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The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

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Title: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Author: Benvenuto Cellini

Translator: John Addington Symonds


        
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4028]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4028

Credits: This etext was produced by Norman Wolcott.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENVENUTO CELLINI ***
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This etext was produced by Norman Wolcott.







Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

[Redactor’s Note: This version of the Autobiography, one of the most
famous of all time, was translated by John Addington Symonds
(1840-1893). Cellini lived from 1500-1571. This version is in ISO Latin1
with 8 bit accents, and is also supplied in a single file HTML version.]

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The Autobiography of
Benvenuto Cellini

Translated By
John Addington Symonds

With Introduction and Notes
Volume 31

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Introductory Sonnet

     THIS tale of my sore-troubled life I write,
        To thank the God of nature, who conveyed
        My soul to me, and with such care hath stayed
        That divers noble deeds I’ve brought to light.
     ‘Twas He subdued my cruel fortune’s spite:
        Life glory virtue measureless hath made
        Such grace worth beauty be through me displayed
        That few can rival, none surpass me quite.
     Only it grieves me when I understand
        What precious time in vanity I’ve spent-
        The wind it beareth man’s frail thoughts away.
     Yet, since remorse avails not, I’m content,
        As erst I came, WELCOME to go one day,
        Here in the Flower of this fair Tuscan land.

Introductory Note

AMONG the vast number of men who have thought fit to write down the
history of their own lives, three or four have achieved masterpieces
which stand out preeminently: Saint Augustine in his “Confessions,”
Samuel Pepys in his “Diary,” Rousseau in his “Confessions.” It is among
these extraordinary documents, and unsurpassed by any of them, that the
autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini takes its place.

The “Life” of himself which Cellini wrote was due to other motives than
those which produced its chief competitors for first place in its class.
St. Augustine’s aim was religious and didactic, Pepys noted down in his
diary the daily events of his life for his sole satisfaction and with no
intention that any one should read the cipher in which they were
recorded. But Cellini wrote that the world might know, after he was
dead, what a fellow he had been; what great things he had attempted, and
against what odds he had carried them through. “All men,” he held,
“whatever be their condition, who have done anything of merit, or which
verily has a semblance of merit, if so be they are men of truth and good
repute, should write the tale of their life with their own hand.” That
he had done many things of merit, he had no manner of doubt. His repute
was great in his day, and perhaps good in the sense in which he meant
goodness; as to whether he was a man of truth, there is still dispute
among scholars. Of some misrepresentations, some suppressions of
damaging facts, there seems to be evidence only too good-a man with
Cellini’s passion for proving himself in the right could hardly have
avoided being guilty of such-; but of the general trustworthiness of his
record, of the kind of man he was and the kind of life he led, there is
no reasonable doubt.

The period covered by the autobiography is from Cellini’s birth in 1500
to 1562; the scene is mainly in Italy and France. Of the great events of
the time, the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, of
the strife of Pope and Emperor and King, we get only glimpses. The
leaders in these events appear in the foreground of the picture only
when they come into personal relations with the hero; and then not
mainly as statesmen or warriors, but as connoisseurs and patrons of art.
Such an event as the Sack of Rome is described because Benvenuto himself
fought in it.

Much more complete is the view he gives of the artistic life of the
time. It was the age of Michelangelo, and in the throng of great artists
which then filled the Italian cities, Cellini was no inconsiderable
figure. Michelangelo himself he knew and adored. Nowhere can we gain a
better idea than in this book of the passionate enthusiasm for the
creation of beauty which has bestowed upon the Italy of the Renaissance
its greatest glory.

Very vivid, too, is the impression we receive of the social life of the
sixteenth century; of its violence and licentiousness, of its zeal for
fine craftsmanship, of its abounding vitality, its versatility and its
idealism. For Cellini himself is an epitome of that century. This man
who tells here the story of his life was a murderer and a braggart,
insolent, sensual, inordinately proud and passionate; but he was also a
worker in gold and silver, rejoicing in delicate chasing and subtle
modelling of precious surfaces; a sculptor and a musician; and, as all
who read his book must testify, a great master of narrative. Keen as was
Benvenuto’s interest in himself, and much as he loved to dwell on the
splendor of his exploits and achievements, he had little idea that
centuries after his death he would live again, less by his “Perseus” and
his goldsmith’s work than by the book which he dictated casually to a
lad of fourteen, while he went about his work.

The autobiography was composed between 1558 and 1566, but it brings the
record down only to 1562. The remainder of Cellini’s life seems to have
been somewhat more peaceful. In 1565 he married Piera de Salvadore
Parigi, a servant who had nursed him when he was sick; and in the care
of his children, as earlier of his sister and nieces, he showed more
tenderness than might have been expected from a man of his boisterous
nature. He died at Florence, May 13, 1571, and was buried in The Church
of the Annunziata in that city.

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Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

I

ALL men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of
excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they
are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own
hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have
passed the age of forty. This duty occurs to my own mind now that I am
travelling beyond the term of fifty-eight years, and am in Florence, the
city of my birth. Many untoward things can I remember, such as happen to
all who live upon our earth; and from those adversities I am now more
free than at any previous period of my career-nay, it seems to me that I
enjoy greater content of soul and health of body than ever I did in
bygone years. I can also bring to mind some pleasant goods and some
inestimable evils, which, when I turn my thoughts backward, strike
terror in me, and astonishment that I should have reached this age of
fifty-eight, wherein, thanks be to God, I am still travelling
prosperously forward.

II

IT is true that men who have laboured with some show of excellence, have
already given knowledge of themselves to the world; and this alone ought
to suffice them; I mean the fact that they have proved their manhood and
achieved renown. Yet one must needs live like others; and so in a work
like this there will always be found occasion for natural bragging,
which is of divers kinds, and the first is that a man should let others
know he draws his lineage from persons of worth and most ancient origin.

I am called Benvenuto Cellini, son of Maestro Giovanni, son of Andrea,
son of Cristofano Cellini; my mother was Madonna Elisabetta, daughter to
Stefano Granacci; both parents citizens of Florence. It is found written
in chronicles made by our ancestors of Florence, men of old time and of
credibility, even as Giovanni Villani writes, that the city of Florence
was evidently built in imitation of the fair city of Rome; and certain
remnants of the Colosseum and the Baths can yet be traced. These things
are near Santa Croce. The Capitol was where is now the Old Market. The
Rotonda is entire, which was made for the temple of Mars, and is now
dedicated to our Saint John. That thus is was, can very well be seen,
and cannot be denied, but the said buildings are much smaller than those
of Rome. He who caused them to built, they say, was Julius Cæsar, in
concert with some noble Romans, who, when Fiesole had been stormed and
taken, raised a city in this place, and each of them took in hand to
erect one of these notable edifices.

Julius Cæsar had among his captains a man of highest rank and valour,
who was called Fiorino of Cellino, which is a village about two miles
distant from Monte Fiascone. Now this Fiorino took up his quarters under
the hill of Fiesole, on the ground where Florence now stands, in order
to be near the river Arno, and for the convenience of the troops. All
those soldiers and others who had to do with the said captain, used then
to say: “Let us go to Fiorenze;” as well because the said captain was
called Fiorino, as also because the place he had chosen for his quarters
was by nature very rich in flowers. Upon the foundation of the city,
therefore, since this name struck Julius Cæsar as being fair and apt,
and given by circumstance, and seeing furthermore that flowers
themselves bring good augury, he appointed the name of Florence for the
town. He wished besides to pay his valiant captain this compliment; and
he loved him all the more for having drawn him from a very humble place,
and for the reason that so excellent a man was a creature of his own.
The name that learned inventors and investigators of such etymologies
adduce, as that Florence is flowing at the Arno, cannot hold; seeing
that Rome is flowing at the Tiber, Ferrara is flowing at the Po, Lyons
is flowing at the Saone, Paris is flowing at the Seine, and yet the
names of all these towns are different, and have come to them by other
ways. [1]

Thus then we find; and thus we believe that we are descended from a man
of worth. Furthermore, we find that there are Cellinis of our stock in
Ravenna, that most ancient town of Italy, where too are plenty of gentle
folk. In Pisa also there are some, and I have discovered them in many
parts of Christendom; and in this state also the breed exists, men
devoted to the profession of arms; for not many years ago a young man,
called Luca Cellini, a beardless youth, fought with a soldier of
experience and a most valorous man, named Francesco da Vicorati, who had
frequently fought before in single combat. This Luca, by his own valour,
with sword in hand, overcame and slew him, with such bravery and
stoutness that he moved the folk to wonder, who were expecting quite the
contrary issue; so that I glory in tracing my descent from men of valour.

As for the trifling honours which I have gained for my house, under the
well-known conditions of our present ways of living, and by means of my
art, albeit the same are matters of no great moment, I will relate these
in their proper time and place, taking much more pride in having been
born humble and having laid some honourable foundation for my family,
than if I had been born of great lineage and had stained or overclouded
that by my base qualities. So then I will make a beginning by saying how
it pleased God I should be born.

Note 1. He is alluding to the name 'Fluenzia,' which some antiquaries of
his day thought to have been the earliest name of the city, derived from
its being near 'Arno Fluente.' I have translated the word 'fluente' in
the text literally, though of course it signifies “situated on a flowing
river.” I need not call attention to the apocryphal nature of Cellini’s
own derivation from the name of his supposed ancestor.

III

MY ancestors dwelt in Val d’ Ambra, where they owned large estates, and
lived like little lords, in retirement, however, on account of the then
contending factions. They were all men devoted to arms and of notable
bravery. In that time one of their sons, the younger, who was called
Cristofano, roused a great feud with certain of their friends and
neighbours. Now the heads of the families on both sides took part in it,
and the fire kindled seemed to them so threatening that their houses
were like to perish utterly; the elders upon this consideration, in
concert with my own ancestors, removed Cristofano; and the other youth
with whom the quarrel began was also sent away. They sent their young
man to Siena. Our folk sent Cristofano to Florence; and there they
bought for him a little house in Via Chiara, close to the convent of S.
Orsola, and they also purchased for him some very good property near the
Ponte a Rifredi. The said Cristofano took wife in Florence, and had sons
and daughters; and when all the daughters had been portioned off, the
sons, after their father’s death, divided what remained. The house in
Via Chiara with some other trifles fell to the share of one of the said
sons, who had the name of Andrea. He also took wife, and had four male
children. The first was called Girolamo, the second Bartolommeo, the
third Giovanni, who was afterwards my father, and the fourth Francesco.
This Andrea Cellini was very well versed in architecture, as it was then
practised, and lived by it as his trade. Giovanni, who was my father,
paid more attention to it than any of the other brothers. And since
Vitruvius says, amongst other things, that one who wishes to practise
that art well must have something of music and good drawing, Giovanni,
when he had mastered drawing, began to turn his mind to music, and
together with the theory learned to play most excellently on the viol
and the flute; and being a person of studious habits, he left his home
but seldom.

They had for neighbour in the next house a man called Stefano Granacci,
who had several daughters, all of them of remarkable beauty. As it
pleased God, Giovanni noticed one of these girls who was named
Elisabetta; and she found such favour with him that he asked her in
marriage. The fathers of both of them being well acquainted through
their close neighbourhood, it was easy to make this match up; and each
thought that he had very well arranged his affairs. First of all the two
good old men agreed upon the marriage; then they began to discuss the
dowry, which led to a certain amount of friendly difference; for Andrea
said to Stefano: “My son Giovanni is the stoutest youth of Florence, and
of all Italy to boot, and if I had wanted earlier to have him married, I
could have procured one of the largest dowries which folk of our rank
get in Florence:” whereupon Stefano answered: “You have a thousand
reasons on your side; but here am I with five daughters and as many
sons, and when my reckoning is made, this is as much as I can possibly
afford.” Giovanni, who had been listening awhile unseen by them,
suddenly broke in and said: “O my father, I have sought and loved that
girl and not their money. Ill luck to those who seek to fill their
pockets by the dowry of their wife! As you have boasted that I am a
fellow of such parts, do you not think that I shall be able to provide
for my wife and satisfy her needs, even if I receive something short of
the portion you would like to get? Now I must make you understand that
the woman is mine, and you may take the dowry for yourself.” At this
Andrea Cellini, who was a man of rather awkward temper, grew a trifle
angry; but after a few days Giovanni took his wife, and never asked for
other portion with her.

They enjoyed their youth and wedded love through eighteen years, always
greatly desiring to be blessed with children. At the end of this time
Giovanni’s wife miscarried of two boys through the unskilfulness of the
doctors. Later on she was again with child, and gave birth to a girl,
whom they called Cosa, after the mother of my father. [1] At the end of
two years she was once more with child; and inasmuch as those longings
to which pregnant women are subject, and to which they pay much
attention, were now exactly the same as those of her former pregnancy,
they made their minds up that she would give birth to a female as
before, and agreed to call the child Reparata, after the mother of my
mother. It happened that she was delivered on a night of All Saints,
following the feast-day, at half-past four precisely, in the year 1500.
[2] The midwife, who knew that they were expecting a girl, after she had
washed the baby and wrapped it in the fairest white linen, came softly
to my father Giovanni and said: “I am bringing you a fine present, such
as you did not anticipate.” My father, who was a true philosopher, was
walking up and down, and answered: “What God gives me is always dear to
me;” and when he opened the swaddling clothes, he saw with his own eyes
the unexpected male child. Joining together the palms of his old hands,
he raised them with his eyes to God, and said “Lord, I thank Thee with
my whole heart; this gift is very dear to me; let him be Welcome.” All
the persons who were there asked him joyfully what name the child should
bear. Giovanni would make no other answer than “Let him be
Welcome-Benvenuto;” [3] and so they resolved, and this name was given me
at Holy Baptism, and by it I still am living with the grace of God.

Note 1. Cosa is Florentine for Niccolòsa.

Note 2. The hour is reckoned, according to the old Italian fashion, from
sunset of one day to sunset of the next-twenty-four hours.

Note 3. Benvenuto means Welcome.

IV

ANDREA CELLINI was yet alive when I was about three years old, and he
had passed his hundredth. One day they had been altering a certain
conduit pertaining to a cistern, and there issued from it a great
scorpion unperceived by them, which crept down from the cistern to the
ground, and slank away beneath a bench. I saw it, and ran up to it, and
laid my hands upon it. It was so big that when I had it in my little
hands, it put out its tail on one side, and on the other thrust forth
both its mouths. [1] They relate that I ran in high joy to my
grandfather, crying out: “Look, grandpapa, at my pretty little crab.”
When he recognised that the creature was a scorpion, he was on the point
of falling dead for the great fear he had and anxiety about me. He
coaxed and entreated me to give it him; but the more he begged, the
tighter I clasped it, crying and saying I would not give it to any one.
My father, who was also in the house, ran up when he heard my screams,
and in his stupefaction could not think how to prevent the venomous
animal from killing me. Just then his eyes chanced to fall upon a pair
of scissors; and so, while soothing and caressing me, he cut its tail
and mouths off. Afterwards, when the great peril had been thus averted,
he took the occurrence for a good augury.

When I was about five years old my father happened to be in a
basement-chamber of our house, where they had been washing, and where a
good fire of oak-logs was still burning; he had a viol in his hand, and
was playing and singing alone beside the fire. The weather was very
cold. Happening to look into the fire, he spied in the middle of those
most burning flames a little creature like a lizard, which was sporting
in the core of the intensest coals. Becoming instantly aware of what the
thing was, he had my sister and me called, and pointing it out to us
children, gave me a great box on the ears, which caused me to howl and
weep with all my might. Then he pacified me good-humouredly, and spoke
as follows: “My dear little boy, I am not striking you for any wrong
that you have done, but only to make you remember that that lizard which
you see in the fire is a salamander, a creature which has never been
seen before by any one of whom we have credible information.” So saying,
he kissed me and gave me some pieces of money.

Note 1. The word is 'bocche,' so I have translated it by 'mouths.' But
Cellini clearly meant the gaping claws of the scorpion.

V

MY father began teaching me to play upon the flute and sing by note; by
notwithstanding I was of that tender age when little children are wont
to take pastime in whistles and such toys, I had an inexpressible
dislike for it, and played and sang only to obey him. My father in those
times fashioned wonderful organs with pipes of wood, spinets the fairest
and most excellent which then could be seen, viols and lutes and harps
of the most beautiful and perfect construction. He was an engineer, and
had marvellous skill in making instruments for lowering bridges and for
working mills, and other machines of that sort. In ivory he was the
first who wrought really well. But after he had fallen in love with the
woman who was destined to become my mother-perhaps what brought them
together was that little flute, to which indeed he paid more attention
than was proper-he was entreated by the fifers of the Signory to play in
their company. Accordingly he did so for some time to amuse himself,
until by constant importunity they induced him to become a member of
their band. Lorenzo de’ Medici and Pietro his son, who had a great
liking for him, perceived later on that he was devoting himself wholly
to the fife, and was neglecting his fine engineering talent and his
beautiful art. [1] So they had him removed from that post. My father
took this very ill, and it seemed to him that they had done him a great
despite. Yet he immediately resumed his art, and fashioned a mirror,
about a cubit in diameter, out of bone and ivory, with figures and
foliage of great finish and grand design. The mirror was in the form of
a wheel. In the middle was the looking-glass; around it were seven
circular pieces, on which were the Seven Virtues, carved and joined of
ivory and black bone. The whole mirror, together with the Virtues, was
placed in equilibrium, so that when the wheel turned, all the Virtues
moved, and they had weights at their feet which kept them upright.
Possessing some acquaintance with the Latin tongue, he put a legend in
Latin round his looking-glass, to this effect-”Whithersoever the wheel
of Fortune turns, Virtue stands firm upon her feet:”

     Rota sum: semper, quoquo me verto, stat Virtus.

A little while after this he obtained his place again among the fifers.
Although some of these things happened before I was born, my familiarity
with them has moved me to set them down here. In those days the
musicians of the Signory were all of them members of the most honourable
trades, and some of them belonged to the greater guilds of silk and
wool; [2] and that was the reason why my father did not disdain to
follow this profession, and his chief desire with regard to me was
always that I should become a great performer on the flute. I for my
part felt never more discontented than when he chose to talk to me about
this scheme, and to tell me that, if I liked, he discerned in me such
aptitudes that I might become the best man in the world.

Note 1. The Medici here mentioned were Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his
son Pietro, who was expelled from Florence in the year 1494. He never
returned, but died in the river Garigliano in 1504.

