A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

“Without a country and without liberty we might perhaps produce some prophets of art but no vital art. Therefore it is better for us to consecrate our lives to the solution of the problem, ‘are we to have a country?’ and turn at once to the political question. If we are successful, the art of Italy will bloom and flourish over our graves.”

So much for the political state of Italy between 1527 and 1580. The social was even more anarchical. No reference need be made to the moral code adopted by the leaders of thought and action—to the organized murder by hired bravi, to the general winking at adultery, to the convent intrigues. A low standard of morals by no means involves a low standard of art. But the peculiar viciousness of the morality of sixteenth-century Italy seems to depend upon the connection of this degraded moral sense with a general chaos of social order. The condottieri of the age of Cosimo de Medici were replaced by banditti in the pay of feudal nobles. The old respect for trade disappeared. With the growth of the aristocratic ideals of Spain, the wealthy burgher class, which had been the most stable element in towns like Florence and Milan, vanished. Monopolies were granted to all and sundry. The agents of the Italian princes and the Pope, together with the Spanish viceroys, placed imposts upon all sorts of goods, regardless of the necessities of commerce.

The prosperity of the great art centres of Italy decreased rapidly. Take the case of Rome. A passage from the official report of the Venetian envoy in 1565, Giacomo Soranzo, furnishes a striking contrast between the condition of Rome in the mid-sixteenth century and Rome when Michael Angelo was in his first vigorous youth. In 1565 the aristocracy consisted of a fluctuating nobility and priesthood depending upon the largesses of the chief members of the Papal Court. At times the population totalled 100,000. During an unpopular pontificacy it fell as low as 40,000.

“The Court of Rome,” writes Soranzo, “is no longer what it used to be either in the quality or the numbers of the courtiers. This is principally due to the poverty of the cardinals and the parsimony of the popes. In the old days, when they gave away more liberally, men of ability flocked from all quarters. This reduction of the Court dates from the Council; for the bishops and beneficed clergy being now obliged to retire to their residences, the larger portion of the Court has left Rome. To the same cause may be ascribed a diminution of the numbers of those who serve the Pontiff, seeing that since only one benefice can now be given and that involves residence, there are few who care to follow the Court at their own expense and inconvenience without hope of greater reward. The poverty of the cardinals springs from two causes. The first is that they cannot now obtain benefices of the first class, as was the case when England, Germany, and other provinces were subject to the Holy See, and when, moreover, they could hold three or four archbishoprics apiece together with other places of emolument, whereas they now can only have one apiece. The second cause is that the number of the cardinals has been increased to seventy-five, and that the foreign powers have ceased to complement them with large presents and benefices, as was the wont of Charles V. and the French Crown.”

The consequence can be readily realized. There was the old demand for pictures and sculptures. But quick returns rather than sound accomplishment were required by the artists and their patrons. A delayed commission would stand but a poor chance of payment. For it would not fulfil its main purpose—the aggrandizement of a prince or cardinal whose term of power depended upon the life of the Pope or the tenure of office by such a ruler as one of the Medicean tyrants of Florence.

Nor was this all. Not only were the circumstances less favourable but the artists themselves were unfitted for the accomplishment of the greatest tasks. The age, not the earthly parent, is the real father of the man. Lesser spirits attempted to wield a giant’s tools and struggled with themes which Michael Angelo oftentimes failed to make articulate. They sought to obtain his sublime effects by insistence upon such accidents of his style as the exaggerated muscular development or contorted poses of his figures. Immense monuments, suggested by the achievements of the earlier age, were called for. A striving after exaggerated effect replaced the former determination to base every work of art upon the accurate observation of nature and the definite proportion of part and part. The later artists lacked the simple reserve which is only given to men who see life steadily and see it whole. In place of the deeps of Angelo, we find the shallows of Giovanni Bologna and his even less gifted contemporaries. Just because they are shoals, the turmoils surrounding them oftentimes appear tempestuous. But they never suggest the tremendous power which evidences the oceanic depths of the passions of a man who is not only a sculptor but a seer.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

The character of a typical sixteenth-century Italian artist has been preserved to us in the “Autobiography” of Cellini. From its pages we can conjure up the lives of the men who made this fifty years of Italian sculpture. Cellini, be it remembered, is no Bohemian hanging around the outskirts of the artistic world. On his death in February 13, 1571, his brothers of the Accademia delle Belle Arti record: “Messer Benvenuto Cellini was buried with great funeral pomp in our Chapter House at the Annunziata in the presence of our Academical Body and the Company.”

But the “Autobiography” pictures a born swaggerer, a swashbuckler—a bully, if you like—though a gay-hearted genius withal.

Let us examine Cellini’s life story rather more closely. When little more than a youth Cellini was banished from Florence on account of an affray with a party of his fellows. Returning, a second affair necessitated a flight to Rome, where he took part in the celebrated defence of the town against the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. Once more restored to favour in his native Florence, Cellini took upon himself to avenge his brother’s death. A murderous affray with a notary and an ultra-energetic manner of dealing with a rival goldsmith, ended in the two years’ confinement in the Castle of Saint Angelo with which all readers of the “Autobiography” are familiar. And in all these excitements, Cellini is never in the wrong. “What I have done, I have done in defence of that body which God has lent me.” Adopting the apologia which he attributes to one of the numerous Popes with whom he came in contact, Cellini calls upon the world to recognize “that men like myself, unique in their profession, are subject to no laws.”