Benvenuto Cellini
NO one can read Benvenuto’s extraordinary autobiography without being reminded of the even more extraordinary diary of Mr. Pepys. But there is one very great difference. Cellini dictated his memoirs to a little boy for the world at large, and did not profess to tell the whole truth—rather those things which came into his mind readily in his old age; but Pepys wrote for himself in secret cypher in his own study, and the reason of his writing has never yet been guessed. Why did he set down all his most private affairs? And when they became too disgraceful even for Mr. Pepys’s conscience, why did he set them down in a mongrel mixture of French and Spanish? Can we find a hint in the fact that he left a key to the cypher behind him? Did he really wish his Diary to remain unreadable for ever? Was it really a quaint and beastly vanity that moved him?
But Cellini wroteper mediumof a little boy amanuensis while he himself worked, and possibly he may have deliberately omitted some facts too shameful for the ears of thatpuer ingenuus;though I have my doubts about this theory. He frankly depicts himself as a cynical and forth-right fellow always ready to brawl; untroubled by conventional ideas either of art or of morality; ready to call a spade a spade or any number of adjectived shovels that came instantly to his mind. If it be great writing to express one’s meaning tersely, directly, and positively, then Cellini’s is the greatest of writing, though we have to be thankful that it is in a foreign language. The best translation is probably that of John Addington Symonds—a cheaper and excellent edition is published in theEveryman Library—and nobody who wishes to write precisely as he thinks can afford to go without studying this remarkable book. And having studied it he will probably come to the conclusion that there are other things in writing than merely to express oneself directly. There is such a thing as beauty of thought as well as beauty of expression; and probably he will end by wondering what is that thing which we call beauty? Is it only Truth, as even such a master of Beauty as Keats seems to have thought? Why is one line of theGrecian Urnmore beautiful than all the blood and thunder of Benvenuto?
Cellini says that he caught the “French evil”—i.e.syphilis—when he was a young man; he certainly did his best to catch it. His symptoms were abnormal, and the doctors assured him that his disease was not the “French evil.” However, he knew better, and assumed a treatment of his own, consisting oflignum vitæand a holiday shooting in the marshes. Here he probably caught malaria, of which he cured himself with guaiacum. We know now that, alas, syphilis cannot be cured by such means; and the fact that he lived to old age seems to show that there was something wrong with his diagnosis. I have known plenty of syphilitics who have reached extreme old age, but they had not been cured bylignum vitæand a holiday; it was mercury that had cured them, taken early and often, over long periods. I very much doubt whether he ever had the “French evil” at all.
[Photo, Brogi.PERSEUS AND THE GORGON’S HEAD.Statue by Benvenuto Cellini (Florence, Loggia de’ Lanzi).
But apart from this and from his amazing revelations of quarrelling and loose living, the autobiography is worth reading for its remarkable description of the casting of his great statue of Perseus, which now stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence hard by the Uffizi. By the time the book had reached so far the little boy had long wearied of the job of secretary, and the old man had buckled down to the labourof writing with his own hand. I dare swear that he wrote this particular section at one breath, so to speak; the torrent of words, poured forth in wild excitement, carry the reader away with the frenzy of the writer as Benvenuto recalls the greatest hours of his life. Nowhere is such an instance of the terrible labour pains of a true artist as his offspring comes to birth.
The great statue does more than represent Perseus; it represents the wild and headlong mind of Benvenuto himself. Perseus stands in triumph with the Gorgon’s head in one hand and a sword in the other. You can buy paper-knives modelled on this sword for five lire in Florence to-day. The gladness and youthful joy of Perseus are even more striking than those of Verrochio’s David in the Bargello just near at hand. Verrochio has modelled a young rascal of a Jew who is clearly saying: “Alone I did it; and very nice too!” Never was boyish triumph better portrayed. But Benvenuto’s Perseus is a great young man who has done something very worthy, and knows that it is worthy. He has begun to amputate the head very carefully with a neat circular incision round the neck; then, his rage or his fear of the basilisk glance getting the better of him, he has set his foot against the Gorgon’s shoulder and tuggedat the head violently until the grisly thing has come away in his hand, tearing through the soft parts of the neck and wrenching the great vessels from the heart.
As is well known, opportunities for performing decapitation upon a Gorgon are few; apart from the rarity of the monster there is always the risk lest the surgeon may be frozen stiff in the midst of the operation; and it becomes still more difficult when it has to be performed in the Fourth Dimension through a looking-glass. We have the authority ofThe Mikadothat self-decapitation is a difficult, not to say painful, operation, and Benvenuto could not have practised his method before a shaving-mirror, because he had a bushy beard, though some of us have inadvertently tried in our extreme youth before we have learned the advisability of using safety razors. Anyhow, Benvenuto’s Perseus is a very realistic, violent, and wonderful piece of sculpture; if he had done nothing else he would have still been one of the greatest artists in the world. My own misfortune was in going to Florence before I had seriously read his autobiography; I wish to warn others lest that misfortune should befall them. Read Cellini’s autobiography—then, go to Florence! You will see how the author of the autobiography was the only manwho could possibly have done the Perseus; how, in modelling the old pre-hellenic demigod, he was really modelling his own subconscious mind.