Note 2. In the Middle Ages the burghers of Florence were divided into
industrial guilds called the Greater and the Lesser Arts. The former
took precedence of the latter, both in political importance and in
social esteem.

VI

AS I have said, my father was the devoted servant and attached friend of
the house of Medici; and when Piero was banished, he entrusted him with
many affairs of the greatest possible importance. Afterwards, when the
magnificent Piero Soderini was elected, and my father continued in his
office of musician, Soderini, perceiving his wonderful talent, began to
employ him in many matters of great importance as an engineer. [1] So
long as Soderini remained in Florence, he showed the utmost good-will to
my father; and in those days, I being still of tender age, my father had
me carried, and made me perform upon the flute; I used to play treble in
concert with the musicians of the palace before the Signory, following
my notes: and a beadle used to carry me upon his shoulders. The
Gonfalonier, that is, Soderini, whom I have already mentioned, took much
pleasure in making me chatter, and gave me comfits, and was wont to say
to my father: “Maestro Giovanni, besides music, teach the boy those
other arts which do you so much honour.” To which my father answered: “I
do not wish him to practise any art but playing and composing; for in
this profession I hope to make him the greatest man of the world, if God
prolongs his life.” To these words one of the old counsellors made
answer: “Ah! Maestro Giovanni, do what the Gonfalonier tells you! for
why should he never become anything more than a good musician?”

Thus some time passed, until the Medici returned. [2] When they arrived,
the Cardinal, who afterwards became Pope Leo, received my father very
kindly. During their exile the scutcheons which were on the palace of
the Medici had had their balls erased, and a great red cross painted
over them, which was the bearing of the Commune. [3] Accordingly, as
soon as they returned, the red cross was scratched out, and on the
scutcheon the red balls and the golden field were painted in again, and
finished with great beauty. My father, who possessed a simple vein of
poetry, instilled in him by nature, together with a certain touch of
prophecy, which was doubtless a divine gift in him, wrote these four
verses under the said arms of the Medici, when they were uncovered to
the view:-

     These arms, which have so long from sight been laid
       Beneath the holy cross, that symbol meek,
       Now lift their glorious glad face, and seek
     With Peter’s sacred cloak to be arrayed.

This epigram was read by all Florence. A few days afterwards Pope Julius
II. died. The Cardinal de’ Medici went to Rome, and was elected Pope
against the expectation of everybody. He reigned as Leo X, that generous
and great soul. My father sent him his four prophetic verses. The Pope
sent to tell him to come to Rome; for this would be to his advantage.
But he had no will to go; and so, in lieu of reward, his place in the
palace was taken from him by Jacopo Salviati, upon that man’s election
as Gonfalonier. [4] This was the reason why I commenced goldsmith; after
which I spent part of my time in learning that art, and part in playing,
much against my will.

Note 1. Piero Soderini was elected Gonfalonier of the Florentine
Republic for life in the year 1502. After nine years of government, he
was banished, and when he died, Machiavelli wrote the famous sneering
epitaph upon him. See J. A. Symonds’ 'Renaissance in Italy,' vol. i. p.
297.

Note 2. This was in 1512, when Lorenzo’s two sons, Giuliano and Giovanni
(afterwards Pope Leo X), came back through the aid of a Spanish army,
after the great battle at Ravenna.

Note 3. The Medicean arms were “or, six pellets gules, three, two, and
one.” The Florentine Commune bore, “argent a cross gules.”

Note 4. Cellini makes a mistake here. Salviati married a daughter of
Lorenzo de’ Medici, and obtained great influence in Florence; but we
have no record of his appointment to the office of Gonfalonier.

VII

WHEN my father spoke to me in the way I have above described, I
entreated him to let me draw a certain fixed number of hours in the day;
all the rest of my time I would give to music, only with the view of
satisfying his desire. Upon this he said to me: “So then, you take no
pleasure in playing?” To which I answered, “No;” because that art seemed
too base in comparison with what I had in my own mind. My good father,
driven to despair by this fixed idea of mine, placed me in the workshop
of Cavaliere Bandinello’s father, who was called Michel Agnolo, a
goldsmith from Pinzi di Monte, and a master excellent in that craft. [1]
He had no distinction of birth whatever, but was the son of a
charcoal-seller. This is no blame to Bandinello, who has founded the
honour of the family-if only he had done so honestly! However that may
be, I have no cause now to talk about him. After I had stayed there some
days, my father took me away from Michel Agnolo, finding himself unable
to live without having me always under his eyes. Accordingly, much to my
discontent, I remained at music till I reached the age of fifteen. If I
were to describe all the wonderful things that happened to me up to that
time, and all the great dangers to my own life which I ran, I should
astound my readers; but, in order to avoid prolixity, and having very
much to relate, I will omit these incidents.

When I reached the age of fifteen, I put myself, against my father’s
will, to the goldsmith’s trade with a man called Antonio, son of Sandro,
known commonly as Marcone the goldsmith. He was a most excellent
craftsman and a very good fellow to boot, high-spirited and frank in all
his ways. My father would not let him give me wages like the other
apprentices; for having taken up the study of this art to please myself,
he wished me to indulge my whim for drawing to the full. I did so
willingly enough; and that honest master of mine took marvellous delight
in my performances. He had an only son, a bastard, to whom he often gave
his orders, in order to spare me. My liking for the art was so great,
or, I may truly say, my natural bias, both one and the other, that in a
few months I caught up the good, nay, the best young craftsmen in our
business, and began to reap the fruits of my labours. I did not,
however, neglect to gratify my good father from time to time by playing
on the flute or cornet. Each time he heard me, I used to make his tears
fall accompanied with deep-drawn sighs of satisfaction. My filial piety
often made me give him that contentment, and induce me to pretend that I
enjoyed the music too.

Note 1. Baccio Bandinello, the sculptor, and a great rival of Cellini’s,
as will appear in the ensuing pages, was born in 1487, and received the
honour of knighthood from Clement VII and Charles V. Posterity has
confirmed Cellini’s opinion of Bandinello as an artist; for his works
are coarse, pretentious, and incapable of giving pleasure to any person
of refined intelligence.

VIII

AT that time I had a brother, younger by two years, a youth of extreme
boldness and fierce temper. He afterwards became one of the great
soldiers in the school of that marvellous general Giovannino de’ Medici,
father of Duke Cosimo. [1] The boy was about fourteen, and I two years
older. One Sunday evening, just before nightfall, he happened to find
himself between the gate San Gallo and the Porta a Pinti; in this
quarter he came to duel with a young fellow of twenty or thereabouts.
They both had swords; and my brother dealt so valiantly that, after
having badly wounded him, he was upon the point of following up his
advantage. There was a great crowd of people present, among whom were
many of the adversary’s kinsfolk. Seeing that the thing was going ill
for their own man, they put hand to their slings, a stone from one of
which hit my poor brother in the head. He fell to the ground at once in
a dead faint. It so chanced that I had been upon the spot alone, and
without arms; and I had done my best to get my brother out of the fray
by calling to him: “Make off; you have done enough.” Meanwhile, as luck
would have it, he fell, as I have said, half dead to earth. I ran up at
once, seized his sword, and stood in front of him, bearing the brunt of
several rapiers and a shower of stones. I never left his side until some
brave soldiers came from the gate San Gallo and rescued me from the
raging crowd; they marvelled much, the while, to find such valour in so
young a boy.

Then I carried my brother home for dead, and it was only with great
difficulty that he came to himself again. When he was cured, the Eight,
who had already condemned out adversaries and banished them for a term
of years, sent us also into exile for six months at a distance of ten
miles from Florence. [2] I said to my brother: “Come along with me;” and
so we took leave of our poor father; and instead of giving us money, for
he had none, he bestowed on us his blessing. I went to Siena, wishing to
look up a certain worthy man called Maestro Francesco Castoro. On
another occasion, when I had run away from my father, I went to this
good man, and stayed some time with him, working at the goldsmith’s
trade until my father sent for me back. Francesco, when I reached him,
recognised me at once, and gave me work to do While thus occupied, he
placed a house at my disposal for the whole time of my sojourn in Siena.
Into this I moved, together with my brother, and applied myself to
labour for the space of several months. My brother had acquired the
rudiments of Latin, but was still so young that he could not yet relish
the taste of virtuous employment, but passed his time in dissipation,

Note 1. Cellini refers to the famous Giovanni delle Bande Nere, who was
killed in an engagement in Lombardy in November 1526, by the Imperialist
troops marching to the sack of Rome. His son Cosimo, after the murder of
Duke Alessandro, established the second Medicean dynasty in Florence.

Note 2. The Eight, or Gli Otto, were a magistracy in Florence with
cognizance of matters affecting the internal peace of the city.

IX

THE CARDINAL DE’ MEDICI, who afterwards became Pope Clement VII., had us
recalled to Florence at the entreaty of my father. [1] A certain pupil
of my father’s, moved by his own bad nature, suggested to the Cardinal
that he ought to send me to Bologna, in order to learn to play well from
a great master there. The name of this master was Antonio, and he was in
truth a worthy man in the musician’s art. The Cardinal said to my father
that, if he sent me there he would give me letters of recommendation and
support. My father, dying with joy at such an opportunity, sent me off;
and I being eager to see the world, went with good grace.

When I reached Bologna, I put myself under a certain Maestro Ercole del
Piffero, and began to earn something by my trade. In the meantime I used
to go every day to take my music lesson, and in a few weeks made
considerable progress in that accursed art. However I made still greater
in my trade of goldsmith; for the Cardinal having given me no
assistance, I went to live with a Bolognese illuminator who was called
Scipione Cavalletti (his house was in the street of our Lady del
Baraccan); and while there I devoted myself to drawing and working for
one Graziadio, a Jew, with whom I earned considerably.

At the end of six months I returned to Florence, where that fellow
Pierino, who had been my father’s pupil, was greatly mortified by my
return. To please my father, I went to his house and played the cornet
and the flute with one of his brothers, who was named Girolamo, several
years younger than the said Piero, a very worthy young man, and quite
the contrary of his brother. On one of those days my father came to
Piero’s house to hear us play, and in ecstasy at my performance
exclaimed: “I shall yet make you a marvellous musician against the will
of all or any one who may desire to prevent me.” To this Piero answered,
and spoke the truth: “Your Benvenuto will get much more honour and
profit if he devotes himself to the goldsmiths trade than to this
piping.” These words made my father angry, seeing that I too had the
same opinion as Piero, that he flew into a rage and cried out at him:
“Well did I know that it was you, you who put obstacles in the way of my
cherished wish; you are the man who had me ousted from my place at the
palace, paying me back with that black ingratitude which is the usual
recompense of great benefits. I got you promoted, and you have got me
cashiered; I taught you to play with all the little art you have, and
you are preventing my son from obeying me; but bear in mind these words
of prophecy: not years or months, I say, but only a few weeks will pass
before this dirty ingratitude of yours shall plunge you into ruin.” To
these words answered Pierino and said: “Maestro Giovanni, the majority
of men, when they grow old, go mad at the same time; and this has
happened to you. I am not astonished at it, because most liberally have
you squandered all your property, without reflecting that your children
had need of it. I mind to do just the opposite, and to leave my children
so much that they shall be able to succour yours.” To this my father
answered: “No bad tree ever bore good fruit; quite the contrary; and I
tell you further that you are bad, and that your children will be mad
and paupers, and will cringe for alms to my virtuous and wealthy sons.”
Thereupon we left the house, muttering words of anger on both sides. I
had taken my father’s part; and when we stepped into the street
together, I told him I was quite ready to take vengeance for the insults
heaped on him by that scoundrel, provided he permit me to give myself up
to the art of design. He answered: “My dear son, I too in my time was a
good draughtsman; but for recreation, after such stupendous labours, and
for the love of me who am your father, who begat you and brought you up
and implanted so many honourable talents in you, for the sake of
recreation, I say, will not you promise sometimes to take in hand your
flute and that seductive cornet, and to play upon them to your heart’s
content, inviting the delight of music?” I promised I would do so, and
very willingly for his love’s sake. Then my good father said that such
excellent parts as I possessed would be the greatest vengeance I could
take for the insults of his enemies.

Not a whole month had been completed after this scene before the man
Pierino happened to be building a vault in a house of his, which he had
in the Via dello Studio; and being one day in a ground-floor room above
the vault which he was making, together with much company around him, he
fell to talking about his old master, my father. While repeating the
words which he had said to him concerning his ruin, no sooner had they
escaped his lips than the floor where he was standing (either because
the vault had been badly built, or rather through the sheer mightiness
of God, who does not always pay on Saturday) suddenly gave way. Some of
the stones and bricks of the vault, which fell with him, broke both his
legs. The friends who were with him, remaining on the border of the
broken vault took no harm, but were astounded and full of wonder,
especially because of the prophecy which he had just contemptuously
repeated to them. When my father heard of this, he took his sword, and
went to see the man. There, in the presence of his father, who was
called Niccolaio da Volterra, a trumpeter of the Signory, he said, “O
Piero, my dear pupil, I am sorely grieved at your mischance; but if you
remember it was only a short time ago that I warned you of it; and as
much as I then said will come to happen between your children and mine.”
Shortly afterwards, the ungrateful Piero died of that illness. He left a
wife of bad character and one son, who after the lapse of some years
came to me to beg for alms in Rome. I gave him something, as well
because it is my nature to be charitable, as also because I recalled
with tears the happy state which Pierino held when my father spake those
words of prophecy, namely, that Pierino’s children should live to crave
succour from his own virtuous sons. Of this perhaps enough is now said;
but let none ever laugh at the prognostications of any worthy man whom
he has wrongfully insulted; because it is not he who speaks, nay, but
the very voice of God through him.

Note 1. This Cardinal and Pope was Giulio, a natural son of Giuliano,
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s brother, who had been killed in the Pazzi
conspiracy, year 1478. Giulio lived to become Pope Clement VII., to
suffer the sack of Rome in 1527, and to make the concordat with Charles
V. at Bologna in 1529-30, which settled for three centuries the destiny
of Italy. We shall hear much more of him from Cellini in the course of
this narrative.

X

ALL this while I worked as a goldsmith, and was able to assist my good
father. His other son, my brother Cecchino, had, as I said before, been
instructed in the rudiments of Latin letters. It was our father’s wish
to make me, the elder, a great musician and composer, and him, the
younger, a great and learned jurist. He could not, however, put force
upon the inclinations of our nature, which directed me to the arts of
design, and my brother, who had a fine and graceful person, to the
profession of arms. Cecchino, being still quite a lad, was returning
from his first lesson in the school of the stupendous Giovannino de’
Medici. On the day when he reached home, I happened to be absent; and
he, being in want of proper clothes, sought out our sisters, who,
unknown to my father, gave him a cloak and doublet of mine, both new and
of good quality. I ought to say that, beside the aid I gave my father
and my excellent and honest sisters, I had bought those handsome clothes
out of my own savings. When I found I had been cheated, and my clothes
taken from me, and my brother from whom I should have recovered them was
gone, I asked my father why he suffered so great a wrong to be done me,
seeing that I was always ready to assist him. He replied that I was his
good son, but that the other, whom he thought to have lost, had been
found again; also that it was a duty, nay, a precept from God Himself,
that he who hath should give to him who hath not; and that for his sake
I ought to bear this injustice, for God would increase me in all good
things. I, like a youth without experience, retorted on my poor
afflicted parent; and taking the miserable remnants of my clothes and
money, went toward a gate of the city. As I did not know which gate
would start me on the road to Rome, I arrived at Lucca, and from Lucca
reached Pisa.

When I came to Pisa (I was about sixteen years of age at the time), I
stopped near the middle bridge, by what is called the Fish-stone, at the
shop of a goldsmith, and began attentively to watch what the master was
about. [1] He asked me who I was, and what was my profession. I told him
that I worked a little in the same trade as his own. This worthy man
bade me come into his shop, and at once gave me work to do, and spoke as
follows: “Your good appearance makes me believe you are a decent honest
youth.” Then he told me out gold, silver, and gems; and when the first
day’s work was finished, he took me in the evening to his house, where
he dwelt respectably with his handsome wife and children. Thinking of
the grief which my good father might be feeling for me, I wrote him that
I was sojourning with a very excellent and honest man, called Maestro
Ulivieri della Chiostra, and was working with him at many good things of
beauty and importance. I bade him be of good cheer, for that I was bent
on learning, and hoped by my acquirements to bring him back both profit
and honour before long. My good father answered the letter at once in
words like these: “My son, the love I bear you is so great, that if it
were not for the honour of our family, which above all things I regard,
I should immediately have set off for you; for indeed it seems like
being without the light of my eyes, when I do not see you daily, as I
used to do. I will make it my business to complete the training of my
household up to virtuous honesty; do you make it yours to acquire
excellence in your art; and I only wish you to remember these four
simple words, obey them, and never let them escape your memory:

     In whatever house you be,
     Steal not, and live honestly.”

Note 1. The Fish-stone, or Pietra del Pesce, was the market on the quay
where the fish brought from the sea up the Arno to Pisa used to be sold.

XI

THIS letter fell into the hands of my master Ulivieri, and he read it
unknown to me. Afterwards he avowed that he had read it, and added: “So
then, my Benvenuto, your good looks did not deceive me, as a letter from
your father which has come into my hands gives me assurance, which
proves him to be a man of notable honesty and worth. Consider yourself
then to be at home here, and as though in your own father’s house.”

While I stayed at Pisa, I went to see the Campo Santo, and there I found
many beautiful fragments of antiquity, that is to say, marble
sarcophagi. In other parts of Pisa also I saw many antique objects,
which I diligently studied whenever I had days or hours free from the
labour of the workshop. My master, who took pleasure in coming to visit
me in the little room which he had allotted me, observing that I spent
all my time in studious occupations, began to love me like a father. I
made great progress in the one year that I stayed there, and completed
several fine and valuable things in gold and silver, which inspired me
with a resolute ambition to advance in my art.

My father, in the meanwhile, kept writing piteous entreaties that I
should return to him; and in every letter bade me not to lose the music
he had taught me with such trouble. On this, I suddenly gave up all wish
to go back to him; so much did I hate that accursed music; and I felt as
though of a truth I were in paradise the whole year I stayed at Pisa,
where I never played the flute.

