In 1518 Benvenuto returned to Florence and began to study the cartoons of Michael Angelo. He must have already acquired considerable reputation as a workman, for about this time Torrigiani invited him to go to England in his company and enter the service of Henry VIII. The Renaissance was now beginning to penetrate the nations of the North, and Henry and Francis vied with each other in trying to attract foreign artists to their capitals. It does not, however, appear that the English king secured the services of men so distinguished as Lionardo da Vinci, II Rosso, Primaticcio, Del Sarto, and Cellini, who shed an artificial lustre on the Court of France. Going to London then was worse than going to Russia now, and to take up a lengthy residence among questi diavoli ... quelle bestie di quegli Inglesi, as Cellini politely calls the English, did not suit a Southern taste. He had, moreover, private reasons for disliking Torrigiani, who boasted of having broken Michael Angelo's nose in a quarrel. "His words," says Cellini, "raised in me such a hatred of the fellow that, far from wishing to accompany him to England, I could not bear to look at him." It may be mentioned that one of Cellini's best points was hero-worship for Michael Angelo. He never speaks of him except as quel divino Michel Agnolo, il mio maestro, and extols la bella maniera of the mighty sculptor to the skies. Torrigiani, as far as we can gather from Cellini's description of him, must have been a man of his own kidney and complexion: "he was handsome, of consummate assurance, having rather the airs of a bravo than a sculptor; above all, his fierce gestures and his sonorous voice, with a peculiar manner of knitting his brows, were enough to frighten everyone that saw him; and he was continually talking of his valiant feats among those bears of Englishmen." The story of Torrigiani's death in Spain is worth repeating. A grandee employed him to model a Madonna, which he did with more than usual care, expecting a great reward. His pay, however, falling short of is expectation, in a fit of fury he knocked his statue to pieces. For this act of sacrilege, as it was deemed, to the work of his own brain and hand, Torrigiani was thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition. There he starved himself to death in 1522 in order to escape the fate of being burned. This story helps to explain why the fine arts were never well developed in Spain, and why they languished after the introduction of the Holy Office into Italy.[[351]]
Instead of emigrating to England, Benvenuto, after a quarrel with his father about the obnoxious flute-playing, sauntered out one morning toward the gate of S. Piero Gattolini. There he met a friend called Tasso, who had also quarrelled with his parents; and the two youths agreed, upon the moment, to set off for Rome. Both were nineteen years of age. Singing and laughing, carrying their bundle by turns, and wondering "what the old folks would say," they trudged on foot to Siena, there hired a return horse between them, and so came to Rome. This residence in Rome only lasted two years, which were spent by Cellini in the employment of various masters. At the expiration of that time he returned to Florence, and distinguished himself by the making of a marriage girdle for a certain Raffaello Lapaccini.[[352]] The fame of this and other pieces of jewellery roused against him the envy and malice of the elder goldsmiths, and led to a serious fray, in the course of which he assaulted a young man of the Guasconti family, and was obliged to fly disguised like a monk to Rome.
