail, a want of repose in the constraint of
his postures, a want of modesty in his ostentatious *
parade of its opposite, a want of order and of pro
portion in the attenuation of some of his figures and
in the heavy clumsiness of others.
But if Cellini was in many respects a second-rate
artist, he was a first-rate craftsman. His magnificent
bronze of the Perseus is a triumph of handling and
of casting; his bust of Cosimo de' Medici is as life
like and expressive as it is perfect in workmanship ;
his treatment of the Ganymede furnishes the finest
example extant of the combination of modern, or
comparatively modern, with ancient statuary ; and it
would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that his
greyhound is the most anatomically correct repre-
1 Pope. Prologue to Cato.

Side-lights. 153
sentation of a dog which appeared before the time of
Landseer. If there be not a single authenticated
specimen of his jewellery or of his lighter gold and
silver plate, no higher criticism could be given to it
than the tradition which has been handed down from
his own days to ours, that the best and the finest
Italian examples of sixteenth century goldsmith's
work, when not definitely proved to be the work of
others, should be attributed to Benvenuto Cellini.
It is a hackneyed saying that the autobiography of
Cellini throws an interesting sidelight upon the history
of his times. This is an obvious truism ; but it is
equally true that few things are more misleading than
sidelights on history if taken by themselves. An
accumulation of sidelights, provided they come from
different directions, is invaluable to the historical
student ; but it should not be forgotten that even
such an accumulation does not constitute history. It
only clarifies it.
Difficult enough to any writer, however unpreju
diced and personally unconcerned, is the task of
giving a thoroughly impartial opinion of events which
are past ; but if there ever existed a writer above
others in whom the nicely balanced judgment, the
cool and unimpassioned criticism, the unbiassed and
disinterested opinion, so necessary in a historian, are
conspicuous by their absence, that writer was Ben
venuto Cellini.
There can be little doubt that, in Cellini's auto
biography, there are many specimens of peculiar, al
most phenomenal, and even interesting lying. So
much, however, of what he tells us undoubtedly hap
pened that his writings are all the more dangerous ;

154 Chisel, Pen and Poignard.
for, if in the main he intended to tell the truth, there
can be little question that, whenever he found it con
venient, he did not hesitate to mislead his readers
with highly coloured realities, distorted facts, mis
quoted conversations, wrongly imputed motives, and
falsely drawn inferences.
Perhaps a fanciful, though not very erroneous
analysis of the value of Cellini's statements might
be made as follows : 50 per cent, of the tolerable
truthfulness of the good story-teller, 25 per cent of
the quasi-veracity of the gossiping letter- writer, 15
per cent, of the quasi-mendacity of the man with a
grievance, and 10 per cent, ofthe unqualified mendacity
of a deliberate liar of a somewhat rare but particularly
morbid and malignant character. And, after all, was
Pascal very far wrong when, in assuming the part of
spokesman for mankind in general, he said : J " We
are altogether untruth, duplicity, and contradiction,
and we even try to hide and disguise ourselves from
ourselves ! "
Whatever may have been the faults of Benvenuto
Cellini, this at least may be said of him, that no other
character known to history was at the same time so
skilful and so ready with his chisel, his pen, and his
poignard.
1 Pensees, lxiv., Sidney Lear's translation.

INDEX.
F.N. signifies Footnote.
Adrian VI., Pope, 15.
Alamanni, 89, 94 seq.
Alexander VI., Pope, 3, 80, F.N.
Altoviti, Bindo, 130.
Ammanato, 146.
Ammirato, 115.
Andrews, St. , Bishop of, 23.
Angelica, 54, 56-58.
Angelico, Fra, 152.
Angelo, Michael, goldsmith, 7.
— Michael, sculptor, 25, 35, 115, 116, 123 seq., 142.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 6.
Ariosto, 6, 87 seq.
Austria, Don John of, 114, F.N.
Bandinelli, ii, 117, 120-125, J36. 141. 143 se<l-
Bayle, 90.
Bembo, Cardinal, 76.
Bene, Alessandro del, 28.
Bernadone, 136.
Bourbon, Constable of, 28.
Bracciano, Duchess of, 77.
Brewster, Sir David, 57, F.N.
Bronzino, 115, 138, 142.
Buontalenti, 115.
Cajetan, Cardinal, 6.
Capecelatro, Archbishop, 29.
Cardan, Jerome, 23, 24.
Carpi, Da, 22.
Cassanante, 23, 24.
Caterina, 104.
Cellini, Cecchino, 39 seq.

i56

Index.

