While I was pondering a subject for a statue which should silence the idle and malevolent, it happened that a competition in sculpture was opened in Siena, in which no one could compete but those who were of that country and province. Naturally I determined to compete. The only other competitor was the young sculptor Enea Becheroni, a pupil of the Academy there. Another wished to enter into the competition, and this was Giovanni Lusini, an accomplished sculptor who had lately returned from Rome, where he had been pensioned for four years, he having gained the prize at the quadrennial competition of our Academy at Florence. But he was not allowed to come in; for although, like Becheroni and myself, he was a native of Siena, he was inadmissible because he had passed the age decreed by the rules. This competition was called Biringucci, from the name of the worthy man who by his will had founded a prize and pension for sculpture, as well as others for painting, architecture, and various sciences that I do not remember. The studies and pensions established by him had been in existence for more than 300 years, and are still in existence, but, by one of those curious combinations that some would call a fatality, precisely in this very year, when it would have been most welcome to me, the prize for sculpture was struck out by one stroke of the pen.
BIRINGUCCI COMPETITION.
I had already for some time prepared myself for this competition, which required that the artist should be shut up in a room by himself, and there should make, in the course of one day from morning till evening, a sketch in clay of some subject drawn by him by lot at the moment of entering the studio. For a considerable time I had made nothing but sketches; and within a space of time certainly not greater than that allowed by the competition, I had in fact made some dozen, and by practice I had become so rapid in composition, that whatever subject might be given me, I felt fully equipped, so as to be able to come out of the struggle with honour.
One day—it was Sunday—I was standing in my little studio in the Via del Palagio, and modelling one of these sketches, the subject of which was Elias carried away in the chariot. I was working with goodwill, and was happy and in the vein. My father had come to see me, and he was sitting and reading quietly the Bible. The bell rang, and a letter was given me bearing the post-mark of Siena, and I recognised the handwriting of the secretary of the competition, Signor Corsini. I opened the letter, and read that the Government had suppressed the pension for sculpture as being superfluous, and had disposed of the sum by appropriating it to a chair at the University, and therefore the competition would not take place. I see, as if he were now before me, my father start up suddenly and exclaim—"Sagratino Moro Moraccio" (which is, literally, "Cursed Moor of the Blackamoors "), "what have you done?"
I SMASH MY SKETCH OF ELIAS.
With one blow of my fist I had smashed to pieces my poor Elias, and he saw it on the ground between the legs of the horse.
"Read," I said, giving him the letter.
Scarcely had he fixed his eyes on it, than he grew red, stamped with his feet, and repeated his usual "Sagratino Moro." I was at once aware that I had acted ill in giving way thus brutally to my irritation. This I have recounted out of love of the truth, and that those who know me now may see how different I was then, and how ludicrously that excitability of character which I still feel, but which I have learned how to repress, was exhibited in the tragic destruction of that poor sketch.
And this too was of advantage, just as the gossip and incredulity about the first triennial was. The refusal to give work was also of advantage, when I went seeking about from studio to studio, and it was denied to me, even in terms of scorn. It was all of advantage to me. It obliged me to concentrate myself, and, seeing myself rejected on all sides, to will and to know, and with God's assistance to make my place with my own unassisted powers. It was all right—thoroughly right; I repeat it. Who can tell? The pension of Siena was for ten years. May God pardon me, but I always feared that that pension might prove to me, as it had to others, a Capuan idleness.
I began now to turn over in my mind a new subject which should be serious and sympathetic, and into which I could put my whole heart, strength, will, hopes, and all—and I found it. Among the pictures, bronzes, and terre cotte of Pacetti's shop, where I used often to wander about, I was struck by a group in terra cotta of a pietà. The figure of Christ specially seemed to me beautiful; and I had half a mind to make a dead Christ, and went about ruminating in my mind over the composition. Certainly a dead Christ would be, as it always is, a very sublime theme. But yet I was not satisfied. I wished to find a new subject; and as the Bible was familiar to me, the death of Abel suggested itself, and I seized upon it with settled purpose. I sought for a studio to shut myself up in with the model, and I found one in the Piazzetta of S. Simone, opposite the church. Then I put together a few sous to buy me two stands, one for the living model and one for the clay. Among the nude figures which I saw in the evenings when I went to draw, I selected the one that seemed to me best adapted to the subject, and I arranged with him to come to me every afternoon, as I was employed in wood-carving all the morning. I had already made several sketches, but I wished to make one from life, so as to be sure of a good movement and a true expression. It was on Shrove Thursday in 1842, and all the world who could and wished to do so, were walking about in the Corso. The model and I were shut up together in the studio, and it was nothing less than a miracle that that day was not the last of both of our lives. Poor Brina is still living, as old as I am, and he still stands as a model at our Academy.