As this is the first of Cellini's homicidal quarrels, it is worth while to transcribe what he says about it. "One day as I was leaning against the shop of these Guasconti, and talking with them, they contrived that a load of bricks should pass by at the moment, and Gherardo Guasconti pushed it against me in such wise that it hurt me. Turning suddenly and seeing that he was laughing, I struck him so hard upon the temple that he fell down stunned. Then turning to his cousins, I said, That is how I treat cowardly thieves like you; and when they began to show fight, being many together, I, finding myself on flame, set hand to a little knife I had, and cried, If one of you leaves the shop, let another run for the confessor, for a surgeon won't find anything to do here." Nor was he contented with this truculent behaviour; for when Gherardo recovered from his blow, and the matter had come before the magistrates, Cellini went to seek him in his own house. There he stabbed him in the midst of all his family, raging meanwhile, to use his own phrase, "like an infuriated bull."[[353]] It appears that on this occasion no one was seriously hurt; but the affair proved perilous to Cellini, since it was a mere accident that he had not killed more than one of the Guasconti. These affrays recur continually among the adventures recorded by Cellini in his Life. He says with comical reservation of phrase that he was "naturally somewhat choleric;" and then, describes the access of his fury as a sort of fever, lasting for days, preventing him from taking food or sleep, making his blood boil in his veins, inflaming his eyes, and never suffering him to rest till he revenged himself by murder or at least by blows. To enumerate all the people he killed or wounded, or pounded to a jelly in public brawls or private quarrels, in the pursuit of deliberate vendetta or under a sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take too long. We are forced by an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even self-complacency about his homicides. He makes himself accuser, judge, and executioner, and is quite satisfied with the goodness of his cause, the justice of his sentence, and the equity of his administration. In a sonnet written to Bandinelli, he compares his own victims with the mangled statues of that sculptor, much to his own satisfaction.[[354]]
There is the same callousness of conscience in his record of spiteful acts that we should blush to think of—stabs in the dark, and such a piece of revenge as cutting the beds to bits in the house of an innkeeper who had offended him.[[355]] Nor does he speak with any shame of the savage cruelty with which he punished a woman who was sitting to him as a model, and whom he hauled up and down his room by the hair of her head, kicking and beating her till he was tired.[[356]] It is true that on this occasion he regrets having spoiled, in a moment of blind passion, the best arms and legs that he could find to draw from. Such episodes, to which it is impossible to allude otherwise than very briefly, illustrate with extraordinary vividness what I have already had occasion to say about the Italian sense of honour at this period.[[357]]
The consciousness of physical courage and the belief in his own moral superiority sustained Cellini in all his dangers and in all his crimes. Armed with his sword and dagger, and protected by his coat of mail, he was ready to stand against the world and fight his way towards any object he desired. When a man opposed his schemes or entered into competition with him as an artist, he swaggered up with hand on hilt and threatened to run him through the body if he did not mind his business. At the same time he attributes the success of his own violence in quelling and maltreating his opponents to the providence of God. "I do not write this narrative," he says, "from a motive of vanity, but merely to return thanks to God, who has extricated me out of so many trials and difficulties; who likewise delivers me from those that daily impend over me. Upon all occasions I pay my devotions to Him, call upon Him as my defender, and recommend myself to His care. I always exert my utmost efforts to extricate myself, but when I am quite at a loss, and all my powers fail me, then the force of the Deity displays itself—that formidable force which, unexpectedly, strikes those who wrong and oppress others, and neglect the great and honourable duty which God has enjoined on them." I shall have occasion later on to discuss Cellini's religious opinions; but here it may be remarked that the feeling of this passage is thoroughly sincere and consistent with the spirit of the times. The separation between religion and morality was complete in Italy.[[358]] Men made their own God and worshipped him; and the God of Cellini was one who always helped those who began to help themselves by taking justice into their own hands.
From the date of his second visit to Rome in 1523, Cellini's life divides itself into three periods, the first spent in the service of Popes Clement VII. and Paul III., the second in Paris at the Court of Francis, and the third at Florence under Cosimo de' Medici.
On arriving in Rome, his extraordinary abilities soon brought him into notice at the Court. The Chigi family, the Bishop of Salamanca, and the Pope himself employed him to make various jewels, ornaments, and services of plate. In consequence of a dream in which his father appeared and warned him not to neglect music, under pain of the paternal malediction, he accepted a post in the Papal band. The old bugbear of flute-playing followed him until his father's death, and then we hear no more of it. The history of this portion of his life is among the most entertaining passages of his biography. Drawing the Roman ruins, shooting pigeons, scouring the Campagna on a pony like a shaggy bear, fighting duels, prosecuting love-affairs, defending his shop against robbers, skirmishing with Moorish pirates on the shore by Cerveterra, stabbing, falling ill of the plague and the French sickness—these adventures diversify the account he gives of masterpieces in gold and silver ware. The literary and artistic society of Rome at this period was very brilliant. Painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths mixed with scholars and poets, passing their time alternately in the palaces of dukes and cardinals and in the lodgings of gay women. Bohemianism of the wildest type was combined with the manners of the great world. A little incident described at some length by Cellini brings this varied life before us. There was a club of artists, including Giulio Romano and other pupils of Raphael, who met twice a week to sup together and to spend the evening in conversation, with music and the recitation of sonnets. Each member of this company brought with him a lady. Cellini, on one occasion, not being provided for the moment with an innamorata, dressed up a beautiful Spanish youth called Diego as a woman, and took him to the supper. The ensuing scene is described in the most vivid manner. We see before us the band of painters and poets, the women in their bright costumes, the table adorned with flowers and fruit, and, as a background to the whole picture, a trellis of jasmines with dark foliage and starry blossoms. Diego, called Pomona, with regard doubtless to his dark and ruddy beauty, is unanimously proclaimed the fairest of the fair. Then a discovery of his sex is made; and the adventure leads, as usual in the doings of Cellini, to daggers, midnight ambushes, and vendettas that only end with bloodshed.