Cellini, Benvenuto, birth, 3 ; worked under a goldsmith, 7 ; went to Bologna,
12 ; went to Rome, 16 ; joined the papal band, 20 ; had the plague,
24 ; became a papal artilleryman, 29 ; went to Florence and to Mantua,
31 ; became a Florentine militiaman, 35 ; returned to Rome, 35 ; mur
dered a constable, 40 ; murdered Pompeo, 45 ; caught a burglar, 48 ;
dabbled in necromancy, 55 seq. ; affair with Angelica, 55 ; went to
Florence, 63 ; illness and unwelcome visitors, 67 ; returned to Rome,
69 ; went to Venice and thence to Paris, 76 ; fever, 77 ; returned to
Rome and there imprisoned, 77 ; escaped, 79 ; re-imprisoned, 81 ;
liberated, 85 ; Ferrara, 86 ; went to Fontainebleau, 88 ; started to leave
France, 89 ; established at Paris, 91 ; the salt-cellar, 94 seq. ; quarrels
with Madame d'Etampes, 97-112 ; went to Florence, 113 ; order for
the Perseus, 116 ; cast the Perseus, 129 ; went to Rome, 130 ; returned
to Florence, 131 ; quarrelled with Grand Duchess, 133-147 ; quarrelled
with Grand Duke, 140-149 ; his great crucifix, 145 ; poisoned, 148 ;
married, T49 ; death, 150.
— Giovanni, 6 seq. , 20.
Cessano, 94.
Charles V., Emperor, 26 seq., 52-100.
— IX. of France, 99.
Chigi, Gismondo, and his wife, 19.
Clement VII., Pope, Giulio de' Medici, ruled Florence, 11 ; Pope, 15 ;
abilities, 18 ; gave orders to Cellini, 22 ; war with Cardinal Colonna,
27 ; besieged by Charles, V. , 28 ; peace, 31 ; declared war against
Florence, 35 ; quarrelled with Cellini, 41-43 ; ordered Cellini to be
hanged, 44 ; doubts as to Cellini's honesty, 47-49 ; more quarrels with
Cellini, 51-54; illness and death, 58, 59, 131.
Colonna, Cardinal Pompeo, 27.
Cortona, Cardinal of, 33.
Cowper, Lord, 38.
D'Aubigne', 16, F.N.
Dauphin of France, 93, 101, 107.
D' Este, Cardinal Ippolito (Cardinal of Ferrara), 76, 77, 84, seq. , 94 seq.
D'Etampes, Duchess, 93, 99 ; quarrels with Cellini, 97-112.
Donatello, 116.
Duranti, Durante, 74, F.N. ; 84.
Durer, Albert, 37, 38.
Eleonora, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 133-147.
Evans, Rev. J., 56, F.N.
Farnese, Duke Ottaviano, 80.
Ferrara, Cardinal of. See D' Este.
— Duke of, 88.
Finguena, 37.