At the end of the year my master Ulivieri had occasion to go to
Florence, in order to sell certain gold and silver sweepings which he
had; [1] and inasmuch as the bad air of Pisa had given me a touch of
fever, I went with the fever hanging still about me, in my master’s
company, back to Florence. There my father received him most
affectionately, and lovingly prayed him, unknown by me, not to insist on
taking me again to Pisa. I was ill about two months, during which time
my father had me most kindly treated and cured, always repeating that it
seemed to him a thousand years till I got well again, in order that he
might hear me play a little. But when he talked to me of music, with his
fingers on my pulse, seeing he had some acquaintance with medicine and
Latin learning, he felt it change so much if he approached that topic,
that he was often dismayed and left my side in tears. When I perceived
how greatly he was disappointed, I bade one of my sisters bring me a
flute; for though the fever never left me, that instrument is so easy
that it did not hurt me to play upon it; and I used it with such
dexterity of hand and tongue that my father coming suddenly upon me,
blessed me a thousand times, exclaiming that while I was away from him I
had made great progress, as he thought; and he begged me to go forwards,
and not to sacrifice so fine an accomplishment.

Note 1. I have translated 'spazzature' by 'sweepings.' It means all
refuse of the precious metals left in goldsmith’s trays.

XII

WHEN I had recovered my health, I returned to my old friend Marcone, the
worthy goldsmith, who put me in the way of earning money, with which I
helped my father and our household. About that time there came to
Florence a sculptor named Piero Torrigiani; [1] he arrived from England,
where he had resided many years; and being intimate with my master, he
daily visited his house; and when he saw my drawings and the things
which I was making, he said: “I have come to Florence to enlist as many
young men as I can; for I have undertaken to execute a great work of my
king, and want some of my own Florentines to help me. Now your method of
working and your designs are worthy rather of a sculptor than a
goldsmith; and since I have to turn out a great piece of bronze, I will
at the same time turn you into a rich and able artist.” This man had a
splendid person and a most arrogant spirit, with the air of a great
soldier more than a sculptor, especially in regard to his vehement
gestures and his resonant voice, together with a habit he had of
knitting his brows, enough to frighten any man of courage. He kept
talking every day about his gallant feats among those beasts of
Englishmen.

In course of conversation he happened to mention Michel Agnolo
Buonarroti, led thereto by a drawing I had made from a cartoon of that
divinest painter. [2] This cartoon was the first masterpiece which
Michel Agnolo exhibited, in proof of his stupendous talents. He produced
it in competition with another painter, Lionardo da Vinci, who also made
a cartoon; and both were intended for the council-hall in the palace of
the Signory. They represented the taking of Pisa by the Florentines; and
our admirable Lionardo had chosen to depict a battle of horses, with the
capture of some standards, in as divine a style as could possibly be
imagined. Michel Agnolo in his cartoon portrayed a number of
foot-soldiers, who, the season being summer, had gone to bathe in Arno.
He drew them at the very moment the alarm is sounded, and the men all
naked run to arms; so splendid in their action that nothing survives of
ancient or of modern art which touches the same lofty point of
excellence; and as I have already said, the design of the great Lionardo
was itself most admirably beautiful. These two cartoons stood, one in
the palace of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope. So long as
they remained intact, they were the school of the world. Though the
divine Michel Agnolo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope
Julius, [3] he never rose half-way to the same pitch of power; his
genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies.

Note 1. Torrigiani worked in fact for Henry VIII., and his monument to
Henry VII. still exists in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey. From
England he went to Spain, where he modelled a statue of the Virgin for a
great nobleman. Not receiving the pay he expected, he broke his work to
pieces; for which act of sacrilege the Inquisition sent him to prison,
where he starved himself to death in 1522. Such at least is the legend
of his end.

Note 2. The cartoons to which Cellini here alludes were made by Michel
Angelo and Lionardo for the decoration of the Sala del Gran Consiglio in
the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. Only the shadows of them remain to this
day; a part of Michel Angelo’s, engraved by Schiavonetti, and a
transcript by Rubens from Lionardo’s, called the Battle of the Standard.

Note 3. The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

XIII

NOW let us return to Piero Torrigiani, who, with my drawing in his hand,
spoke as follows: “This Buonarroti and I used, when we were boys, to go
into the Church of the Carmine, to learn drawing from the chapel of
Masaccio. [1] It was Buonarroti’s habit to banter all who were drawing
there; and one day, among others, when he was annoying me, I got more
angry than usual, and clenching my fist, gave him such a blow on the
nose, that I felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my
knuckles; and this mark of mine he will carry with him to the grave.”
[2] These words begat in me such hatred of the man, since I was always
gazing at the masterpieces of the divine Michel Agnolo, that although I
felt a wish to go with him to England, I now could never bear the sight
of him.

All the while I was at Florence, I studied the noble manner of Michel
Agnolo, and from this I have never deviated. About that time I
contracted a close and familiar friendship with an amiable lad of my own
age, who was also in the goldsmith’s trade. He was called Francesco, son
of Filippo, and grandson of Fra Lippo Lippi, that most excellent
painter. [3] Through intercourse together, such love grew up between us
that, day or night, we never stayed apart. The house where he lived was
still full of the fine studies which his father had made, bound up in
several books of drawings by his hand, and taken from the best
antiquities of Rome. The sight of these things filled me with passionate
enthusiasm; and for two years or thereabouts we lived in intimacy. At
that time I fashioned a silver bas-relief of the size of a little
child’s hand. It was intended for the clasp to a man’s belt; for they
were then worn as large as that. I carved on it a knot of leaves in the
antique style, with figures of children and other masks of great beauty.
This piece I made in the workshop of one Francesco Salimbene; and on its
being exhibited to the trade, the goldsmiths praised me as the best
young craftsman of their art.

There was one Giovan Battista, surnamed Il Tasso, a wood-carver,
precisely of my own age, who one day said to me that if I was willing to
go to Rome, he should be glad to join me. [4] Now we had this
conversation together immediately after dinner; and I being angry with
my father for the same old reason of the music, said to Tasso: “You are
a fellow of words, not deeds.” He answered: “I too have come to anger
with my mother; and if I had cash enough to take me to Rome, I would not
turn back to lock the door of that wretched little workshop I call
mine.” To these words I replied that if that was all that kept him in
Florence I had money enough in my pockets to bring us both to Rome.
Talking thus and walking onwards, we found ourselves at the gate San
Piero Gattolini without noticing that we had got there; whereupon I
said: “Friend Tasso, this is God’s doing that we have reached this gate
without either you or me noticing that we were there; and now that I am
here, it seems to me that I have finished half the journey.” And so,
being of one accord, we pursued our way together, saying, “Oh, what will
our old folks say this evening?” We then made an agreement not to think
more about them till we reached Rome. So we tied our aprons behind our
backs, and trudged almost in silence to Siena. When we arrived at Siena,
Tasso said (for he had hurt his feet) that he would not go farther, and
asked me to lend him money to get back. I made answer: “I should not
have enough left to go forward; you ought indeed to have thought of this
on leaving Florence; and if it is because of your feet that you shirk
the journey, we will find a return horse for Rome, which will deprive
you of the excuse.” Accordingly I hired a horse; and seeing that he did
not answer, I took my way toward the gate of Rome. When he knew that I
was firmly resolved to go, muttering between his teeth, and limping as
well as he could, he came on behind me very slowly and at a great
distance. On reaching the gate, I felt pity for my comrade, and waited
for him, and took him on the crupper, saying: “What would our friends
speak of us to-morrow, if, having left for Rome, we had not pluck to get
beyond Siena?” Then the good Tasso said I spoke the truth; and as he was
a pleasant fellow, he began to laugh and sing; and in this way, always
singing and laughing, we travelled the whole way to Rome. I had just
nineteen years then, and so had the century.

When we reached Rome, I put myself under a master who was known as Il
Firenzuola. His name was Giovanni, and he came from Firenzuola in
Lombardy, a most able craftsman in large vases and big plate of that
kind. I showed him part of the model for the clasp which I had made in
Florence at Salimbene’s. It pleased him exceedingly; and turning to one
of his journeymen, a Florentine called Giannotto Giannotti, who had been
several years with him, he spoke as follows: “This fellow is one of the
Florentines who know something, and you are one of those who know
nothing.” Then I recognised the man, and turned to speak with him; for
before he went to Rome, we often went to draw together, and had been
very intimate comrades. He was so put out by the words his master flung
at him, that he said he did not recognise me or know who I was;
whereupon I got angry, and cried out: “O Giannotto, you who were once my
friend-for have we not been together in such and such places, and drawn,
and ate, and drunk, and slept in company at your house in the country? I
don’t want you to bear witness on my behalf to this worthy man, your
master, because I hope my hands are such that without aid from you they
will declare what sort of a fellow I am.”

Note 1. The Chapel of the Carmine, painted in fresco by Masaccio and
some other artist, possibly Filippino Lippi, is still the most important
monument of Florentine art surviving from the period preceding Raphael.

Note 2. The profile portraits of Michel Angelo Buonarroti confirm this
story. They show the bridge of his nose bent in an angle, as though it
had been broken.

Note 3. Fra Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite monk, whose frescoes at Prato
and Spoleta and oil-paintings in Florence and elsewhere are among the
most genial works of the pre-Raphaelite Renaissance. Vasari narrates his
love-adventures with Lucrezia Buti, and Robert Browning has drawn a
clever portrait of him in his “Men and Women.” His son, Filippo or
Filippino, was also an able painter, some of whose best work survives in
the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella at Florence, and in the Church of
S. Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome.

Note 4. Tasso was an able artist, mentioned both by Vasari and Pietro
Aretino. He stood high in the favour of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, who took
his opinion on the work of other craftsmen.

XIV

WHEN I had thus spoken, Firenzuola, who was a man of hot spirit and
brave, turned to Giannotto, and said to him: “You vile rascal, aren’t
you ashamed to treat a man who has been so intimate a comrade with you
in this way?” And with the same movement of quick feeling, he faced
round and said to me: “Welcome to my workshop; and do as you have
promised; let your hands declare what man you are.”

He gave me a very fine piece of silver plate to work on for a cardinal.
It was a little oblong box, copied from the porphyry sarcophagus before
the door of the Rotonda. Beside what I copied, I enriched it with so
many elegant masks of my invention, that my master went about showing it
through the art, and boasting that so good a piece of work had been
turned out from his shop. [1] It was about half a cubit in size, and was
so constructed as to serve for a salt-cellar at table. This was the
first earning that I touched at Rome, and part of it I sent to assist my
good father; the rest I kept for my own use, living upon it while I went
about studying the antiquities of Rome, until my money failed, and I had
to return to the shop for work. Battista del Tasso, my comrade, did not
stay long in Rome, but went back to Florence.

After undertaking some new commissions, I took it into my head, as soon
as I had finished them, to change my master; I had indeed been worried
into doing so by a certain Milanese, called Pagolo Arsago. [2] My first
master, Firenzuola, had a great quarrel about this with Arsago, and
abused him in my presence; whereupon I took up speech in defence of my
new master. I said that I was born free, and free I meant to live, and
that there was no reason to complain of him, far less of me, since some
few crowns of wages were still due to me; also that I chose to go, like
a free journeyman, where it pleased me, knowing I did wrong to no man.
My new master then put in with his excuses, saying that he had not asked
me to come, and that I should gratify him by returning with Firenzuola.
To this I replied that I was not aware of wronging the latter in any
way, and as I had completed his commissions, I chose to be my own master
and not the man of others, and that he who wanted me must beg me of
myself. Firenzuola cried: “I don’t intend to beg you of yourself; I have
done with you; don’t show yourself again upon my premises.” I reminded
him of the money he owed me. He laughed me in the face; on which I said
that if I knew how to use my tools in handicraft as well as he had seen,
I could be quite as clever with my sword in claiming the just payment of
my labour. While we were exchanging these words, an old man happened to
come up, called Maestro Antonio, of San Marino. He was the chief among
the Roman goldsmiths, and had been Firenzuola’s master. Hearing what I
had to say, which I took good care that he should understand, he
immediately espoused my cause, and bade Firenzuola pay me. The dispute
waxed warm, because Firenzuola was an admirable swordsman, far better
than he was a goldsmith. Yet reason made itself heard; and I backed my
cause with the same spirit, till I got myself paid. In course of time
Firenzuola and I became friends, and at his request I stood godfather to
one of his children.

Note 1. Cellini’s use of the word 'arte' for the 'art' or 'trade' of
goldsmiths corresponds to “the art” as used by English writers early in
this century. See Haydon’s Autobiography, 'passim.'

Note 2. The Italian is 'sobbillato,' which might be also translated
'inveigled' or 'instigated.' But Varchi, the contemporary of Cellini,
gives this verb the force of using pressure and boring on until somebody
is driven to do something.

XV

I WENT on working with Pagolo Arsago, and earned a good deal of money,
the greater part of which I always sent to my good father. At the end of
two years, upon my father’s entreaty, I returned to Florence, and put
myself once more under Francesco Salimbene, with whom I earned a great
deal, and took continual pains to improve in my art. I renewed my
intimacy with Francesco di Filippo; and though I was too much given to
pleasure, owing to that accursed music, I never neglected to devote some
hours of the day or night to study. At that time I fashioned a silver
heart’s-key ('chiavaquore'), as it was then so called. This was a girdle
three inches broad, which used to be made for brides, and was executed
in half relief with some small figures in the round. It was a commission
from a man called Raffaello Lapaccini. I was very badly paid; but the
honour which it brought me was worth far more than the gain I might have
justly made by it. Having at this time worked with many different
persons in Florence, I had come to know some worthy men among the
goldsmiths, as for instance, Marcone, my first master; but I also met
with others reputed honest, who did all they could to ruin me, and
robbed me grossly. When I perceived this, I left their company, and held
them for thieves and black-guards. One of the goldsmiths, called
Giovanbattista Sogliani, kindly accommodated me with part of his shop,
which stood at the side of the New Market near the Landi’s bank. There I
finished several pretty pieces, and made good gains, and was able to
give my family much help. This roused the jealousy of the bad men among
my former masters, who were called Salvadore and Michele Guasconti. In
the guild of the goldsmiths they had three big shops, and drove a
thriving trade. On becoming aware of their evil will against me, I
complained to certain worthy fellows, and remarked that they ought to
have been satisfied with the thieveries they practised on me under the
cloak of hypocritical kindness. This coming to their ears, they
threatened to make me sorely repent of such words; but I, who knew not
what the colour of fear was, paid them little or no heed.

XVI

IT chanced one day that I was leaning against a shop of one of these
men, who called out to me, and began partly reproaching, partly
bullying. I answered that had they done their duty by me, I should have
spoken of them what one speaks of good and worthy men; but as they had
done the contrary, they ought to complain of themselves and not of me.
While I was standing there and talking, one of them, named Gherardo
Guasconti, their cousin, having perhaps been put up to it by them, lay
in wait till a beast of burden went by. [1] It was a load of bricks.
When the load reached me, Gherardo pushed it so violently on my body
that I was very much hurt. Turning suddenly round and seeing him
laughing, I struck him such a blow on the temple that he fell down,
stunned, like one dead. Then I faced round to his cousins, and said:
“That’s the way to treat cowardly thieves of your sort;” and when they
wanted to make a move upon me, trusting to their numbers, I, whose blood
was now well up, laid hands to a little knife I had, and cried: “If one
of you comes out of the shop, let the other run for the confessor,
because the doctor will have nothing to do here.” These words so
frightened them that not one stirred to help their cousin. As soon as I
had gone, the fathers and sons ran to the Eight, and declared that I had
assaulted them in their shops with sword in hand, a thing which had
never yet been seen in Florence. The magistrates had me summoned. I
appeared before them; and they began to upbraid and cry out upon
me-partly, I think, because they saw me in my cloak, while the others
were dressed like citizens in mantle and hood; [2] but also because my
adversaries had been to the houses of those magistrates, and had talked
with all of them in private, while I, inexperienced in such matters, had
not spoken to any of them, trusting in the goodness of my cause. I said
that, having received such outrage and insult from Gherardo, and in my
fury having only given him a box on the ear, I did not think I deserved
such a vehement reprimand. I had hardly time to finish the word box,
before Prinzivalle della Stufa, [3] who was one of the Eight,
interrupted me by saying: “You gave him a blow, and not a box, on the
ear.” The bell was rung and we were all ordered out, when Prinzivalle
spoke thus in my defence to his brother judges: “Mark, sirs, the
simplicity of this poor young man, who has accused himself of having
given a box on the ear, under the impression that this is of less
importance than a blow; whereas a box on the ear in the New Market
carries a fine of twenty-five crowns, while a blow costs little or
nothing. He is a young man of admirable talents, and supports his poor
family by his labour in great abundance; I would to God that our city
had plenty of this sort, instead of the present dearth of them.”

Note 1. The Italian is 'appostò che passassi una soma.' The verb
'appostare' has the double meaning of lying in wait and arranging
something on purpose. Cellini’s words may mean, 'caused a beast of
burden to pass by.'

Note 2. Varchi says that a man who went about with only his cloak or
cape by daytime, if he were not a soldier, was reputed an ill-liver. The
Florentine citizens at this time still wore their ancient civil dress of
the long gown and hood called 'lucco.'

Note 3. This man was an ardent supporter of the Medici, and in 1510
organized a conspiracy in their favour against the Gonfalonier Soderini.

