BENVENUTO CELLINI – A SELF-MADE MAN?

I’m currently studying an MA in Art History and will be publishing my essays on my blog, see my first assignment below – on the Goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini.

Discuss the ways in which the category of the artist is defined and constructed in relation to the work of art in the selected primary and secondary sources.

Primary source: Benvenuto Cellini, Memoirs Written by Himself

Secondary source: Journal article, Cellini’s Blood, Michael Cole, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 81, No. 2 (June 1999), pp. 215-235. Published by: CAA

In order to realise the importance of authorship and artistic genius at the time of the (European) Renaissance, one has to understand its beginnings: in the fourteenth century a re-birth of interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome emerged in Italy, replacing the ethos of the ‘Middle Ages’ with a new intellectual freedom. Throughout this period Christianity was interlaced with these philosophical ideals and Greek mythology and Roman writings – and consequently, new sciences, literature and art were embraced. This shift charged men to re-think their destiny under the ‘humanistic’ view; that man was at the ‘centre of his world’ and subsequently could shape his own fate.

Fundamental beliefs and narratives of this movement were still traditionally depicted through the arts: sculpture; architecture and paintings were commissioned by the church and nobility to affirm their power and cultural importance. However, artists were no longer perceived as the anonymous workhands as they had been in the Middle Ages; they were now thought of as highly-skilled ‘creators’. Artists sought to be equal to that of their intellectual contemporaries; it was a time of experimentation, discovery and rivalry amongst prominent artists and leaders of the day. By the Fifteenth Century, Italy was a diverse and divided country of independently governed ‘states’. Florence, where the Italian Renaissance emerged, was a metropolis of wealthy merchants and bankers – who along with the church and conventional nobility, also became patrons of the arts.ü Subsequently, it was crucial for the artist and indeed patron, to be identifiable through the style of their work or commissioned pieces.

Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini has been posthumously credited as contributing one of the most important insights into what it was like to be an artist during the Renaissance period with his autobiographies the Vita di Benvenuto Cellini. ‘Mainly thanks to the enduring fortune of his autobiography, Cellini is still widely considered to be one of the most versatile talents, as well as one of the most extraordinary writers, of his age. Starting from the late Twentieth Century, scholars have, however, finally begun to fully appreciate him also as a great Italian artist of the High Renaissance.’[1] Cellini’s most remembered artworks are a part-enamelled gold table sculpture made for King Francis I of France (dubbed as the Cellini Salt Cellar) and the bronze statue Perseus with the Head of Medusa which will be discussed in this essay.

Throughout his autobiographies, Cellini ranked his talents with the Master Renaissance Artists of his time, even going so far as to emulate Giorgio Vasari’s artist biographies in Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori. Published c1550, Vasari’s resurrection of biographical writing was not lost on Cellini as a way for him ‘to present the ideal life of the modern artist.’[2] Cellini did not hold back in falsifying accounts of his lineage; claiming his family could be traced back to a distinguished officer under Julius Caesar whom Florence was named after. Thus self-presenting as somebody of huge importance to Florence, even before he is known to the reader as a great Renaissance artist.

During most of his career Cellini was seen as a decorative artist. Although he employed the status of being commissioned by noblemen, royalty and the church, creating intricately made jewellery and sculptures, he expressed in his writing this was not the ultimate status he sought nor identified with. His opportunity to attain the legacy he so wanted as a sculptor and mastermind of his time, came in the form of the commission of Perseus. Created for the Florentine Duke Cosimo I (of the Medici family), the bronze casting of Perseus was deemed impossible by the Duke and Cellini’s workmen, as a quote from one Maestro Alessandro Lastricati describes in the primary source ‘Listen, Benvenuto! You are taking in hand a thing which defies the laws of art, and cannot be done, whatever means you try.’[3]

?However, Cellini asserts he was able to oversee the execution to perfection; not without difficulty, but the adversity he faces: ill with fever, surrounded by as he deems incompetent men, a storm and a fire, only proves to validate his own virtuosity as the one person on earth capable of achieving the casting. ‘When I had mastered all this confusion and trouble, I shouted now to this man, now to that, bidding them fetch and carry for me; and the solidified metal beginning to melt just then, the whole band were so excited to obedience, that each man did the work of three—When I saw I had raised the dead, in despite of all those ignorant sceptics, such vigor came back to me, that the remembrance of my fever and the fear of death passed away from me utterly.’ The secondary source claims here, that Cellini’s words were not referring to the sculpture but to the molten bronze itself; with the ancient belief that metals contain an earthly and spiritual life-force. ‘The idea that bronze could be brought to life is not something Cellini made up. It draws on conceptions about metals that he would have understood as both ancient and contemporary, scientific assumptions about their nature, their origins and their potential.’ [5]

Immediately one has to question the multi-faceted meaning behind the use of metal for the sculpture’s creation – was Cellini emphasising his choice of bronze, as opposed to marble for the construction of the statue to amplify his legacy? Cellini was a talented goldsmith and therefore could attain intricate detail through casting metal; hence using bronze, Cellini was able to bring Perseus and even the dead Medusa to ‘life’. Cellini has established his self-fashioned mythology in ‘alchemy’ – alluding to this fact when he compares his accomplishment of the casting with God’s own ability to create life. Is this act his redemption in both artistic and personal terms, given that Cellini was not favoured by many of his contemporaries in his own lifetime (it is no secret that Cellini had numerous encounters with the law, which often jeopardised his reputation and employment).