Index. Xr~,
Franeia, 7, F.N.
Francis I. of France, 15, F.N. ; 26 seq.
Franzesi, 66 seq.
Gaddi, Angiolo, 55, 56.
— Giovanni, 66 seq.
Ghiberti, 7, F.N.
Ghirlandajo, 100.
Gibbons, Cardinal, 3, F.N., 16, F.N.
Giovanni da Bologna, 115.
Guidi, Guido, 100, 148.
— Giacopo, Bishop of Penna, 140.
Henry VIII. of England, 27, F.N. ; 46, 53.
Holbein, 36.
Hope, Beresford, 38.
Jannitzer, 36.
Julius III., Pope, 131.
Juvenale, Latino, 73.
Leo X., Pope, Giovanni de' Medici, ruled Florence, 9 ; Pope, 10 ; reception
at Florence, 11 ; death, 15 ; character, 16, 17.
Leonora, Queen of France, 91.
Lorraine, Cardinal of, 97.
Loyola, St. Ignatius of, 70, 132.
Luigi, Pier, 61 seq., 85.
Luther, 16.
Machiavelli, 2, 10.
Magniac. The Magniac Collection, 36.
Mantegni, Andrea, 38.
Marcellus II., Pope, 131.
Maximilian, 26.
Medici, Alessandro de', 33, 64 seq.
— Cardinal Giovanni de', son of Duke Cosimo, 147.
— Cardinal Ippolito de', 45.
— Catherine de' , Dauphiness, 93, 107.
— Cosimo de', the Elder, 8.
— Cosimo de', elected, 70 ; character, 113 seq. ; tried to induce Michael
Angelo to go to Florence, 130; unpleasant to Cellini, 133; affair of
the pearls, 135 ; quarrelled with Cellini, 140 seq. ; killed a son, 147 ;
death, 147.
— Don Garzia de', 147.
— Francisco de', 114, F.N.
— Giovanni de'. See Leo X.

i58

Index.

Medici, Giulio de'. See Clement VII.
— House of, 7 seq.
— Lorenzino de' , 65 seq.
— Lorenzo II., de', 34.
— Ottaviano de', 64 seq., 68.
— Pallone de', 28.
Mezerai, 91, in.
Navarre, King of, 107.
— Queen of, 93, 101.
Negroli, P. de, 36.
Neri, St. Philip, 71, 132.
Newman, Cardinal, 71, 83.
Nicholas V., Pope, 9, F.N.
Orcagna, 7, F.N.
Orsini, Cardinal, 29.
— L., Count of Pitigliano, 62, F.N.
Palestrina, 6, 132.
Paul III., Pope (Cardinal Farnese), pardoned Cellini, 60; character, 61 ;
reputed children, 61 ; relations to Francis I. and Charles V. , 73 ;
order to Cellini for a present for Charles V. , 74 ; his escape as a youth
from the Castle of St. Angelo, 80; negotiations about Cellini with
Cardinal Cornaro, 80 ; liberates Cellini, 85, 131.
— IV., Pope, 131.
Penni, G. F.
Pepys, quoted, 24.
Peruzzi, Baldassare, 18.
Philip II., 114, F.N.
Pisa, Archbishop of, 143.
Pisselen, William de, 99.
Pitti, Luca, 115, F.N.
Pius II., Pope, 4, F.N.
— V., St., Pope, 131.
Poitiers, Diane de, 101.
Pollainolo, A. del, 7, F.N.
Pompeo, 40 seq., 81.
Pontormo, n, 138.
Poyet, roo.
Primaticcio, F., 101 seq.
Raphael, 6, 51, F.N.
Recalcati, Ambrogio, 60.
Riccio, P. F., 116 seq.
Romano, Giulio, 25.

Index.
Rossetti, 66, F.N.
Rosso, II, 24, 106.
Rothschild, Baron, 38.
Ruskin, 1.
St. Angelo, the Constable of, 78 seq.
Salamanca, Bishop of, 21 seq.
Salisbury, Lord, 38.
Salviati, Cardinal, 53.
Sarto, Andrea del, 7, F.N. ; 11.
Savonarola, 2, 34.
Sebastian del Piombo, 51.
Solosmeo/44. Sully, 99.
Symonds, J. A., 1, 82, 148.
Titian, 120.
Tobbia, 41, 44.
Torrigiani, 12, 13.
Urbino, Duke of, 28.
Valle, Padre della, 68, F.N.
Valori, B., 52, F.N.
Varchi, 63, 115.
Vasari, 67 seq., 105, 115, 121.
Verrochio, 7, F.N.
Vestri, M. di Goro, 32.
Vignola, Barozzi da, 105.
Vinci, Leonardo da, 6, 90.
Warwick, Lord, 38.
Ximenes, Cardinal, 6.

159

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