XVII

AMONG the magistrates were some Radical fellows with turned-up hoods,
who had been influenced by the entreaties and the calumnies of my
opponents, because they all belonged to the party of Fra Girolamo; and
these men would have had me sent to prison and punished without too
close a reckoning. [1] But the good Prinzivalle put a stop to that. So
they sentenced me to pay four measures of flour, which were to be given
as alms to the nunnery of the Murate. [2] I was called in again; and he
ordered me not to speak a word under pain of their displeasure, and to
perform the sentence they had passed. Then, after giving me another
sharp rebuke, they sent us to the chancellor; I muttering all the while,
“It was a slap and not a blow,” with which we left the Eight bursting
with laughter. The chancellor bound us over upon bail on both sides; but
only I was punished by having to pay the four measures of meal. Albeit
just then I felt as though I had been massacred, I sent for one of my
cousins, called Maestro Annibale, the surgeon, father of Messer
Librodoro Librodori, desiring that he should go bail for me. [3] He
refused to come, which made me so angry, that, fuming with fury and
swelling like an asp, I took a desperate resolve. At this point one may
observe how the stars do not so much sway as force our conduct. When I
reflected on the great obligations which this Annibale owed my family,
my rage grew to such a pitch that, turning wholly to evil, and being
also by nature somewhat choleric, I waited till the magistrates had gone
to dinner; and when I was alone, and observed that none of their
officers were watching me, in the fire of my anger, I left the palace,
ran to my shop, seized a dagger and rushed to the house of my enemies,
who were at home and shop together. I found them at table; and Gherardo,
who had been the cause of the quarrel, flung himself upon me. I stabbed
him in the breast, piercing doublet and jerkin through and through to
the shirt, without however grazing his flesh or doing him the least harm
in the world. When I felt my hand go in, and heard the clothes tear, I
thought that I had killed him; and seeing him fall terror-struck to
earth, I cried: “Traitors, this day is the day on which I mean to murder
you all.” Father, mother, and sisters, thinking the last day had come,
threw themselves upon their knees, screaming out for mercy with all
their might; but I perceiving that they offered no resistance, and that
he was stretched for dead upon the ground, thought it too base a thing
to touch them. I ran storming down the staircase; and when I reached the
street, I found all the rest of the household, more than twelve persons;
one of them had seized an iron shovel, another a thick iron pipe, one
had an anvil, some of them hammers, and some cudgels. When I got among
them, raging like a mad bull, I flung four or five to the earth, and
fell down with them myself, continually aiming my dagger now at one and
now at another. Those who remained upright plied both hands with all
their force, giving it me with hammers, cudgels, and anvil; but inasmuch
as God does sometime mercifully intervene, He so ordered that neither
they nor I did any harm to one another. I only lost my cap, on which my
adversaries seized, though they had run away from it before, and struck
at it with all their weapons. Afterwards, they searched among their dead
and wounded, and saw that not a single man was injured.

Note 1. Cellini calls these magistrates 'arronzinati cappuccetti,' a
term corresponding to our Roundheads. The democratic or anti-Medicean
party in Florence at that time, who adhered to the republican principles
of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, distinguished themselves by wearing the long
tails of their hoods twisted up and turned round their heads. Cellini
shows his Medicean sympathies by using this contemptuous term, and by
the honourable mention he makes of Prinzivalle della Stufa

Note 2. A convent of closely immured nuns.

Note 3. The word I have translated 'massacred' above is 'assassinato.'
It occurs frequently in Italian of this period, and indicates the
extremity of wrong and outrage.

XVIII

I WENT off in the direction of Santa Maria Novella, and stumbling up
against Fra Alessio Strozzi, whom by the way I did not know, I entreated
this good friar for the love of God to save my life, since I had
committed a great fault. He told me to have no fear; for had I done
every sin in the world, I was yet in perfect safety in his little cell.

After about an hour, the Eight, in an extraordinary meeting, caused one
of the most dreadful bans which ever were heard of to be published
against me, announcing heavy penalties against who should harbour me or
know where I was, without regard to place or to the quality of my
protector. My poor afflicted father went to the Eight, threw himself
upon his knees, and prayed for mercy for his unfortunate young son.
Thereupon one of those Radical fellows, shaking the crest of his twisted
hood, stood up and addressed my father with these insulting words: [1]
“Get up from there, and begone at once, for to-morrow we shall send your
son into the country with the lances.” [2] My poor father had still the
spirit to answer: “What God shall have ordained, that will you do, and
not a jot or little more.” Whereto the same man replied that for certain
God had ordained as he had spoken. My father said: “The thought consoles
me that you do not know for certain;” and quitting their presence, he
came to visit me, together with a young man of my own age, called Pierro
di Giovanni Landi-we loved one another as though we had been brothers.

Under his mantle the lad carried a first-rate sword and a splendid coat
of mail; and when they found me, my brave father told me what had
happened, and what the magistrates had said to him. Then he kissed me on
the forehead and both eyes, and gave me his hearty blessing, saying:
“May the power of goodness of God be your protection;” and reaching me
the sword and armour, he helped me with his own hands to put them on.
Afterwards he added: “Oh, my good son, with these arms in thy hand thou
shalt either live or die.” Pier Landi, who was present, kept shedding
tears; and when he had given me ten golden crowns, I bade him remove a
few hairs from my chin, which were the first down of my manhood. Frate
Alessio disguised me like a friar and gave me a lay brother to go with
me. [3] Quitting the convent, and issuing from the city by the gate of
Prato, I went along the walls as far as the Piazza di San Gallo. Then I
ascended the slope of Montui, and in one of the first houses there I
found a man called Il Grassuccio, own brother to Messer Benedetto da
Monte Varchi. [4] I flung off my monk’s clothes, and became once more a
man. Then we mounted two horses, which were waiting there for us, and
went by night to Siena. Grassuccio returned to Florence, sought out my
father, and gave him the news of my safe escape. In the excess of his
joy, it seemed a thousand years to my father till he should meet the
member of the Eight who had insulted him; and when he came across the
man, he said: “See you, Antonio, that it was God who knew what had to
happen to my son, and not yourself?” To which the fellow answered: “Only
let him get another time into our clutches!” And my father: “I shall
spend my time in thanking God that He has rescued him from that fate.”

Note 1. 'Un di queli arrovellati scotendo la cresto dello arronzinato
cappuccio.' See above, p. 31. The democrats in Cellini’s days were
called at Florence 'Arrabbiati' or 'Arrovellati.' In the days of
Savonarola this nickname had been given to the ultra-Medicean party or
Palleschi.

Note 2. 'Lanciotti.' There is some doubt about this word. But it clearly
means men armed with lances, at the disposal of the Signory.

Note 3. 'Un converso,' an attendant on the monks.

Note 4. Benedetto da Monte Varchi was the celebrated poet, scholar, and
historian of Florence, better known as Varchi. Another of his brothers
was a physician of high repute at Florence. They continued throughout
Cellini’s life to live on terms of intimacy with him.

XIX

AT Siena I waited for the mail to Rome, which I afterwards joined; and
when we passed the Paglia, we met a courier carrying news of the new
Pope, Clement VII. Upon my arrival in Rome, I went to work in the shop
of the master-goldsmith Santi. He was dead; but a son of his carried on
the business. He did not work himself, but entrusted all his commissions
to a young man named Lucagnolo from Iesi, a country fellow, who while
yet a child had come into Santi’s service. This man was short but well
proportioned, and was a more skilful craftsman than any one whom I had
met with up to that time; remarkable for facility and excellent in
design. He executed large plate only: that is to say, vases of the
utmost beauty, basons, and such pieces. [1] Having put myself to work
there, I began to make some candelabra for the Bishop of Salamanca, a
Spaniard. [2] They were richly chased, so far as that sort of work
admits. A pupil of Raffaello da Urbino called Gian Francesco, and
commonly known as Il Fattore, was a painter of great ability; and being
on terms of friendship with the Bishop, he introduced me to his favour,
so that I obtained many commissions from that prelate, and earned
considerable sums of money. [3]

During that time I went to draw, sometimes in Michel Agnolo’s chapel,
and sometimes in the house of Agostino Chigi of Siena, which contained
many incomparable paintings by the hand of that great master Raffaello.
[4] This I did on feast-days, because the house was then inhabited by
Messer Gismondo, Agostino’s brother. They plumed themselves exceedingly
when they saw young men of my sort coming to study in their palaces.
Gismondo’s wife, noticing my frequent presence in that house-she was a
lady as courteous as could be, and of surpassing beauty-came up to me
one day, looked at my drawings, and asked me if I was a sculptor or a
painter; to whom I said I was a goldsmith. She remarked that I drew too
well for a goldsmith; and having made one of her waiting-maids bring a
lily of the finest diamonds set in gold, she showed it to me, and bade
me value it. I valued it at 800 crowns. Then she said that I had very
nearly hit the mark, and asked me whether I felt capable of setting the
stones really well. I said that I should much like to do so, and began
before her eyes to make a little sketch for it, working all the better
because of the pleasure I took in conversing with so lovely and
agreeable a gentlewoman. When the sketch was finished, another Roman
lady of great beauty joined us; she had been above, and now descending
to the ground-floor, asked Madonna Porzia what she was doing there. She
answered with a smile: “I am amusing myself by watching this worthy
young man at his drawing; he is as good as he is handsome.” I had by
this time acquired a trifle of assurance, mixed, however, with some
honest bashfulness; so I blushed and said: “Such as I am, lady, I shall
ever be most ready to serve you.” The gentlewoman, also slightly
blushing, said: “You know well that I want you to serve me;” and
reaching me the lily, told me to take it away; and gave me besides
twenty golden crowns which she had in her bag, and added: “Set me the
jewel after the fashion you have sketched, and keep for me the old gold
in which it is now set.” On this the Roman lady observed: “If I were in
that young man’s body, I should go off without asking leave.” Madonna
Porzia replied that virtues rarely are at home with vices, and that if I
did such a thing, I should strongly belie my good looks of an honest
man. Then turning round, she took the Roman lady’s hand, and with a
pleasant smile said: “Farewell, Benvenuto.” I stayed on a short while at
the drawing I was making, which was a copy of a Jove by Raffaello. When
I had finished it and left the house, I set myself to making a little
model of wax, in order to show how the jewel would look when it was
completed. This I took to Madonna Porzia, whom I found with the same
Roman lady. Both of them were highly satisfied with my work, and treated
me so kindly that, being somewhat emboldened, I promised the jewel
should be twice as good as the model. Accordingly I set hand to it, and
in twelve days I finished it in the form of a fleur-de-lys, as I have
said above, ornamenting it with little masks, children, and animals,
exquisitely enamelled, whereby the diamonds which formed the lily were
more than doubled in effect.

Note 1. Cellini calls this 'grosseria.'

Note 2. Don Francesco de Bobadilla. He came to Rome in 1517, was shut up
with Clement in the castle of S. Angelo in 1527, and died in 1529, after
his return to Spain.

Note 3. This painter, Gio. Francesco Penni, surnamed Il Fattore, aided
Raphael in his Roman frescoes and was much beloved by him. Together with
Giulio Romano he completed the imperfect Stanze of the Vatican.

Note 4. Cellini here alludes to the Sistine Chapel and to the Villa
Farnesina in Trastevere, built by the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi. It
was here that Raphael painted his Galatea and the whole fable of Cupid
and Psyche.

XX

WHILE I was working at this piece, Lucagnolo, of whose ability I have
before spoken, showed considerable discontent, telling me over and over
again that I might acquire far more profit and honour by helping him to
execute large plate, as I had done at first. I made him answer that,
whenever I chose, I should always be capable of working at great silver
pieces; but that things like that on which I was now engaged were not
commissioned every day; and beside their bringing no less honour than
large silver plate, there was also more profit to be made by them. He
laughed me in the face, and said: “Wait and see, Benvenuto; for by the
time that you have finished that work of yours, I will make haste to
have finished this vase, which I took in hand when you did the jewel;
and then experience shall teach you what profit I shall get from my
vase, and what you will get from your ornament.” I answered that I was
very glad indeed to enter into such a competition with so good a
craftsman as he was, because the end would show which of us was
mistaken. Accordingly both the one and the other of us, with a scornful
smile upon our lips, bent our heads in grim earnest to the work, which
both were now desirous of accomplishing; so that after about ten days,
each had finished his undertaking with great delicacy and artistic skill.

Lucagnolo’s was a huge silver piece, used at the table of Pope Clement,
into which he flung away bits of bone and the rind of divers fruits,
while eating; an object of ostentation rather than necessity. The vase
was adorned with two fine handles, together with many masks, both small
and great, and masses of lovely foliage, in as exquisite a style of
elegance as could be imagined; on seeing which I said it was the most
beautiful vase that ever I set eyes on. Thinking he had convinced me,
Lucagnolo replied: “Your work seems to me no less beautiful, but we
shall soon perceive the difference between the two.” So he took his vase
and carried it to the Pope, who was very well pleased with it, and
ordered at once that he should be paid at the ordinary rate of such
large plate. Meanwhile I carried mine to Madonna Porzia, who looked at
it with astonishment, and told me I had far surpassed my promise. Then
she bade me ask for my reward whatever I liked; for it seemed to her my
desert was so great that if I craved a castle she could hardly
recompense me; but since that was not in her hands to bestow, she added
laughing that I must beg what lay within her power. I answered that the
greatest reward I could desire for my labour was to have satisfied her
ladyship. Then, smiling in my turn, and bowing to her, I took my leave,
saying I wanted no reward but that. She turned to the Roman lady and
said: “You see that the qualities we discerned in him are companied by
virtues, and not vices.” They both expressed their admiration, and then
Madonna Porzia continued: “Friend Benvenuto, have you never heard it
said that when the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs?” I replied:
“Quite true! and yet, in the midst of all his troubles, I should like
this time to see him laugh;” and as I took my leave, she said that this
time she had no will to bestow on him that favour.

When I came back to the shop, Lucagnolo had the money for his vase in a
paper packet; and on my arrival he cried out: “Come and compare the
price of your jewel with the price of my plate.” I said that he must
leave things as they were till the next day, because I hoped that even
as my work in its kind was not less excellent than his, so I should be
able to show him quite an equal price for it.

XXI

ON the day following, Madonna Porzia sent a major-domo of hers to my
shop, who called me out, and putting into my hands a paper packet full
of money from his lady, told me that she did not choose the devil should
have his whole laugh out: by which she hinted that the money sent me was
not the entire payment merited by my industry, and other messages were
added worthy of so courteous a lady. Lucagnolo, who was burning to
compare his packet with mine, burst into the shop; then in the presence
of twelve journeymen and some neighbours, eager to behold the result of
this competition, he seized his packet, scornfully exclaiming “Ou! ou!”
three or four times, while he poured his money on the counter with a
great noise. They were twenty-five crowns in giulios; and he fancied
that mine would be four or five crowns 'di moneta.' [1] I for my part,
stunned and stifled by his cries, and by the looks and smiles of the
bystanders, first peeped into my packet; then, after seeing that it
contained nothing but gold, I retired to one end of the counter, and,
keeping my eyes lowered and making no noise at all, I lifted it with
both hands suddenly above my head, and emptied it like a mill hopper.
[2] My coin was twice as much as his; which caused the onlookers, who
had fixed their eyes on me with some derision, to turn round suddenly to
him and say: “Lucagnolo, Benvenuto’s pieces, being all of gold and twice
as many as yours, make a far finer effect.” I thought for certain that,
what with jealousy and what with shame, Lucagnolo would have fallen dead
upon the spot; and though he took the third part of my gain, since I was
a journeyman (for such is the custom of the trade, two-thirds fall to
the workman and one-third to the masters of the shop), yet inconsiderate
envy had more power in him than avarice: it ought indeed to have worked
quite the other way, he being a peasant’s son from Iesi. He cursed his
art and those who taught it him, vowing that thenceforth he would never
work at large plate, but give his whole attention to those brothel
gewgaws, since they were so well paid. Equally enraged on my side, I
answered, that every bird sang its own note; that he talked after the
fashion of the hovels he came from; but that I dared swear that I should
succeed with ease in making his lubberly lumber, while he would never be
successful in my brothel gewgaws. [3] Thus I flung off in a passion,
telling him that I would soon show him that I spoke truth. The
bystanders openly declared against him, holding him for a lout, as
indeed he was, and me for a man, as I had proved myself.

Note 1. 'Scudi di giuli' and 'scudi di moneta.' The 'giulio' was a
silver coin worth 56 Italian centimes. The 'scudi di moneta' was worth
10 'giulios.' Cellini was paid in golden crowns, which had a much higher
value. The 'scuda' and the 'ducato' at this epoch were reckoned at [7]
'lire,' the 'lira' at 20 'soldi.'

Note 2. The packet was funnel-shaped, and Cellini poured the coins out
from the broad end.

Note 3. The two slang phrases translated above are 'bordellerie' and
'coglionerie.'

XXII

NEXT day, I went to thank Madonna Porzia, and told her that her ladyship
had done the opposite of what she said she would; for that while I
wanted to make the devil laugh, she had made him once more deny God. We
both laughed pleasantly at this, and she gave me other commissions for
fine and substantial work.

Meanwhile, I contrived, by means of a pupil of Raffaello da Urbino, to
get an order from the Bishop of Salamanca for one of those great
water-vessels called 'acquereccia,' which are used for ornaments to
place on sideboards. He wanted a pair made of equal size; and one of
them he entrusted to Lucagnolo, the other to me. Giovan Francesco, the
painter I have mentioned, gave us the design. [1] Accordingly I set hand
with marvellous good-will to this piece of plate, and was accommodated
with a part of his workshop by a Milanese named Maestro Giovan Piero
della Tacca. Having made my preparations, I calculated how much money I
should need for certain affairs of my own, and sent all the rest to
assist my poor father.

It so happened that just when this was being paid to him in Florence, he
stumbled upon one of those Radicals who were in the Eight at the time
when I got into that little trouble there. It was the very man who had
abused him so rudely, and who swore that I should certainly be sent into
the country with the lances. Now this fellow had some sons of very bad
morals and repute; wherefore my father said to him: “Misfortunes can
happen to anybody, especially to men of choleric humour when they are in
the right, even as it happened to my son; but let the rest of his life
bear witness how virtuously I have brought him up. Would God, for your
well-being, that your sons may act neither worse nor better toward you
than mine do to me. God rendered me able to bring them up as I have
done; and where my own power could not reach, ‘twas He who rescued them,
against your expectation, out of your violent hands.” On leaving the
man, he wrote me all this story, begging me for God’s sake to practise
music at times, in order that I might not lose the fine accomplishment
which he had taught me with such trouble. The letter so overflowed with
expressions of the tenderest fatherly affection, that I was moved to
tears of filial piety, resolving, before he died, to gratify him amply
with regard to music. Thus God grants us those lawful blessings which we
ask in prayer, nothing doubting.

Note 1. That is, Il Fattore. See above, p. 34.

XXIII

WHILE I was pushing forward Salamanca’s vase, I had only one little boy
as help, whom I had taken at the entreaty of friends, and half against
my own will, to be my workman. He was about fourteen years of age, bore
the name of Paulino, and was son to a Roman burgess, who lived upon the
income of his property. Paulino was the best-mannered, the most honest,
and the most beautiful boy I ever saw in my whole life. His modest ways
and actions, together with his superlative beauty and his devotion to
myself, bred in me as great an affection for him as a man’s breast can
hold. This passionate love led me oftentimes to delight the lad with
music; for I observed that his marvellous features, which by complexion
wore a tone of modest melancholy, brightened up, and when I took my
cornet, broke into a smile so lovely and so sweet, that I do not marvel
at the silly stories which the Greeks have written about the deities of
heaven. Indeed, if my boy had lived in those times, he would probably
have turned their heads still more. [1] He had a sister, named Faustina,
more beautiful, I verily believe, than that Faustina about whom the old
books gossip so. Sometimes he took me to their vineyard, and, so far as
I could judge, it struck me that Paulino’s good father would have
welcomed me as a son-in-law. This affair led me to play more than I was
used to do.

