“I immediately caused the mouths of my mould to be opened, but finding that the metal did not run with its usual velocity, and apprehending that the cause of it was that the fusibility of the metal was injured by the violence of the fire, I ordered all my dishes and porringers, which were in number about two hundred, to be placed one by one before my tubes, and part of them to be thrown into the furnace; upon which all present perceived that my bronze was completely dissolved, and that my mould was filling; they now with joy and alacrity assisted and obeyed me. I, for my part, was sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, giving my directions and assisting my men, before whom I offered up this prayer: ‘O God, I address myself to Thee, who, of Thy divine power, didst rise from the dead and ascend in glory to heaven. I acknowledge in gratitude this mercy that my mould has been filled: I fall prostrate before Thee, and with my whole heart return thanks to Thy divine Majesty.’ My prayer being over, I took a plate of salad which stood upon a little bench, and ate with a great appetite. I then drank with all my journeymen and assistants, and went joyful and in good health to bed, for there were still two hours of night; and I rested as well as if I had been troubled with no manner of disorder.”
All that splendid energy and craftsmanship could do, Cellini did. The “[Perseus]” was finished in 1554 and placed in its present position in the Loggia dei Lanzi amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the Florentines. Of the vigour of the design there can be no doubt. The beauty of much of the decoration of the base may be admitted. The figure of the Gorgon at the feet of Perseus is instinct with passion. Note the manner in which the right arm lies inert, while the lower limbs are still palpitating with life. But one cannot but feel the loss of intellectual beauty and breadth of outlook which might have enshrouded a more philosophical conception of the Greek hero. There can be no question about Cellini’s full-blooded, self-assertive vitality. At any rate, the sculptor of the “[Perseus]” was no copyist. But he lived in an age when the first spontaneous outburst of imaginative enthusiasm had spent itself. Italy had given up thinking and feeling. So Cellini could express nothing beyond his own passionate personality. He would have approached Michael Angelo if he could have echoed the prayer which Socrates sent up in that plane-tree glade on the banks of the Ilissus.
“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one.”
Giovanni da Bologna, or John of Douay, as he is also called, was a sculptor of even greater natural talent than Cellini. He was equipped with almost every gift that a sculptor can desire. It has been well said of him that he had “the power of seeing a definite idea incorporated in a form which is the distillation of all the related sensations which go to make up the idea.” This is the Hellenic gift—the essential characteristic of a man who has to express himself by means of marble and bronze. With it went, in the case of Giovanni Bologna, a wonderful feeling for the beauty of line. Technically, his finest endowment was, perhaps, his unique power of expressing swift movement—the best known example of which is the well-known “[Mercury]” now in the Bargello. Giovanni images the Messenger of the gods as borne on a light zephyr through space. The figure is the very embodiment of energetic action. Yet the harmony which is essential to sculptural beauty is never sacrificed.
BERNINI
APOLLO AND DAPHNE
Borghese Gallery, Rome
BERNINI
