The great popularity of one of the central figures of the late Renaissance—Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572)—has for many years caused the finest examples to be attributed to him or to his school, often with complete disregard of their design, which can be traced in many cases to another source. It is unnecessary to give a biographical account of the famous Florentine goldsmith, for his life may best be studied in his own memoirs. More to the present purpose is it to attempt to estimate the real position that Cellini should occupy, especially with regard to such examples of jewellery as have come down to the present day.
Upon the question of Cellini the artistic world has long been divided into two camps. The majority of those who have previously dealt with the subject have considered it sufficient to sum up the whole history of the jeweller's art of the sixteenth century under the name of this one artist, and to attribute everything important to him. The lively and singularly attractive narrative of his own life and adventures contains such candid glorification of himself and his work, that the temptation is strong to follow the majority, and, unmindful of his contemporaries, to associate with him, as he himself has done, the finest jewellery of the whole Renaissance. Eugène Plon, for example, Cellini's chief exponent, in his magnificent work, Benvenuto Cellini, Orfèvre, Médailleur, Sculpteur (1883), though eminently just, and on the whole fair in his attributions, cannot disguise an evident desire to ascribe to the Florentine goldsmith, or at any rate to his school, not only several jewels which might conceivably be associated with Cellini, but also several others of more doubtful origin. Among these is the important group of jewels in the Rothschild Collection in the British Museum, known as the Waddesdon Bequest, the real origin of all of which is held by those best entitled to judge to be incontestably German.
Cellini's critics, on the other hand, sceptical, and in the main dispassionate, have placed him under a more searching light, and despoiled him of the halo with which his own memoirs have encircled him. He remains, however, an excellent and many-sided artist, thoroughly versed in all the technicalities of his craft, and one who without doubt strongly influenced his contemporaries. Admirable goldsmith and jeweller as he certainly was, he is entitled to the highest distinction, but not so much on account of the references in his Vita and Trattati to his own productions, as for his lucid treatment of technical questions.
"Artists," says Mr. Symonds, "who aspire to immortality should shun the precious metals." Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the Leda and the Swan at Vienna ([Pl. XXIX, 5]), the Chariot of Apollo at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the Four Cæsars and the Centaur and the Bacchic Genii in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous golden salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith's point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewellers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.
In endeavouring to affix a nationality to existing jewels, the only really serviceable landmarks are those furnished by the collections of engraved designs by German and French masters of ornament; and when these are compared with the contemporary work just spoken of, the common origin of nearly all becomes at once evident. Bearing in mind the skill and fame of the Italian goldsmiths, not only of Cellini, but of his contemporaries, such as Girolamo del Prato, Giovanni da Ferenzuola, Luca Agnolo, and Piero, Giovanni, and Romalo del Tovaloccio, the reason why the vast majority of extant jewels should follow German designs is difficult to understand. An authority no less reliable than Sir A. W. Franks has expressed an opinion that the designs of Dürer, Aldegrever, and other German artists were extensively used in Italy.[123] Italian goldsmiths did not produce any such examples of engraved ornament for jewellery as did their confrères in Germany, France, and Flanders; but the current knowledge we possess of the art of the period renders it at least unlikely that the individuality which is the key-note of all the productions of the Italian Renaissance would have countenanced there, in Italy, the use of extraneous ready-made designs. Certainly artists of the stamp of Cellini would not have used them. One is forced nevertheless to acknowledge the possibility of minor Italian craftsmen having executed jewels from German engravings. The international character visible on so many art objects of the time must be attributed in no small degree to the circulation of such designs in almost all the workshops of Europe.
A reason for the many difficulties that arise in connection with this particular question seems to lie in the fact that for causes unexplained the jewellery of the first half of the sixteenth century, whether Italian, German, or of other nationality, has almost all vanished, and that examples met with at the present day belong chiefly to the second half of that century. While acknowledging the existence of a fair number of jewels whose authorship cannot be otherwise than Italian, and without denying the possibility of the survival of examples of jewellery even from the hand of Cellini himself, a protest must be raised against the practice, hitherto so common, of describing every jewel of the sixteenth century as Italian, and of coupling every high-class object of this description with the magic name of Cellini.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
GERMANY, THE LOW COUNTRIES, HUNGARY