It happened at that time that one Giangiacomo of Cesena, a musician in
the Pope’s band, and a very excellent performer, sent word through
Lorenzo, the trumpeter of Lucca, who is now in our Duke’s service, to
inquire whether I was inclined to help them at the Pope’s Ferragosto,
playing soprano with my cornet in some motets of great beauty selected
by them for that occasion. [2] Although I had the greatest desire to
finish the vase I had begun, yet, since music has a wondrous charm of
its own, and also because I wished to please my old father, I consented
to join them. During eight days before the festival we practised two
hours a day together; then on the first of August we went to the
Belvedere, and while Pope Clement was at table, we played those
carefully studied motets so well that his Holiness protested he had
never heard music more sweetly executed or with better harmony of parts.
He sent for Giangiacomo, and asked him where and how he had procured so
excellent a cornet for soprano, and inquired particularly who I was.
Giangiacomo told him my name in full. Whereupon the Pope said: “So,
then, he is the son of Maestro Giovanni?” On being assured I was, the
Pope expressed his wish to have me in his service with the other
bandsmen. Giangiacomo replied: “Most blessed Father, I cannot pretend
for certain that you will get him, for his profession, to which he
devotes himself assiduously, is that of a goldsmith, and he works in it
miraculously well, and earns by it far more than he could do by
playing.” To this the Pope added: “I am the better inclined to him now
that I find him possessor of a talent more than I expected. See that he
obtains the same salary as the rest of you; and tell him from me to join
my service, and that I will find work enough by the day for him to do in
his other trade.” Then stretching out his hand, he gave him a hundred
golden crowns of the Camera in a handkerchief, and said: [3] “Divide
these so that he may take his share.”

When Giangiacomo left the Pope, he came to us, and related in detail all
that the Pope had said; and after dividing the money between the eight
of us, and giving me my share, he said to me: “Now I am going to have
you inscribed among our company.” I replied: “Let the day pass;
to-morrow I will give my answer.” When I left them, I went meditating
whether I ought to accept the invitation, inasmuch as I could not but
suffer if I abandoned the noble studies of my art. The following night
my father appeared to me in a dream, and begged me with tears of
tenderest affection, for God’s love and his, to enter upon this
engagement. Methought I answered that nothing would induce me to do so.
In an instant he assumed so horrible an aspect as to frighten me out of
my wits, and cried: “If you do not, you will have a father’s curse; but
if you do, may you be ever blessed by me!” When I woke, I ran, for very
fright, to have myself inscribed. Then I wrote to my old father, telling
him the news, which so affected him with extreme joy that a sudden fit
of illness took him, and well-nigh brought him to death’s door. In his
answer to my letter, he told me that he too had dreamed nearly the same
as I had.

Note 1. 'Gli Arebbe fatti più uscire de’ gangheri;' would have taken
them still more off the hinges.

Note 2. Lit., “the largest piece left of me should be my ears.”

Note 3. The Camera Apostolica was the Roman Exchequer.

XXIV

KNOWING now that I had gratified my father’s honest wish, I began to
think that everything would prosper with me to a glorious and honourable
end. Accordingly, I set myself with indefatigable industry to the
completion of the vase I had begun for Salamanca. That prelate was a
very extraordinary man, extremely rich, but difficult to please. He sent
daily to learn what I was doing; and when his messenger did not find me
at home, he broke into fury, saying that he would take the work out of
my hands and give it to others to finish. This came of my slavery to
that accursed music. Still I laboured diligently night and day, until,
when I had brought my work to a point when it could be exhibited, I
submitted it to the inspection of the Bishop. This so increased his
desire to see it finished that I was sorry I had shown it. At the end of
three months I had it ready, with little animals and foliage and masks,
as beautiful as one could hope to see. No sooner was it done than I sent
it by the hand of my workman, Paulino, to show that able artist
Lucagnolo, of whom I have spoken above. Paulino, with the grace and
beauty which belonged to him, spoke as follows: “Messer Lucagnolo,
Benvenuto bids me say that he has sent to show you his promises and your
lumber, expecting in return to see from you his gewgaws.” This message
given, Lucagnolo took up the vase, and carefully examined it; then he
said to Paulino: “Fair boy, tell your master that he is a great and able
artist, and that I beg him to be willing to have me for a friend, and
not to engage in aught else.” The mission of that virtuous and
marvellous lad caused me the greatest joy; and then the vase was carried
to Salamanca, who ordered it to be valued. Lucagnolo took part in the
valuation, estimating and praising it far above my own opinion.
Salamanca, lifting up the vase, cried like a true Spaniard: “I swear by
God that I will take as long in paying him as he has lagged in making
it.” When I heard this, I was exceedingly put out, and fell to cursing
all Spain and every one who wished well to it.

Amongst other beautiful ornaments, this vase had a handle, made all of
one piece, with most delicate mechanism, which, when a spring was
touched, stood upright above the mouth of it. While the prelate was one
day ostentatiously exhibiting my vase to certain Spanish gentlemen of
his suite, it chanced that one of them, upon Monsignor’s quitting the
room, began roughly to work the handle, and as the gentle spring which
moved it could not bear his loutish violence, it broke in his hand.
Aware what mischief he had done, he begged the butler who had charge of
the Bishop’s plate to take it to the master who had made it, for him to
mend, and promised to pay what price he asked, provided it was set to
rights at once. So the vase came once more into my hands, and I promised
to put it forthwith in order, which indeed I did. It was brought to me
before dinner; and at twenty-two o’clock the man who brought it
returned, all in a sweat, for he had run the whole way, Monsignor having
again asked for it to show to certain other gentlemen. [1] The butler,
then, without giving me time to utter a word, cried: “Quick, quick,
bring the vase.” I, who wanted to act at leisure and not to give up to
him, said that I did not mean to be so quick. The serving-man got into
such a rage that he made as though he would put one hand to his sword,
while with the other he threatened to break the shop open. To this I put
a stop at once with my own weapon, using therewith spirited language,
and saying: “I am not going to give it to you! Go and tell Monsignor,
your master, that I want the money for my work before I let it leave
this shop.” When the fellow saw he could not obtain it by swaggering, he
fell to praying me, as one prays to the Cross, declaring that if I would
only give it up, he would take care I should be paid. These words did
not make me swerve from my purpose; but I kept on saying the same thing.
At last, despairing of success, he swore to come with Spaniards enough
to cut me in pieces. Then he took to his heels; while I, who inclined to
believe partly in their murderous attack, resolved that I would defend
myself with courage. So I got an admirable little gun ready, which I
used for shooting game, and muttered to myself: “He who robs me of my
property and labour may take my life too, and welcome.” While I was
carrying on this debate in my own mind, a crowd of Spaniards arrived,
led by their major-domo, who, with the headstrong rashness of his race,
bade them go in and take the vase and give me a good beating. Hearing
these words, I showed them the muzzle of my gun, and prepared to fire,
and cried in a loud voice: “Renegade Jews, traitors, is it thus that one
breaks into houses and shops in our city of Rome? Come as many of you
thieves as like, an inch nearer to this wicket, and I’ll blow all their
brains out with my gun.” Then I turned the muzzle toward their
major-domo, and making as though I would discharge it, called out: “And
you big thief, who are egging them on, I mean to kill you first.” He
clapped spurs to the jennet he was riding, and took flight headlong. The
commotion we were making stirred up all the neighbours, who came
crowding round, together with some Roman gentlemen who chanced to pass,
and cried: “Do but kill the renegades, and we will stand by you.” These
words had the effect of frightening the Spaniards in good earnest. They
withdrew, and were compelled by the circumstances to relate the whole
affair to Monsignor. Being a man of inordinate haughtiness, he rated the
members of his household, both because they had engaged in such an act
of violence, and also because, having begun, they had not gone through
with it. At this juncture the painter, who had been concerned in the
whole matter, came in, and the Bishop bade him go and tell me that if I
did not bring the vase at once, he would make mincemeat of me; [2] but
if I brought it, he would pay its price down. These threats were so far
from terrifying me, that I sent him word I was going immediately to lay
my case before the Pope.

In the meantime, his anger and my fear subsided; whereupon, being
guaranteed by some Roman noblemen of high degree that the prelate would
not harm me, and having assurance that I should be paid, I armed myself
with a large poniard and my good coat of mail, and betook myself to his
palace, where he had drawn up all his household. I entered, and Paulino
followed with the silver vase. It was just like passing through the
Zodiac, neither more nor less; for one of them had the face of the lion,
another of the scorpion, a third of the crab. However, we passed onward
to the presence of the rascally priest, who spouted out a torrent of
such language as only priests and Spaniards have at their command. In
return I never raised my eyes to look at him, nor answered word for
word. That seemed to augment the fury of his anger; and causing paper to
be put before me, he commanded me to write an acknowledgment to the
effect that I had been amply satisfied and paid in full. Then I raised
my head, and said I should be very glad to do so when I had received the
money. The Bishop’s rage continued to rise; threats and recriminations
were flung about; but at last the money was paid, and I wrote the
receipt. Then I departed, glad at heart and in high spirits.

Note 1. The Italians reckoned time from sundown till sundown, counting
twenty-four hours. Twenty-two o’clock was therefore two hours before
nightfall. One hour of the night was one hour after nightfall, and so
forth. By this system of reckoning, it is clear that the hours varied
with the season of the year; and unless we know the exact month in which
an event took place, we cannot translate any hour into terms of our own
system.

Note 2. Lit., “the largest piece left of me should be my ears.”

XXV

WHEN Pope Clement heard the story-he had seen the vase before, but it
was not shown him as my work-he expressed much pleasure and spoke warmly
in my praise, publicly saying that he felt very favourably toward me.
This caused Monsignor Salamanca to repent that he had hectored over me;
and in order to make up our quarrel, he sent the same painter to inform
me that he meant to give me large commissions. I replied that I was
willing to undertake them, but that I should require to be paid in
advance. This speech too came to Pope Clement’s ears, and made him laugh
heartily. Cardinal Cibo was in the presence, and the Pope narrated to
him the whole history of my dispute with the Bishop. [1] Then he turned
to one of his people, and ordered him to go on supplying me with work
for the palace. Cardinal Cibo sent for me, and after some time spent in
agreeable conversation, gave me the order for a large vase, bigger than
Salamanca’s. I likewise obtained commissions from Cardinal Cornaro, and
many others of the Holy College, especially Ridolfi and Salviati; they
all kept me well employed, so that I earned plenty of money. 2

Madonna Porzia now advised me to open a shop of my own. This I did; and
I never stopped working for that excellent and gentle lady, who paid me
exceedingly well, and by whose means perhaps it was that I came to make
a figure in the world.

I contracted close friendship with Signor Gabbriello Ceserino, at that
time Gonfalonier of Rome, and executed many pieces for him. One, among
the rest, is worthy of mention. It was a large golden medal to wear in
the hat. I engraved upon it Leda with her swan; and being very well
pleased with the workmanship, he said he should like to have it valued,
in order that I might be properly paid. Now, since the medal was
executed with consummate skill, the valuers of the trade set a far
higher price on it than he had thought of. I therefore kept the medal,
and got nothing for my pains. The same sort of adventures happened in
this case as in that of Salamanca’s vase. But I shall pass such matters
briefly by, lest they hinder me from telling things of greater
importance.

Note 1. Innocenzio Cibo Malaspina, Archbishop of Genoa, and nephew of
Lorenzo de’ Medici. He was a prelate of vast wealth and a great patron
of arts and letters.

Note 2. Marco Cornaro was a brother of Caterina, the Queen of Cyprus. He
obtained the hat in 1492. Niccolò Ridolfi was a nephew of Leo X.
Giovanni Salviati, the son of Jacopo mentioned above, was also a nephew
of Leo X, who gave him the hat in 1517.

XXVI

SINCE I am writing my life, I must from time to time diverge from my
profession in order to describe with brevity, if not in detail, some
incidents which have no bearing on my career as artist. On the morning
of Saint John’s Day I happened to be dining with several men of our
nation, painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, amongst the most notable of
whom was Rosso and Gainfrancesco, the pupil of Raffaello. [1] I had
invited them without restraint or ceremony to the place of our meeting,
and they were all laughing and joking, as is natural when a crowd of men
come together to make merry on so great a festival. It chanced that a
light-brained swaggering young fellow passed by; he was a soldier of
Rienzo da Ceri, who, when he heard the noise that we were making, gave
vent to a string of opprobrious sarcasms upon the folk of Florence. [2]
I, who was the host of those great artists and men of worth, taking the
insult to myself, slipped out quietly without being observed, and went
up to him. I ought to say that he had a punk of his there, and was going
on with his stupid ribaldries to amuse her. When I met him, I asked if
he was the rash fellow who was speaking evil of the Florentines. He
answered at once: “I am that man.” On this I raised my hand, struck him
in the face, and said: “And I am 'this' man.” Then we each of us drew
our swords with spirit; but the fray had hardly begun when a crowd of
persons intervened, who rather took my part than not, hearing and seeing
that I was in the right.

On the following day a challenge to fight with him was brought me, which
I accepted very gladly, saying that I expected to complete this job far
quicker than those of the other art I practised. So I went at once to
confer with a fine old man called Bevilacqua, who was reputed to have
been the first sword of Italy, because he had fought more than twenty
serious duels and had always come off with honour. This excellent man
was a great friend of mine; he knew me as an artist and had also been
concerned as intermediary in certain ugly quarrels between me and
others. Accordingly, when he had learned my business, he answered with a
smile: “My Benvenuto, if you had an affair with Mars, I am sure you
would come out with honour, because through all the years that I have
known you, I have never seen you wrongfully take up a quarrel.” So he
consented to be my second, and we repaired with sword in hand to the
appointed place, but no blood was shed, for my opponent made the matter
up, and I came with much credit out of the affair. [3] I will not add
further particulars; for though they would be very interesting in their
own way, I wish to keep both space and words for my art, which has been
my chief inducement to write as I am doing, and about which I shall have
only too much to say.

The spirit of honourable rivalry impelled me to attempt some other
masterpiece, which should equal, or even surpass, the productions of
that able craftsman, Lucagnolo, whom I have mentioned. Still I did not
on this account neglect my own fine art of jewellery; and so both the
one and the other wrought me much profit and more credit, and in both of
them I continued to produce things of marked originality. There was at
that time in Rome a very able artist of Perugia named Lautizio, who
worked only in one department, where he was sole and unrivalled
throughout the world. [4] You must know that at Rome every cardinal has
a seal, upon which his title is engraved, and these seals are made just
as large as a child’s hand of about twelve years of age; and, as I have
already said, the cardinal’s title is engraved upon the seal together
with a great many ornamental figures. A well-made article of the kind
fetches a hundred, or more than a hundred crowns. This excellent
workman, like Lucagnolo, roused in me some honest rivalry, although the
art he practised is far remote from the other branches of gold-smithery,
and consequently Lautizio was not skilled in making anything but seals.
I gave my mind to acquiring his craft also, although I found it very
difficult; and, unrepelled by the trouble which it gave me, I went on
zealously upon the path of profit and improvement.

There was in Rome another most excellent craftsman of ability, who was a
Milanese named Messer Caradosso. [5] He dealt in nothing but little
chiselled medals, made of plates of metal, and such-like things. I have
seen of his some paxes in half relief, and some Christs a palm in length
wrought of the thinnest golden plates, so exquisitely done that I
esteemed him the greatest master in that kind I had ever seen, and
envied him more than all the rest together. There were also other
masters who worked at medals carved in steel, which may be called the
models and true guides for those who aim at striking coins in the most
perfect style. All these divers arts I set myself with unflagging
industry to learn.

I must not omit the exquisite art of enamelling, in which I have never
known any one excel save a Florentine, our countryman, called Amerigo.
[6] I did not know him, but was well acquainted with his incomparable
masterpieces. Nothing in any part of the world or by craftsman that I
have seen, approached the divine beauty of their workmanship. To this
branch too I devoted myself with all my strength, although it is
extremely difficult, chiefly because of the fire, which, after long time
and trouble spent in other processes, has to be applied at last, and not
unfrequently brings the whole to ruin. In spite of its great
difficulties, it gave me so much pleasure that I looked upon them as
recreation; and this came from the special gift which the God of nature
bestowed on me, that is to say, a temperament so happy and of such
excellent parts that I was freely able to accomplish whatever it pleased
me to take in hand. The various departments of art which I have
described are very different one from the other, so that a man who
excels in one of them, if he undertakes the others, hardly ever achieves
the same success; whereas I strove with all my power to become equally
versed in all of them: and in the proper place I shall demonstrate that
I attained my object.

Note 1. St. John’s Day was the great Florentine Festival, on which all
the Guilds went in procession with pageants through the city. Of the
Florentine painter, II Rosso, or Maitre Roux, this is the first mention
by Cellini. He went to France in 1534, and died an obscure death there
in 1541.

Note 2. This Rienzo, Renzo, or Lorenzo da Ceri, was a captain of
adventurers or Condottiere, who hired his mercenary forces to
paymasters. He defended Crema for the Venetians in 1514, and conquered
Urbino for the Pope in 1515. Afterwards he fought for the French in the
Italian wars. We shall hear more of him again during the sack of Rome.

Note 3. The Italian, 'restando dal mio avversario,' seems to mean that
Cellini’s opponent proposed an accommodation, apologized, or stayed the
duel at a certain point.

Note 4. See Cellini’s Treatise 'Oreficeria,' cap. vi., for more
particulars about this artist.

Note 5. His real name was Ambrogio Foppa. The nickname Caradosso is said
to have stuck to him in consequence of a Spaniard calling him
Bear’s-face in his own tongue. He struck Leo X’s coins; and we possess
some excellent medallion portraits by his hand.

Note 6. For him, consult Cellini’s 'Oreficeria.'