Knowing the Perseus was his last serious chance of proving his value as a Renaissance artist, Cellini had to ensure it would be remembered. This leads one to ask, had the statue been ‘bloodless’ would the image be quite forgettable amid the many other figures which adorn the Loggia della Signoria. Cole intensely argues that the blood is a main component of the statue, and Medusa is the setting for the blood itself; thus the detailing of Medusa’s blood is Cellini’s legacy. Furthermore, the blood seems to be itself animated, resembling twisting serpents, carefully designed and executed – not only to demonstrate skill but also echoing the mythology of the sculpture as a whole. It could be perceived that the ‘blood’ was a project Cellini was already working on and the Perseus an opportunity to exhibit this idea. Cole discusses in great detail about how the subject of coral could have inspired the blood ‘rendering that blood as coral, making it simultaneously congealed and precious, brings the achievement full circle. Cast, the metal hardens into immortal life.’ [6]

Cellini’s Perseus inevitably evokes many different interpretations of what his sculpture is really communicating. Do the coral-like tendrils of blood so violently erupting from Medusa’s head and twisted body represent the blood Florence has shed over the years or are they part of the story of Medusa? Has Cellini shrewdly entwined the mythology in the casting; depicting how driftwood was transformed into coral, through its encounter with the Gorgon’s head and blood in all its gory glory. The latter poses a lot of ‘what ifs’ – especially with Cole’s argument based on Cellini knowing about certain texts and connotations coral has with the literary source that Cellini used for the sculpture, Ovid’s Metamorphoses Nevertheless, the blood is indeed shocking to behold and unquestionably unique and memorable.

 The critical discovery based on the artefacts found upon Cellini’s death, is in fact, Cellini did not create the Perseus in one casting as he had stated; thus he had embellished his ‘status’ of genius. ‘Cellini rejected the safer and more practical option of casting the Perseus in sections (as the caster of Donatello’s Judith had done) intentionally making the operation more difficult. And when he came subsequently to describe his feat, he conveniently suppressed the fact that not only the blood from Medusa’s head but also the wings on Perseus’s feet and head had been made separately.’ [7]

In writing his autobiographies and his creation of the Perseus, Cellini characterised himself as the ultimate Sixteenth Century artistic genius; Cellini is still talked about to this day. Perseus in truth elevated Cellini’s status from a decorative artist to a noteworthy practitioner of the ‘liberal arts’, thus achieving his greatest ambition in life. More poignant is the fact the commission was for Florence – heart of the Renaissance and his place of birth. The artist as the creator and inventor by this time was a celebrated concept; the role of the artist was entwined heavily with the social and political standings of the day, therefore attributed authorship of one’s work was imperative. ‘Next day I went to pay my respects to his Excellency, who signed me to come near. When I did so he called out angrily “I could have cities and palaces built with ten thousands of ducats;” upon which I retorted that he would find any number of men capable of building cities and palaces, but maybe not one man in all the world who could make another Perseus.’ [8] For Duke Cosimo I a bronze commission of this skill demonstrated his wealth, appreciation of the ancient times (Cosimo’s humanist learning) and the lost art of ‘lost-wax casting’, the technique Cellini used to create the Perseus.

The narrative of the piece placing the viewer n the Gorgon’s realm has substantial political and personal meaning to both Cellini and Duke Cosimo I. This is relevant to the placement of the statue, as it stands across from Michelangelo’s David, coined The ‘Pride of Florence’. It could be imagined to the viewer that Cellini’s Medusa has turned David’s face into stone. Just as a new Florence under the régime of Duke Cosimo I has been born – crushing the former Republic of Florence, the creation of a new piece of art, cast of bronze, not sculptured from marble has been presented to all. A new ‘genius’ has attained the impossible; the one casting of metal into such a large and perfect piece of sculpture. Through this, Cosimo I has exhibited his ultimate power, Cellini, therefore, is the ultimate Renaissance artist, undeniably demonstrating his skill, social and cultural importance in his own lifetime.

[1] Gamberini 2016: Introduction

[2] Gardner 1997: 452

[3] Cellini trans. A. MacDonnell 1910: 2

[4] Cellini trans. A. MacDonnell 1910: 2

[5] Cole 1999: 222

[6] Cole 1999: 230

[7] Cole 1999: 220

[8] Cellini trans. A. MacDonnell 1907: 439

Sources: 

Cellini, Benvenuto, ‘Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini: a Florentine artist’, translated by Macdonnell, Anne (London: Dent; New York: Dutton 1907) p402-440

Cellini, B. ‘Memoirs Written by Himself’, trans. A. MacDonnell, (London and New York, Dent and Dutton 1910), Book 1, pp. 406–412 [on the Perseus]

Cole, Michael, ‘Cellini’s Blood’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 81, No. 2, (CAA 1999) p215-235, JSTOR

Gamberini, Diletta ‘Benvenuto Cellini’, Oxford Bibliographies <https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0336.xml> (accessed 10 October 2018)

Gardner, C. Victoria, ‘Homines non nascuntur, sed figuntur: Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita and Self-Presentation of the Renaissance Artist’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (The Sixteenth Century Journal 1997), p447-465

Gaylard, Susan, ‘Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Image in Renaissance Italy’, (University of Virginia Press 2013 ProQuest Ebook Central)

Hunt, Jocelyn, ‘The Renaissance’, (Routledge 1999 ProQuest Ebook Central)

Joost, Keizer, ‘Style and Authorship in Early Italian Renaissance Art’, (academia.edu 2015) <https://www.academia.edu/18133576/_Style_and_Authorship_in_Early_Italian_Renaissance_Art_Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Kunstgeschichte_78_2015_370-85> (accessed 31 October 2018)

Pyle, Gerald Jackson. ‘Benvenuto Cellini: The Man and His Art.’ The Sewanee Review, Vol. 21, No. 2, (The Johns Hopkins University Press 1913), p235–242, JSTOR

Note: I have amended the essay slightly from feedback given by course tutors.