An episode of this sort may serve as the occasion for observing that the artists of the late Renaissance had become absorbed in the admiration of merely carnal beauty. With the exception of Michael Angelo and Tintoretto, there was no great master left who still pursued an intellectual ideal. The Romans and the Venetians simply sought and painted what was splendid and luxurious in the world around them. Their taste was contented with well-developed muscles, gorgeous colour, youthful bloom, activity of limb, and grace of outline. The habits of the day, voluptuous yet hardy, fostered this one-sided development of the arts; while the asceticism of the Middle Ages had yielded to a pagan cult of sensuality. To draw un bel corpo ignudo with freedom was now the ne plus ultra of achievement. How to express thought or to indicate the subtleties of emotion, had ceased to be the artist's aim. We have already noticed the passionate love of beauty which animated the great masters of the golden age. This, in the less elevated natures of the craftsmen who succeeded them, and under the conditions of advancing national corruption, was no longer refined or restrained by delicacy of feeling or by loftiness of aim. It degenerated into soulless animalism. The capacity for perceiving and for reproducing what is nobly beautiful was lost. Vulgarity and coarseness stamped themselves upon the finest work of men like Giulio Romano. At this crisis it was proved how inferior was the neo-paganism of the sixteenth century to the paganism of antiquity it aped. Mythology preserved Greek art from degradation, and connected a similar enthusiasm for corporeal beauty with the thoughts and aspirations of the Hellenic race. The Italians lacked this safeguard of a natural religion. To throw the Christian ideal aside, and to strive to grasp the classical ideal in exchange, was easy. But paganism alone could give them nothing but its vices; it was incapable of communicating its real source of life—its poetry, its faith, its cult of nature. Art, therefore, as soon as the artists pronounced themselves for sensuality, merged in a skilful selection and reproduction of elegant forms, and nothing more. A handsome youth upon a pedestal was called a god. A duke's mistress on Titian's canvas passed for Aphrodite. Andrea del Sarto's faithless wife figured as Madonna. Cellini himself, though sensitive to every kind of physical beauty—as we gather from what he tells us of Cencio, Diego, Faustina, Paolino, Angelica, Ascanio—has not attempted to animate his "Perseus," or his "Ganymede," or his "Diana of Fontainebleau," with a vestige of intellectual or moral loveliness. The vacancy of their expression proves the degradation of an art that had ceased to idealise anything beyond a faultless body. Not thus did the Greeks imagine even their most sensual divinities. There is at least a thought in Faun and Satyr. Cellini's statues have no thought; their blank animalism corresponds to the condition of their maker's soul.[[359]]
When Rome was carried by assault in 1527, and the Papal Court was besieged in the castle of S. Angelo, Cellini played the part of bombardier. It is well known that he claims to have shot the Constable of Bourbon dead with his own hand, and to have wounded the Prince of Orange; nor does there seem to be any adequate reason for discrediting his narrative. It is certain that he was an expert marksman, and that he did Clement good service by directing the artillery of S. Angelo. If we believed all his assertions, however, we should have to suppose that nothing memorable happened without his intervention. In his own eyes his whole life was a miracle. The very hailstones that fell upon his head could not be grasped in both hands. His guns and powder brought down birds no other marksman had a chance of hitting. When he was a child, he grasped a scorpion without injury, and saw a salamander "living and enjoying himself in the hottest flames." After his fever at Rome in 1535, he threw off from his stomach a hideous worm—hairy, speckled with green, black, and red—the like whereof the doctors never saw.[[360]] When he finally escaped from the dungeons of S. Angelo in 1539, a luminous appearance like an aureole settled on his head, and stayed there for the rest of his life.[[361]] These facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardan, Paracelsus, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in them; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting what he says about his exploits, since imagination and self-conceit could so far distort his judgment.