XXVII

AT that time, while I was still a young man of about twenty-three, there
raged a plague of such extraordinary violence that many thousands died
of it every day in Rome. Somewhat terrified at this calamity, I began to
take certain amusements, as my mind suggested, and for a reason which I
will presently relate. I had formed a habit of going on feast-days to
the ancient buildings, and copying parts of them in wax or with the
pencil; and since these buildings are all ruins, and the ruins house
innumerable pigeons, it came into my head to use my gun against these
birds. So then, avoiding all commerce with people, in my terror of the
plague, I used to put a fowling-piece on my boy Pagolino’s shoulder, and
he and I went out alone into the ruins; and oftentimes we came home
laden with a cargo of the fattest pigeons. I did not care to charge my
gun with more than a single ball; and thus it was by pure skill in the
art that I filled such heavy bags. I had a fowling-piece which I had
made myself; inside and out it was as bright as any mirror. I also used
to make a very fine sort of powder, in doing which I discovered secret
processes, beyond any which have yet been found; and on this point, in
order to be brief, I will give but one particular, which will astonish
good shots of every degree. This is, that when I charged my gun with
powder weighing one-fifth of the ball, it carried two hundred paces
point-blank. It is true that the great delight I took in this exercise
bid fair to withdraw me from my art and studies; yet in another way it
gave me more than it deprived me of, seeing that each time I went out
shooting I returned with greatly better health, because the open air was
a benefit to my constitution. My natural temperament was melancholy, and
while I was taking these amusements, my heart leapt up with joy, and I
found that I could work better and with far greater mastery than when I
spent my whole time in study and manual labour. In this way my gun, at
the end of the game, stood me more in profit than in loss.

It was also the cause of my making acquaintance with certain hunters
after curiosities, who followed in the track [1] of those Lombard
peasants who used to come to Rome to till the vineyards at the proper
season. While digging the ground, they frequently turned up antique
medals, agates, chrysoprases, cornelians, and cameos; also sometimes
jewels, as, for instance, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The
peasants used to sell things of this sort to the traders for a mere
trifle; and I very often, when I met them, paid the latter several times
as many golden crowns as they had given giulios for some object.
Independently of the profit I made by this traffic, which was at least
tenfold, it brought me also into agreeable relations with nearly all the
cardinals of Rome. I will only touch upon a few of the most notable and
the rarest of these curiosities. There came into my hands, among many
other fragments, the head of a dolphin about as big as a good-sized
ballot-bean. Not only was the style of this head extremely beautiful,
but nature had here far surpassed art; for the stone was an emerald of
such good colour, that the man who bought it from me for tens of crowns
sold it again for hundreds after setting it as a finger-ring. I will
mention another kind of gem; this was a magnificent topaz; and here art
equalled nature; it was as large as a big hazel-nut, with the head of
Minerva in a style of inconceivable beauty. I remember yet another
precious stone, different from these; it was a cameo, engraved with
Hercules binding Cerberus of the triple throat; such was its beauty and
the skill of its workmanship, that our great Michel Agnolo protested he
had never seen anything so wonderful. Among many bronze medals, I
obtained one upon which was a head of Jupiter. It was the largest that
had ever been seen; the head of the most perfect execution; and it had
on the reverse side a very fine design of some little figures in the
same style. I might enlarge at great length on this curiosity; but I
will refrain for fear of being prolix.

Note 1. 'Stavano alle velette.' Perhaps 'lay in wait for.'

XXVIII

AS I have said above, the plague had broken out in Rome; but though I
must return a little way upon my steps, I shall not therefore abandon
the main path of my history. There arrived in Rome a surgeon of the
highest renown, who was called Maestro Giacomo da Carpi. [1] This able
man, in the course of his other practice, undertook the most desperate
cases of the so-called French disease. In Rome this kind of illness is
very partial to the priests, and especially to the richest of them.
When, therefore, Maestro Giacomo had made his talents known, he
professed to work miracles in the treatment of such cases by means of
certain fumigations; but he only undertook a cure after stipulating for
his fees, which he reckoned not by tens, but by hundreds of crowns. He
was a great connoisseur in the arts of design. Chancing to pass one day
before my shop, he saw a lot of drawings which I had laid upon the
counter, and among these were several designs for little vases in a
capricious style, which I had sketched for my amusement. These vases
were in quite a different fashion from any which had been seen up to
that date. He was anxious that I should finish one or two of them for
him in silver; and this I did with the fullest satisfaction, seeing they
exactly suited my own fancy. The clever surgeon paid me very well, and
yet the honour which the vases brought me was worth a hundred times as
much; for the best craftsmen in the goldsmith’s trade declared they had
never seen anything more beautiful or better executed.

No sooner had I finished them than he showed them to the Pope; and the
next day following he betook himself away from Rome. He was a man of
much learning, who used to discourse wonderfully about medicine. The
Pope would fain have had him in his service, but he replied that he
would not take service with anybody in the world, and that whoso had
need of him might come to seek him out. He was a person of great
sagacity, and did wisely to get out of Rome; for not many months
afterwards, all the patients he had treated grew so ill that they were a
hundred times worse off than before he came. He would certainly have
been murdered if he had stopped. He showed my little vases to several
persons of quality; amongst others, to the most excellent Duke of
Ferrara, and pretended that he had got them from a great lord in Rome,
by telling this nobleman that if he wanted to be cured, he must give him
those two vases; and that the lord had answered that they were antique,
and besought him to ask for anything else which it might be convenient
for him to give, provided only he would leave him those; but, according
to his own account, Maestro Giacomo made as though he would not
undertake the cure, and so he got them.

I was told this by Messer Alberto Bendedio in Ferrara, who with great
ostentation showed me some earthenware copies he possessed of them. [2]
Thereupon I laughed, and as I said nothing, Messer Alberto Bendedio, who
was a haughty man, flew into a rage and said: “You are laughing at them,
are you? And I tell you that during the last thousand years there has
not been born a man capable of so much as copying them.” I then, not
caring to deprive them of so eminent a reputation, kept silence, and
admired them with mute stupefaction. It was said to me in Rome by many
great lords, some of whom were my friends, that the work of which I have
been speaking was, in their opinion of marvellous excellence and genuine
antiquity; whereupon, emboldened by their praises, I revealed that I had
made them. As they would not believe it, and as I wished to prove that I
had spoken truth, I was obliged to bring evidence and to make new
drawings of the vases; for my word alone was not enough, inasmuch as
Maestro Giacomo had cunningly insisted upon carrying off the old
drawings with him. By this little job I earned a fair amount of money.

Note 1. Giacomo Berengario da Carpi was, in fact, a great physician,
surgeon, and student of anatomy. He is said to have been the first to
use mercury in the cure of syphilis, a disease which was devastating
Italy after the year 1495. He amassed a large fortune, which, when he
died at Ferrara about 1530, he bequeathed to the Duke there.

Note 2. See below, Book II. Chap. viii., for a full account of this
incident at Ferrara.

XXIX

THE PLAGUE went dragging on for many months, but I had as yet managed to
keep it at bay; for though several of my comrades were dead, I survived
in health and freedom. Now it chanced one evening that an intimate
comrade of mine brought home to supper a Bolognese prostitute named
Faustina. She was a very fine woman, but about thirty years of age; and
she had with her a little serving-girl of thirteen or fourteen. Faustina
belonging to my friend, I would not have touched her for all the gold in
the world; and though she declared she was madly in love with me, I
remained steadfast in my loyalty. But after they had gone to bed, I
stole away the little serving-girl, who was quite a fresh maid, and woe
to her if her mistress had known of it! The result was that I enjoyed a
very pleasant night, far more to my satisfaction than if I had passed it
with Faustina. I rose upon the hour of breaking fast, and felt tired,
for I had travelled many miles that night, and was wanting to take food,
when a crushing headache seized me; several boils appeared on my left
arm, together with a carbuncle which showed itself just beyond the palm
of the left hand where it joins the wrist. Everybody in the house was in
a panic; my friend, the cow and the calf, all fled. Left alone there
with my poor little prentice, who refused to abandon me, I felt stifled
at the heart, and made up my mind for certain I was a dead man.

Just then the father of the lad went by, who was physician to the
Cardinal Iacoacci, [1] and lived as member of that prelate’s household.
[2] The boy called out: “Come, father, and see Benvenuto; he is in bed
with some trifling indisposition.” Without thinking what my complaint
might be, the doctor came up at once, and when he had felt my pulse, he
saw and felt what was very contrary to his own wishes. Turning round to
his son, he said: “O traitor of a child, you’ve ruined me; how can I
venture now into the Cardinal’s presence?” His son made answer: “Why,
father, this man my master is worth far more than all the cardinals in
Rome.” Then the doctor turned to me and said: “Since I am here, I will
consent to treat you. But of one thing only I warn you, that if you have
enjoyed a woman, you are doomed.” To this I replied: “I did so this very
night.” He answered: “With whom, and to what extent?” [3] I said: “Last
night, and with a girl in her earliest maturity.” Upon this, perceiving
that he had spoken foolishly, he made haste to add: “Well, considering
the sores are so new, and have not yet begun to stink, and that the
remedies will be taken in time, you need not be too much afraid, for I
have good hopes of curing you.” When he had prescribed for me and gone
away, a very dear friend of mine, called Giovanni Rigogli, came in, who
fell to commiserating my great suffering and also my desertion by my
comrade, and said: “Be of good cheer, my Benvenuto, for I will never
leave your side until I see you restored to health.” I told him not to
come too close, since it was all over with me. Only I besought him to be
so kind as to take a considerable quantity of crowns, which were lying
in a little box near my bed, and when God had thought fit to remove me
from this world, to send them to my poor father, writing pleasantly to
him, in the way I too had done, so far as that appalling season of the
plague permitted. [4] My beloved friend declared that he had no
intention whatsoever of leaving me, and that come what might, in life or
death, he knew very well what was his duty toward a friend. And so we
went on by the help of God: and the admirable remedies which I had used
began to work a great improvement, and I soon came well out of that
dreadful sickness.

The sore was still open, with a plug of lint inside it and a plaster
above, when I went out riding on a little wild pony. He was covered with
hair four fingers long, and was exactly as big as a well-grown bear;
indeed he looked just like a bear. I rode out on him to visit the
painter Rosso, who was then living in the country, toward Civita
Vecchia, at a place of Count Anguillara’s called Cervetera. I found my
friend, and he was very glad to see me; whereupon I said: “I am come to
do to you that which you did to me so many months ago.” He burst out
laughing, embraced and kissed me, and begged me for the Count’s sake to
keep quiet. I stayed in that place about a month, with much content and
gladness, enjoying good wines and excellent food, and treated with the
greatest kindness by the Count; every day I used to ride out alone along
the seashore, where I dismounted, and filled my pockets with all sorts
of pebbles, snail shells, and sea shells of great rarity and beauty.

On the last day (for after this I went there no more) I was attacked by
a band of men, who had disguised themselves, and disembarked from a
Moorish privateer. When they thought that they had run me into a certain
passage, where it seemed impossible that I should escape from their
hands, I suddenly mounted my pony, resolved to be roasted or boiled
alive at that pass perilous, seeing I had little hope to evade one or
the other of these fates; [5] but, as God willed, my pony, who was the
same I have described above, took an incredibly wide jump, and brought
me off in safety, for which I heartily thanked God. I told the story to
the Count; he ran to arms; but we saw the galleys setting out to sea.
The next day following I went back sound and with good cheer to Rome.

Note 1. Probably Domenico Iacobacci, who obtained the hat in 1517.

Note 2. 'A sua provisione stava, i. e.,' he was in the Cardinal’s
regular pay.

Note 3. 'Quanto.' Perhaps we ought to read 'quando-when?'

Note 4. 'Come ancora io avevo fatto secondo l’usanza che promettava
quell’ arrabbiata stagione.' I am not sure that I have given the right
sense in the text above. Leclanché interprets the words thus: “that I
too had fared according to the wont of that appalling season,” 'i. e.,'
had died of the plague. But I think the version in my sense is more true
both to Italian and to Cellini’s special style.

Note 5. 'I. e.,' to escape either being drowned or shot.

XXX

THE PLAGUE had by this time almost died out, so that the survivors, when
they met together alive, rejoiced with much delight in one another’s
company. This led to the formation of a club of painters, sculptors, and
goldsmiths, the best that were in Rome; and the founder of it was a
sculptor with the name of Michel Agnolo. [1] He was a Sienese and a man
of great ability, who could hold his own against any other workman in
that art; but, above all, he was the most amusing comrade and the
heartiest good fellow in the universe. Of all the members of the club,
he was the eldest, and yet the youngest from the strength and vigour of
his body. We often came together; at the very least twice a week. I must
not omit to mention that our society counted Giulio Romano, the painter,
and Gian Francesco, both of them celebrated pupils of the mighty
Raffaello da Urbino.

After many and many merry meetings, it seemed good to our worthy
president that for the following Sunday we should repair to supper in
his house, and that each one of us should be obliged to bring with him
his crow (such was the nickname Michel Agnolo gave to women in the
club), and that whoso did not bring one should be sconced by paying a
supper to the whole company. Those of us who had no familiarity with
women of the town, were forced to purvey themselves at no small trouble
and expense, in order to appear without disgrace at that distinguished
feast of artists. I had reckoned upon being well provided with a young
woman of considerable beauty, called Pantasilea, who was very much in
love with me; but I was obliged to give her up to one of my dearest
friends, called Il Bachiacca, who on his side had been, and still was,
over head and ears in love with her. [2] This exchange excited a certain
amount of lover’s anger, because the lady, seeing I had abandoned her at
Bachiacca’s first entreaty, imagined that I held in slight esteem the
great affection which she bore me. In course of time a very serious
incident grew out of this misunderstanding, through her desire to take
revenge for the affront I had put upon her; whereof I shall speak
hereafter in the proper place.

Well, then, the hour was drawing nigh when we had to present ourselves
before that company of men of genius, each with his own crow; and I was
still unprovided; and yet I thought it would be stupid to fail of such a
madcap bagatelle; [3] but what particularly weighed upon my mind was
that I did not choose to lend the light of my countenance in that
illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these
considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, for the increase of
merriment and the diffusion of mirth in our society.

Having taken this resolve, I sent for a stripling of sixteen years, who
lived in the next house to mine; he was the son of a Spanish
coppersmith. This young man gave his time to Latin studies, and was very
diligent in their pursuit. He bore the name of Diego, had a handsome
figure, and a complexion of marvellous brilliancy; the outlines of his
head and face were far more beautiful than those of the antique
Antinous: I had often copied them, gaining thereby much honour from the
works in which I used them. The youth had no acquaintances, and was
therefore quite unknown; dressed very ill and negligently; all his
affections being set upon those wonderful studies of his. After bringing
him to my house, I begged him to let me array him in the woman’s clothes
which I had caused to be laid out. He readily complied, and put them on
at once, while I added new beauties to the beauty of his face by the
elaborate and studied way in which I dressed his hair. In his ears I
placed two little rings, set with two large and fair pearls; the rings
were broken; they only clipped his ears, which looked as though they had
been pierced. Afterwards I wreathed his throat with chains of gold and
rich jewels, and ornamented his fair hands with rings. Then I took him
in a pleasant manner by one ear, and drew him before a great
looking-glass. The lad, when he beheld himself, cried out with a burst
of enthusiasm: “Heavens! is that Diego?” I said: “That is Diego, from
whom until this day I never asked for any kind of favour; but now I only
beseech Diego to do me pleasure in one harmless thing; and it is this-I
want him to come in those very clothes to supper with the company of
artists whereof he has often heard me speak.” The young man, who was
honest, virtuous, and wise, checked his enthusiasm, bent his eyes to the
ground, and stood for a short while in silence. Then with a sudden move
he lifted up his face and said: “With Benvenuto I will go; now let us
start.”

I wrapped his head in a large kind of napkin, which is called in Rome a
summer-cloth; and when we reached the place of meeting, the company had
already assembled, and everybody came forward to greet me. Michel Agnolo
had placed himself between Giulio and Giovan Francesco. I lifted the
veil from the head of my beauty; and then Michel Agnolo, who, as I have
already said, was the most humorous and amusing fellow in the world,
laid his two hands, the one on Giulio’s and the other on Gian
Francesco’s shoulders, and pulling them with all his force, made them
bow down, while he, on his knees upon the floor, cried out for mercy,
and called to all the folk in words like these: “Behold ye of what sort
are the angels of paradise! for though they are called angels, here
shall ye see that they are not all of the male gender.” Then with a loud
voice he added:

“Angel beauteous, angel best,

Save me thou, make thou me blest.”

Upon this my charming creature laughed, and lifted the right hand and
gave him a papal benediction, with many pleasant words to boot. So
Michel Agnolo stood up, and said it was the custom to kiss the feet of
the Pope and the cheeks of angels; and having done the latter to Diego,
the boy blushed deeply, which immensely enhanced his beauty.

When this reception was over, we found the whole room full of sonnets,
which every man of us had made and sent to Michel Agnolo, My lad began
to read them, and read them all aloud so gracefully, that his infinite
charms were heightened beyond the powers of language to describe. Then
followed conversation and witty sayings, on which I will not enlarge,
for that is not my business; only one clever word must be mentioned, for
it was spoken by that admirable painter Giulio, who, looking round with
meaning [4] in his eyes on the bystanders, and fixing them particularly
upon the women, turned to Michel Agnolo and said: “My dear Michel
Agnolo, your nickname of crow very well suits those ladies to-day,
though I vow they are somewhat less fair than crows by the side of one
of the most lovely peacocks which fancy could have painted”

When the banquet was served and ready, and we were going to sit down to
table, Giulio asked leave to be allowed to place us. This being granted,
he took the women by the hand, and arranged them all upon the inner
side, with my fair in the centre; then he placed all the men on the
outside and me in the middle, saying there was no honour too great for
my deserts.; As a background to the women, there was spread an espalier
of natural jasmines in full beauty, [5] which set off their charms, and
especially Diego’s, to such great advantage, that words would fail to
describe the effect. Then we all of us fell to enjoying the abundance of
our host’s well-furnished table. The supper was followed by a short
concert of delightful music, voices joining in harmony with instruments;
and forasmuch as they were singing and playing from the book, my beauty
begged to be allowed to sing his part. He performed the music better
than almost all the rest, which so astonished the company that Giulio
and Michel Agnolo dropped their earlier tone of banter, exchanging it
for well-weighed terms of sober heartfelt admiration.

