When Benvenuto Cellini arrived in France, François I. was at the château of Fontainebleau with his whole court. The artist stopped in the town, sending word of his arrival to the Cardinal of Ferrara. The cardinal, who knew that the king was impatiently awaiting his coming, at once transmitted the intelligence to his Majesty. Benvenuto was received by the king the same day.
"Benvenuto," he said, addressing him in that mellifluous and expressive tongue in which the artist wrote so well, "for a few days, while you are recovering from your fatigue and vexation, repose, enjoy yourself, make merry, and meanwhile we will reflect and determine upon some noble work for you to execute."
Thereupon he ordered apartments in the château to be made ready for the artist, and that he should want for nothing.
Thus Benvenuto found himself at the outset installed in the very centre of French civilization, at that time behind that of Italy, with which it was already struggling for supremacy, and which it was soon to surpass. As he looked around, he could easily believe that he had never left the Tuscan capital, for he found himself in the midst of the arts and artists he had known at Florence; Primaticcio had succeeded Leonardo da Vinci and Rosso.
It was for Benvenuto, therefore, to show himself not unworthy of these illustrious predecessors, and to carry the art of statuary as high in the eyes of the most gallant court of Europe as those three great masters had carried the art of painting. And so Benvenuto determined to anticipate the king's wishes by not waiting for him to command the noble work promised, and to execute it himself, of his own motion, and with his own resources. He had readily discovered the king's affection for the royal residence where he had met him, and determined to flatter his preference by executing a statue to be called the "Nymph of Fontainebleau."
A lovely work to undertake was this statue, crowned at once with oak and wheat-ears and vines; for Fontainebleau is partly field, partly forest, and partly vineyard. The nymph of whom Benvenuto dreamed must therefore be reminiscent of Ceres and Diana and Erigone,—three types of marvellous beauty melted into one, and which, while retaining their distinctive characteristics, should still form but a single whole. Then there should be represented upon the pedestal the attributes of those three goddesses; and they who have seen the fascinating figures about the statue of Perseus know the Florentine master's method of executing those marvellous details.
But it was his misfortune that, although he had in his own mind his ideal of beauty, he was sadly in need of a human model for the material part of his work. Where was he to find this model, in whose single person could be found the threefold beauty of three goddesses?
Certain it is, that if, as in the olden days, the days of Apelles and Phidias, the beauties of the day, those queens of loveliness, had come of their own accord to pose for Benvenuto, he would have found what he sought within the precincts of the court; for there was a whole Olympus in the flower of youth and beauty. There were Catherine de Medicis, then but one and twenty; Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, who was called the Fourth Grace and the Tenth Muse; and lastly, Madame la Duchesse d'Etampes, whom we shall meet frequently in the course of this narrative, and who was known as the loveliest of blue-stockings and the most learned of beauties. In this galaxy the artist could have found more than he needed; but the days of Apelles and Phidias had long gone by, and he must look elsewhere.
It was with great pleasure, therefore, that he learned that the court was about to set out for Paris. Unfortunately, as Benvenuto himself says, the court in those days travelled like a funeral procession. Preceded by twelve to fifteen thousand horse, halting for the night in some place where there were no more than two or three houses, wasting four hours every evening in pitching the tents, and four hours every morning in striking them,—in this way, although the distance was but sixteen leagues, five days were spent in the journey from Fontainebleau to Paris.
Twenty times on the way Benvenuto was tempted to push forward, but as often the Cardinal of Ferrara dissuaded him, saying that, if the king was compelled to pass a single day without seeing him, he would certainly ask what had become of him, and when he learned that he had left the procession would look upon his unceremonious departure as a failure of respect toward himself. So Benvenuto chafed at his bit, and tried to kill time during the long halt by sketching his nymph of Fontainebleau.