After the music was over, a certain Aurelio Ascolano, [6]remarkable for
his gift as an improvisatory poet, began to extol the women in choice
phrases of exquisite compliment. While he was chanting, the two girls
who had my beauty between them never left off chattering. One of them
related how she had gone wrong; the other asked mine how it had happened
with her, and who were her friends, and how long she had been settled in
Rome, and many other questions of the kind. It is true that, if I chose
to describe such laughable episodes, I could relate several odd things
which then occurred through Pantasilea’s jealousy on my account; but
since they form no part of my design, I pass them briefly over. At last
the conversation of those loose women vexed my beauty, whom we had
christened Pomona for the nonce; and Pomona, wanting to escape from
their silly talk, turned restlessly upon her chair, first to one side
and then to the other. The female brought by Giulio asked whether she
felt indisposed. Pomona answered, yes, she thought she was a month or so
with a child; this gave them the opportunity of feeling her body and
discovering the real sex of the supposed woman. Thereupon they quickly
withdrew their hands and rose from table, uttering such gibing words as
are commonly addressed to young men of eminent beauty. The whole room
rang with laughter and astonishment, in the midst of which Michel
Agnolo, assuming a fierce aspect, called out for leave to inflict on me
the penance he thought fit. When this was granted, he lifted me aloft
amid the clamour of the company, crying: “Long live the gentleman! long
live the gentleman!” and added that this was the punishment I deserved
for having played so fine a trick. Thus ended that most agreeable
supper-party, and each of us returned to his own dwelling at the close
of day.

Note 1. This sculptor came to Rome with his compatriot Baldassare
Peruzzi, and was employed upon the monument of Pope Adrian VI., which he
executed with some help from Tribolo.

Note 2. There were two artists at this epoch surnamed Bachiacca, the
twin sons of Ubertino Verdi, called respectively Francesco and Antonio.
Francesco was an excellent painter of miniature oil-pictures; Antonio
the first embroiderer of his age. The one alluded to here is probably
Francesco.

Note 3. 'Mancare di una sìpazza cosa.' The 'pazza cosa' may be the
supper-party or the 'cornacchia.'

Note 4. 'Virtuosamente.' Cellini uses the word 'virtuoso' in many
senses, but always more with reference to intellectual than moral
qualities. It denotes genius, artistic ability, masculine force, &c.

Note 5. 'Un tessuto di gelsumini naturali e bellissimi. Tessuto' is
properly something woven, a fabric; and I am not sure whether Cellini
does not mean that the ladies had behind their backs a tapestry
representing jasmines in a natural manner.

Note 6. Probably Eurialo d’Ascoli, a friend of Caro, Molza, Aretino.

XXXI

IT would take too long to describe in detail all the many and divers
pieces of work which I executed for a great variety of men. At present I
need only say that I devoted myself with sustained diligence and
industry to acquiring mastery in the several branches of art which I
enumerated a short while back. And so I went on labouring incessantly at
all of them; but since no opportunity has presented itself as yet for
describing my most notable performances, I shall wait to report them in
their proper place before very long. The Sienese sculptor, Michel
Agnolo, of whom I have recently been speaking, was at that time making
the monument of the late Pope Adrian. Giulio Romano went to paint for
the Marquis of Mantua. The other members of the club betook themselves
in different directions, each to his own business; so that our company
of artists was well-nigh altogether broken up.

About this time there fell into my hands some little Turkish poniards;
the handle as well as the blade of these daggers was made of iron, and
so too was the sheath. They were engraved by means of iron implements
with foliage in the most exquisite Turkish style, very neatly filled in
with gold. The sight of them stirred in me a great desire to try my own
skill in that branch, so different from the others which I practiced;
and finding that I succeeded to my satisfaction, I executed several
pieces. Mine were far more beautiful and more durable than the Turkish,
and this for divers reasons. One was that I cut my grooves much deeper
and with wider trenches in the steel; for this is not usual in Turkish
work. Another was that the Turkish arabesques are only composed of arum
leaves a few small sunflowers; [1] and though these have a certain
grace, they do not yield so lasting a pleasure as the patterns which we
use. It is true that in Italy we have several different ways of
designing foliage; the Lombards, for example, construct very beautiful
patterns by copying the leaves of briony and ivy in exquisite curves,
which are extremely agreeable to the eye; the Tuscans and the Romans
make a better choice, because they imitate the leaves of the acanthus,
commonly called bear’s-foot, with its stalks and flowers, curling in
divers wavy lines; and into these arabesques one may excellently well
insert the figures of little birds and different animals, by which the
good taste of the artist is displayed. Some hints for creatures of this
sort can be observed in nature among the wild flowers, as, for instance,
in snap-dragons and some few other plants, which must be combined and
developed with the help of fanciful imaginings by clever draughtsmen.
Such arabesques are called grotesques by the ignorant. They have
obtained this name of grotesques among the moderns through being found
in certain subterranean caverns in Rome by students of antiquity; which
caverns were formerly chambers, hot-baths, cabinets for study, halls,
and apartments of like nature. The curious discovering them in such
places (since the level of the ground has gradually been raised while
they have remained below, and since in Rome these vaulted rooms are
commonly called grottoes), it has followed that the word grotesque is
applied to the patterns I have mentioned. But this is not the right term
for them, inasmuch as the ancients, who delighted in composing monsters
out of goats, cows, and horses, called these chimerical hybrids by the
name of monsters; and the modern artificers of whom I speak, fashioned
from the foliage which they copied monsters of like nature; for these
the proper name is therefore monsters, and not grotesques. Well, then, I
designed patterns of this kind, and filled them in with gold, as I have
mentioned; and they were far more pleasing to the eye than the Turkish.

It chanced at that time that I lighted upon some jars or little antique
urns filled with ashes, and among the ashes were some iron rings inlaid
with gold (for the ancients also used that art), and in each of the
rings was set a tiny cameo of shell. On applying to men of learning,
they told me that these rings were worn as amulets by folk desirous of
abiding with mind unshaken in any extraordinary circumstance, whether of
good or evil fortune. Hereupon, at the request of certain noblemen who
were my friends, I undertook to fabricate some trifling rings of this
kind; but I made them of refined steel; and after they had been well
engraved and inlaid with gold, they produced a very beautiful effect;
and sometimes a single ring brought me more than forty crowns, merely in
payment for my labour.

It was the custom at that epoch to wear little golden medals, upon which
every nobleman or man of quality had some device or fancy of his own
engraved; and these were worn in the cap. Of such pieces I made very
many, and found them extremely difficult to work. I have already
mentioned the admirable craftsman Caradosso, who used to make such
ornaments; and as there were more than one figure on each piece, he
asked at least a hundred gold crowns for his fee. This being so-not,
however, because his prices were so high, but because he worked so
slowly-I began to be employed by certain noblemen, for whom, among other
things, I made a medal in competition with that great artist, and it had
four figures, upon which I had expended an infinity of labour. These men
of quality, when they compared my piece with that of the famous
Caradosso, declared that mine was by far the better executed and more
beautiful, and bade me ask what I liked as the reward of my trouble; for
since I had given them such perfect satisfaction, they wished to do the
like by me. I replied that my greatest reward and what I most desired
was to have rivalled the masterpieces of so eminent an artist; and that
if their lordships thought I had, I acknowledged myself to be most amply
rewarded. With this I took my leave, and they immediately sent me such a
very liberal present, that I was well content; indeed there grew in me
so great a spirit to do well, that to this event I attributed what will
afterwards be related of my progress.

Note 1. 'Gichero,' arum maculatum, and 'clizia,' the sunflower.

XXXII

I SHALL be obliged to digress a little from the history of my art,
unless I were to omit some annoying incidents which have happened in the
course of my troubled career. One of these, which I am about to
describe, brought me into the greatest risk of my life. I have already
told the story of the artists’ club, and of the farcical adventures
which happened owing to the woman whom I mentioned, Pantasilea, the one
who felt for me that false and fulsome love. She was furiously enraged
because of the pleasant trick by which I brought Diego to our banquet,
and she swore to be revenged on me. How she did so is mixed up with the
history of a young man called Luigi Pulci, who had recently come to
Rome. He was the son of one of the Pulcis, who had been beheaded for
incest with his daughter; and the youth possessed extraordinary gifts
for poetry together with sound Latin scholarship; he wrote well, was
graceful in manners, and of surprising personal beauty; he had just left
the service of some bishop, whose name I do not remember, and was
thoroughly tainted with a very foul disease. While he was yet a lad and
living in Florence, they used in certain places of the city to meet
together during the nights of summer on the public streets; and he,
ranking among the best of the improvisatori, sang there. His recitations
were so admirable, that the divine Michel Agnolo Buonarroti, that prince
of sculptors and of painters, went, wherever he heard that he would be,
with the greatest eagerness and delight to listen to him. There was a
man called Piloto, a goldsmith, very able in his art, who, together with
myself, joined Buonarroti upon these occasions. [1] Thus acquaintance
sprang up between me and Luigi Pulci; and so, after the lapse of many
years, he came, in the miserable plight which I have mentioned, to make
himself known to me again in Rome, beseeching me for God’s sake to help
him. Moved to compassion by his great talents, by the love of my
fatherland, and by my own natural tenderness of heart, I took him into
my house, and had him medically treated in such wise that, being but a
youth, he soon regained his health. While he was still pursuing his
cure, he never omitted his studies, and I provided him with books
according to the means at my disposal. The result was that Luigi,
recognising the great benefits he had received from me, oftentimes with
words and tears returned me thanks, protesting that if God should ever
put good fortune in his way, he would recompense me for my kindness. To
this I replied that I had not done for him as much as I desired, but
only what I could, and that it was the duty of human beings to be
mutually serviceable. Only I suggested that he should repay the service
I had rendered him by doing likewise to some one who might have the same
need of him as he had had of me.

The young man in question began to frequent the Court of Rome, where he
soon found a situation, and enrolled himself in the suite of a bishop, a
man of eighty years, who bore the title of Gurgensis. [2] This bishop
had a nephew called Messer Giovanni: he was a nobleman of Venice; and
the said Messer Giovanni made show of marvellous attachment to Luigi
Pulci’s talents; and under the pretence of these talents, he brought him
as familiar to himself as his own flesh blood. Luigi having talked of
me, and of his great obligations to me, with Messer Giovanni, the latter
expressed a wish to make my acquaintance. Thus then it came to pass,
that when I had upon a certain evening invited that woman Pantasilea to
supper, and had assembled a company of men of parts who were my friends,
just at the moment of our sitting down to table, Messer Giovanni and
Luigi Pulci arrived, and after some complimentary speeches, they both
remained to sup with us. The shameless strumpet, casting her eyes upon
the young man’s beauty, began at once to lay her nets for him;
perceiving which, when the supper had come to an agreeable end, I took
Luigi aside, and conjured him, by the benefits he said he owed me, to
have nothing whatever to do with her. To this he answered: “Good
heavens, Benvenuto! do you then take me for a madman?” I rejoined: “Not
for a madman, but for a young fellow;” and I swore to him by God: “I do
not give that woman the least thought; but for your sake I should be
sorry if through her you come to break your neck.” Upon these words he
vowed and prayed to God, that, if ever he but spoke with her, he might
upon the moment break his neck. I think the poor lad swore this oath to
God with all his heart, for he did break his neck, as I shall presently
relate. Messer Giovanni showed signs too evident of loving him in a
dishonourable way; for we began to notice that Luigi had new suits of
silk and velvet every morning, and it was known that he abandoned
himself altogether to bad courses. He neglected his fine talents, and
pretended not to see or recognise me, because I had once rebuked him,
and told him he was giving his soul to foul vices, which would make him
break his neck, as he had vowed.

Note 1. Piloto, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, was a prominent
figure in the Florentine society of artists, and a celebrated practical
joker. Vasari says that a young man of whom he had spoken ill murdered
him. Lasca’s Novelle, 'Le Cene,' should be studied by those who seek an
insight into this curious Bohemia of the sixteenth century.

Note 2. Girolamo Balbo, of the noble Venetian family, Bishop of Gurck,
in Carinthia.

XXXIII

NOW Messer Giovanni bought his favourite a very fine black horse, for
which he paid 150 crowns. The beast was admirably trained to hand, so
that Luigi could go daily to caracole around the lodgings of that
prostitute Pantasilea. Though I took notice of this, I paid it no
attention, only remarking that all things acted as their nature
prompted; and meanwhile I gave my whole mind to my studies. It came to
pass one Sunday evening that we were invited to sup together with the
Sienese sculptor, Michel Agnolo, and the time of the year was summer.
Bachiacca, of whom I have already spoken, was present at the party; and
he had brought with him his old flame, Pantasilea. When we were at
table, she sat between me and Bachiacca; but in the very middle of the
banquet she rose, and excused herself upon the pretext of a natural
need, saying she would speedily return. We, meanwhile, continued talking
very agreeably and supping; but she remained an unaccountably long time
absent. It chanced that, keeping my ears open, I thought I heard a sort
of subdued tittering in the street below. I had a knife in hand, which I
was using for my service at the table. The window was so close to where
I sat, that, by merely rising, I could see Luigi in the street, together
with Pantasilea; and I heard Luigi saying: “Oh, if that devil Benvenuto
only saw us, shouldn’t we just catch it!” She answered: “Have no fear;
only listen to the noise they’re making; we are the last thing they’re
thinking of.” At these words, having made them both well out, I leaped
from the window, and took Luigi by the cape; and certainly I should then
have killed him with the knife I held, but that he was riding a white
horse, to which he clapped spurs, leaving his cape in my grasp, in order
to preserve his life. Pantasilea took to her heels in the direction of a
neighbouring church. The company at supper rose immediately, and came
down, entreating me in a body to refrain from putting myself and them to
inconvenience for a strumpet. I told them that I should not have let
myself be moved on her account, but that I was bent on punishing the
infamous young man, who showed how little he regarded me. Accordingly I
would not yield to the remonstrances of those ingenious and worthy men,
but took my sword, and went alone toward Prati:-the house where we were
supping, I should say, stood close to the Castello gate, which led to
Prati. [1] Walking thus upon the road to Prati, I had not gone far
before the sun sank, and I re-entered Rome itself at a slow pace. Night
had fallen; darkness had come on; but the gates of Rome were not yet
shut.

Toward two hours after sunset, I walked along Pantasilea’s lodging, with
the intention, if Luigi Pulci were there, of doing something to the
discontent of both. When I heard and saw that no one but a poor
servant-girl called Canida was in the house, I went to put away my cloak
and the scabbard of my sword, and then returned to the house, which
stood behind the Banchi on the river Tiber. Just opposite stretched a
garden belonging to an innkeeper called Romolo. It was enclosed by a
thick hedge of thorns, in which I hid myself, standing upright, and
waiting till the woman came back with Luigi. After keeping watch awhile
there, my friend Bachiacca crept up to me; whether led by his own
suspicions or by the advice of others, I cannot say. In a low voice he
called out to me: “Gossip” (for so we used to name ourselves for fun);
and then he prayed me for God’s love, using the words which follow, with
tears in the tone of his voice: “Dear gossip, I entreat you not to
injure that poor girl; she at least has erred in no wise in this
matter-no, not at all.” When I heard what he was saying, I replied: “If
you don’t take yourself off now, at this first word I utter, I will
bring my sword here down upon your head.” Overwhelmed with fright, my
poor gossip was suddenly taken ill with the colic, and withdrew to ease
himself apart; indeed, he could not buy obey the call. There was a
glorious heaven of stars, which shed good light to see by. All of a
sudden I was aware of the noise of many horses; they were coming toward
me from the one side and the other. It turned out to be Luigi and
Pantasilea, attended by a certain Messer Benvegnato of Perugia, who was
chamberlain to Pope Clement, and followed by four doughty captains of
Perugia, with some other valiant soldiers in the flower of youth;
altogether reckoned, there were more than twelve swords. When I
understood the matter, and saw not how to fly, I did my best to crouch
into the hedge. But the thorns pricked and hurt me, goading me to
madness like a bull; and I had half resolved to take a leap and hazard
my escape. Just then Luigi, with his arm round Pantasilea’s neck, was
heard crying: “I must kiss you once again, if only to insult that
traitor Benvenuto.” At that moment, annoyed as I was by the prickles,
and irritated by the young man’s words, I sprang forth, lifted my sword
on high, and shouted at the top of my voice: “You are all dead folk!” My
blow descended on the shoulder of Luigi; but the satyrs who doted on
him, had steeled his person round with coasts of mail and such-like
villainous defences; still the stroke fell with crushing force. Swerving
aside, the sword hit Pantasilea full in nose and mouth. Both she and
Luigi grovelled on the ground, while Bachiacca, with his breeches down
to heels, screamed out and ran away. Then I turned upon the others
boldly with my sword; and those valiant fellows, hearing a sudden
commotion in the tavern, thought there was an army coming of a hundred
men; and though they drew their swords with spirit, yet two horses which
had taken fright in the tumult cast them into such disorder that a
couple of the best riders were thrown, and the remainder took to flight.
I, seeing that the affair was turning out well, for me, ran as quickly
as I could, and came off with honour from the engagement, not wishing to
tempt fortune more than was my duty. During this hurly-burly, some of
the soldiers and captains wounded themselves with their own arms; and
Messer Benvegnato, the Pope’s chamberlain, was kicked and trampled by
his mule. One of the servants also, who had drawn his sword, fell down
together with his master, and wounded him badly in the hand. Maddened by
the pain, he swore louder than all the rest in his Perugian jargon,
crying out: “By the body of God, I will take care that Benvegnato
teaches Benvenuto how to live.” He afterwards commissioned one of the
captains who were with him (braver perhaps than the others, but with
less aplomb, as being but a youth) to seek me out. The fellow came to
visit me in the place of by retirement; that was the palace of a great
Neapolitan nobleman, who had become acquainted with me in my art, and
had besides taken a fancy to me because of my physical and mental
aptitude for fighting, to which my lord himself was personally well
inclined. So, then, finding myself made much of, and being precisely in
my element, I gave such answer to the captain as I think must have made
him earnestly repent of having come to look me up. After a few days,
when the wounds of Luigi, and the strumpet, and the rest were healing,
this great Neapolitan nobleman received overtures from Messer
Benvegnato; for the prelate’s anger had cooled, and he proposed to
ratify a peace between me and Luigi and the soldiers, who had personally
no quarrel with me, and only wished to make my acquaintance. Accordingly
my friend the nobleman replied that he would bring me where they chose
to appoint, and that he was very willing to effect a reconciliation. He
stipulated that no words should be bandied about on either side, seeing
that would be little to their credit; it was enough to go through the
form of drinking together and exchanging kisses; he for his part
undertook to do the talking, and promised to settle the matter to their
honour. This arrangement was carried out. On Thursday evening my
protector took me to the house of Messer Benvegnato, where all the
soldiers who had been present at that discomfiture were assembled, and
already seated at table. My nobleman was attended by thirty brave
fellows, all well armed; a circumstance which Messer Benvegnato had not
anticipated. When we came into the hall, he walking first, I following,
he speak to this effect: “God save you, gentlemen; we have come to see
you, I and Benvenuto, whom I love like my own brother; and we are ready
to do whatever you propose.” Messer Benvegnato, seeing the hall filled
with such a crowd of men, called out: “It is only peace, and nothing
else, we ask of you.” Accordingly he promised that the governor of Rome
and his catchpoles should give me no trouble. Then we made peace, and I
returned to my shop, where I could not stay an hour without that
Neapolitan nobleman either coming to see me or sending for me.

Meanwhile Luigi Pulci, having recovered from his wound, rode every day
upon the black horse which was so well trained to heel and bridle. One
day, among others, after it had rained a little, and he was making his
horse curvet just before Pantasilea’s door, he slipped and fell, with
the horse upon him. His right leg was broken short off in the thigh; and
after a few days he died there in Pantisilea’s lodgings, discharging
thus the vow he registered so heartily to Heaven. Even so may it be seen
that God keeps account of the good and the bad, and gives to each one
what he merits.

Note 1. The Porta Castello was the gate called after the Castle of S.
Angelo. Prati, so far as I can make out, was an open space between the
Borgo and the Bridge of S. Angelo. In order to get inside Rome itself,
Cellini had to pass a second gate. His own lodging and Pantasilea’s
house were in the quarter of the Bianchi, where are now the Via Giulia
and Via de’ Banchi Vecchi.

XXXIV

THE WHOLE world was now in warfare. [1] Pope Clement had sent to get
some troops from Giovanni de’ Medici, and when they came, they made such
disturbances in Rome, that it was ill living in open shops. [2] On this
account I retired to a good snug house behind the Banchi, where I worked
for all the friends I had acquired. Since I produced few things of much
importance at that period, I need not waste time in talking about them.
I took much pleasure in music and amusements of the kind. On the death
of Giovanni de’ Medici in Lombardy, the Pope, at the advice of Messer
Jacopo Salviati, dismissed the five bands he had engaged; and when the
Constable of Bourbon knew there were no troops in Rome, he pushed his
army with the utmost energy up to the city. The whole of Rome upon this
flew to arms. I happened to be intimate with Alessandro, the son of
Piero del Bene, who, at the time when the Colonnesi entered Rome, had
requested me to guard his palace. [3] On this more serious occasion,
therefore, he prayed me to enlist fifty comrades for the protection of
the said house, appointing me their captain, as I had been when the
Colonnesi came. So I collected fifty young men of the highest courage,
and we took up our quarters in his palace, with good pay and excellent
appointments.

Bourbon’s army had now arrived before the walls of Rome, and Alessandro
begged me to go with him to reconnoitre. So we went with one of the
stoutest fellows in our Company; and on the way a youth called Cecchino
della Casa joined himself to us. On reaching the walls by the Campo
Santo, we could see that famous army, which was making every effort to
enter the town. Upon the ramparts where we took our station several
young men were lying killed by the besiegers; the battle raged there
desperately, and there was the densest fog imaginable. I turned to
Alessandro and said: “Let us go home as soon as we can, for there is
nothing to be done here; you see the enemies are mounting, and our men
are in flight.” Alessandro, in a panic, cried: “Would God that we had
never come here!” and turned in maddest haste to fly. I took him up
somewhat sharply with these words: “Since you have brought me here, I
must perform some action worthy of a man;” and directing my arquebuse
where I saw the thickest and most serried troop of fighting men, I aimed
exactly at one whom I remarked to be higher than the rest; the fog
prevented me from being certain whether he was on horseback or on foot.
Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino, and bade them discharge their
arquebuses, showing them how to avoid being hit by the besiegers. When
we had fired two rounds apiece, I crept cautiously up to the wall, and
observing among the enemy a most extraordinary confusion, I discovered
afterwards that one of our shots had killed the Constable of Bourbon;
and from what I subsequently learned, he was the man whom I had first
noticed above the heads of the rest. [4]

Quitting our position on the ramparts, we crossed the Campo Santo, and
entered the city by St. Peter’s; then coming out exactly at the church
of Santo Agnolo, we got with the greatest difficulty to the great gate
of the castle; for the generals Renzo di Ceri and Orazio Baglioni were
wounding and slaughtering everybody who abandoned the defence of the
walls. [5] By the time we had reached the great gate, part of the foemen
had already entered Rome, and we had them in our rear. The castellan had
ordered the portcullis to be lowered, in order to do which they cleared
a little space, and this enabled us four to get inside. On the instant
that I entered, the captain Pallone de’ Medici claimed me as being of
the Papal household, and forced me to abandon Alessandro, which I had to
do, much against my will. I ascended to the keep, and at the same
instant Pope Clement came in through the corridors into the castle; he
had refused to leave the palace of St. Peter earlier, being unable to
believe that his enemies would effect their entrance into Rome. [6]
Having got into the castle in this way, I attached myself to certain
pieces of artillery, which were under the command of a bombardier called
Giuliano Fiorentino. Leaning there against the battlements, the unhappy
man could see his poor house being sacked, and his wife and children
outraged; fearing to strike his own folk, he dared not discharge the
cannon, and flinging the burning fuse upon the ground, he wept as though
his heart would break, and tore his cheeks with both his hands. [7] Some
of the other bombardiers were behaving in like manner; seeing which, I
took one of the matches, and got the assistance of a few men who were
not overcome by their emotions. I aimed some swivels and falconets at
points where I saw it would be useful, and killed with them a good
number of the enemy. Had it not been for this, the troops who poured
into Rome that morning, and were marching straight upon the castle,
might possibly have entered it with ease, because the artillery was
doing them no damage. I went on firing under the eyes of several
cardinals and lords, who kept blessing me and giving me the heartiest
encouragement. In my enthusiasm I strove to achieve the impossible; let
it suffice that it was I who saved the castle that morning, and brought
the other bombardiers back to their duty. [8] I worked hard the whole of
that day; and when the evening came, while the army was marching into
Rome through the Trastevere, Pope Clement appointed a great Roman
nobleman named Antonio Santacroce to be captain of all the gunners. The
first thing this man did was to come to me, and having greeted me with
the utmost kindness, he stationed me with five fine pieces of artillery
on the highest point of the castle, to which the name of the Angel
specially belongs. This circular eminence goes round the castle, and
surveys both Prati and the town of Rome. The captain put under my orders
enough men to help in managing my guns, and having seen me paid in
advance, he gave me rations of bread and a little wine, and begged me to
go forward as I had begun. I was perhaps more inclined by nature to the
profession of arms than to the one I had adopted, and I took such
pleasure in its duties that I discharged them better than those of my
own art. Night came, the enemy had entered Rome, and we who were in the
castle (especially myself, who have always taken pleasure in
extraordinary sights) stayed gazing on the indescribable scene of tumult
and conflagration in the streets below. People who were anywhere else
but where we were, could not have formed the least imagination of what
it was. I will not, however, set myself to describe that tragedy, but
will content myself with continuing the history of my own life and the
circumstances which properly belong to it.

Note 1. War had broken out in 1521 between Charles V and Francis I,
which disturbed all Europe and involved the States of Italy in serious
complications. At the moment when this chapter opens, the Imperialist
army under the Constable of Bourbon was marching upon Rome in 1527.

Note 2. These troops entered Rome in October 1526. They were disbanded
in March, 1527.

Note 3. Cellini here refers to the attack made upon Rome by the great
Ghibelline house of Colonna, led by their chief captain, Pompeo, in
September 1526. They took possession of the city and drove Clement into
the Castle of S. Angelo, where they forced him to agree to terms
favouring the Imperial cause. It was customary for Roman gentlemen to
hire bravi for the defence of their palaces when any extraordinary
disturbance was expected, as, for example, upon the vacation of the
Papal Chair.

Note 4. All historians of the sack of Rome agree in saying that Bourbon
was shot dead while placing ladders against the outworks near the shop
Cellini mentions. But the honour of firing the arquebuse which brought
him down cannot be assigned to any one in particular. Very different
stories were current on the subject. See Gregorovius, 'Stadt Rom.,' vol.
viii. p. 522.

Note 5. For Renzo di Ceri see above. Orazio Baglioni, of the
semi-princely Perugian family, was a distinguished Condottiere. He
subsequently obtained the captaincy of the Bande Nere, and died fighting
near Naples in 1528. Orazio murdered several of his cousins in order to
acquire the lordship of Perugia. His brother Malatesta undertook to
defend Florence in the siege of 1530, and sold the city by treason to
Clement.

Note 6. Giovio, in his Life of the Cardinal Prospero Colonna, relates
how he accompanied Clement in his flight from the Vatican to the castle.
While passing some open portions of the gallery, he threw his violent
mantle and cap of a Monsignore over the white stole of the Pontiff, for
fear he might be shot at by the soldiers in the streets below.

Note 7. The short autobiography of Raffaello da Montelupo, a man in many
respects resembling Cellini, confirms this part of our author’s
narrative. It is one of the most interesting pieces of evidence
regarding what went on inside the castle during the sack of Rome.
Montelupo was also a gunner, and commanded two pieces.

Note 8. This is an instance of Cellini’s exaggeration. He did more than
yeoman’s service, no doubt. But we cannot believe that, without him, the
castle would have been taken.

XXXV

DURING the course of my artillery practice, which I never intermitted
through the whole month passed by us beleaguered in the castle, I met
with a great many very striking accidents, all of them worthy to be
related. But since I do not care to be too prolix, or to exhibit myself
outside the sphere of my profession, I will omit the larger part of
them, only touching upon those I cannot well neglect, which shall be the
fewest in number and the most remarkable. The first which comes to hand
is this: Messer Antonio Santacroce had made me come down from the Angel,
in order to fire on some houses in the neighbourhood, where certain of
our besiegers had been seen to enter. While I was firing, a cannon shot
reached me, which hit the angle of a battlement, and carried off enough
of it to be the cause why I sustained no injury. The whole mass struck
me in the chest and took my breath away. I lay stretched upon the ground
like a dead man, and could hear what the bystanders were saying. Among
them all, Messer Antonio Santacroce lamented greatly, exclaiming: “Alas,
alas! we have lost the best defender that we had.” Attracted by the
uproar, one of my comrades ran up; he was called Gianfrancesco, and was
a bandsman, but was far more naturally given to medicine than to music.
On the spot he flew off, crying for a stoop of the very best Greek wine.
Then he made a tile red-hot, and cast upon it a good handful of
wormwood; after which he sprinkled the Greek wine; and when the wormwood
was well soaked, he laid it on my breast, just where the bruise was
visible to all. Such was the virtue of the wormwood that I immediately
regained my scattered faculties. I wanted to begin to speak; but could
not; for some stupid soldiers had filled my mouth with earth, imagining
that by so doing they were giving me the sacrament; and indeed they were
more like to have excommunicated me, since I could with difficulty come
to myself again, the earth doing me more mischief than the blow.
However, I escaped that danger, and returned to the rage and fury of the
guns, pursuing my work there with all the ability and eagerness that I
could summon.

Pope Clement, by this, had sent to demand assistance from the Duke of
Urbino, who was with the troops of Venice; he commissioned the envoy to
tell his Excellency that the Castle of S. Angelo would send up every
evening three beacons from its summit accompanied by three discharges of
the cannon thrice repeated, and that so long as this signal was
continued, he might take for granted that the castle had not yielded. I
was charged with lighting the beacons and firing the guns for this
purpose; and all this while I pointed my artillery by day upon the
places where mischief could be done. The Pope, in consequence, began to
regard me with still greater favour, because he saw that I discharged my
functions as intelligently as the task demanded. Aid from the Duke of
Urbino [1] never came; on which, as it is not my business, I will make
no further comment.

Note 1. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, commanded a
considerable army as general of the Church, and was now acting for
Venice. Why he effected no diversion while the Imperial troops were
marching upon Rome, and why he delayed to relieve the city, was never
properly explained. Folk attributed his impotent conduct partly to a
natural sluggishness in warfare, and partly to his hatred for the house
of Medici. Leo X had deprived him of his dukedom, and given it to a
Medicean prince. It is to this that Cellini probably refers in the
cautious phrase which ends the chapter.

XXXVI

WHILE I was at work upon that diabolical task of mine, there came from
time to time to watch me some of the cardinals who were invested in the
castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna and the Cardinal de’
Gaddi. [1] I often told them not to show themselves, since their nasty
red caps gave a fair mark to our enemies. From neighbouring buildings,
such as the Torre de’ Bini, we ran great peril when they were there; and
at last I had them locked off, and gained thereby their deep ill-will. I
frequently received visits also from the general, Orazio Baglioni, who
was very well affected toward me. One day while he was talking with me,
he noticed something going forward in a drinking-place outside the Porta
di Castello, which bore the name of Baccanello. This tavern had for sign
a sun painted between two windows, of a bright red colour. The windows
being closed, Signor Orazio concluded that a band of soldiers were
carousing at table just between them and behind the sun. So he said to
me “Benvenuto, if you think that you could hit that wall an ell’s
breadth from the sun with your demi-cannon here, I believe you would be
doing a good stroke of business, for there is a great commotion there,
and men of much importance must probably be inside the house.” I
answered that I felt quite capable of hitting the sun in its centre, but
that a barrel full of stones, which was standing close to the muzzle of
the gun, might be knocked down by the shock of the discharge and the
blast of the artillery. He rejoined: “Don’t waste time, Benvenuto. In
the first place, it is not possible, where it is standing, that the
cannon’s blast should bring it down; and even if it were to fall, and
the Pope himself was underneath, the mischief would not be so great as
you imagine. Fire, then, only fire!” Taking no more thought about it, I
struck the sun in the centre, exactly as I said I should. The cask was
dislodged, as I predicted, and fell precisely between Cardinal Farnese
and Messer Jacopo Salviati. [2] It might very well have dashed out the
brains of both of them, except that just at that very moment Farnese was
reproaching Salviati with having caused the sack of Rome, and while they
stood apart from one another to exchange opprobrious remarks, my gabion
fell without destroying them. When he heard the uproar in the court
below, good Signor Orazio dashed off in a hurry; and I, thrusting my
neck forward where the cask had fallen, heard some people saying; “It
would not be a bad job to kill that gunner!” Upon this I turned two
falconets toward the staircase, with mind resolved to let blaze on the
first man who attempted to come up. The household of Cardinal Farnese
must have received orders to go and do me some injury; accordingly I
prepared to receive them, with a lighted match in hand. Recognising some
who were approaching, I called out: “You lazy lubbers, if you don’t pack
off from there, and if but a man’s child among you dares to touch the
staircase, I have got two cannon loaded, which will blow you into
powder. Go and tell the Cardinal that I was acting at the order of
superior officers, and that what we have done and are doing is in
defence of them priests, [3] and not to hurt them.” They made away; and
then came Signor Orazio Baglioni, running. I bade him stand back, else
I’d murder him; for I knew very well who he was. He drew back a little,
not without a certain show of fear, and called out: “Benvenuto, I am
your friend!” To this I answered: “Sir, come up, but come alone, and
then come as you like.” The general, who was a man of mighty pride,
stood still a moment, and then said angrily: “I have a good mind not to
come up again, and to do quite the opposite of that which I intended
toward you.” I replied that just as I was put there to defend my
neighbours, I was equally well able to defend myself too. He said that
he was coming alone; and when he arrived at the top of the stairs, his
features were more discomposed that I thought reasonable. So I kept my
hand upon my sword, and stood eyeing him askance. Upon this he began to
laugh, and the colour coming back into his face, he said to me with the
most pleasant manner: “Friend Benvenuto, I bear you as great love as I
have it in my heart to give; and in God’s good time I will render you
proof of this. Would to God that you had killed those two rascals; for
one of them is the cause of all this trouble, and the day perchance will
come when the other will be found the cause of something even worse.” He
then begged me, if I should be asked, not to say that he was with me
when I fired the gun; and for the rest bade me be of good cheer. The
commotion which the affair made was enormous, and lasted a long while.
However, I will not enlarge upon it further, only adding that I was
within an inch of revenging my father on Messer Jacopo Salviati, who had
grievously injured him, according to my father’s complaints. As it was,
unwittingly I gave the fellow a great fright. Of Farnese I shall say
nothing here, because it will appear in its proper place how well it
would have been if I had killed him.

Note 1. Benedetto Accolti of Arezzo, Archbishop of Ravenna in 1524,
obtained the hat in 1527, three days before the sack of Rome. He was a
distinguished man of letters. Niccolò Gaddi was created Cardinal on the
same day as Accolti. We shall hear more of him in Cellini’s pages.

Note 2. Alessandro Farnese, Dean of the Sacred College, and afterwards
Pope Paul III. Of Giacopo Salviati we have already heard, p. 14.

Note 3. 'Loro preti.' Perhaps 'their priests.'

XXXVII

I PURSUED my business of artilleryman, and every day performed some
extraordinary feat, whereby the credit and the favour I acquired with
the Pope was something indescribable. There never passed a day but what
I killed one or another of our enemies in the besieging army. On one
occasion the Pope was walking round the circular keep, [1] when he
observed a Spanish Colonel in the Prati; he recognised the man by
certain indications, seeing that this officer had formerly been in his
service; and while he fixed his eyes on him, he kept talking about him.
I, above by the Angel, knew nothing of all this, but spied a fellow down
there, busying himself about the trenches with a javelin in his hand; he
was dressed entirely in rose-colour; and so, studying the worst that I
could do against him, I selected a gerfalcon which I had at hand; it is
a piece of ordnance larger and longer than a swivel, and about the size
of a demiculverin. This I emptied, and loaded it again with a good
charge of fine powder mixed with the coarser sort; then I aimed it
exactly at the man in red, elevating prodigiously, because a piece of
that calibre could hardly be expected to carry true at such a distance.
I fired, and hit my man exactly in the middle. He had trussed his sword
in front, [2] for swagger, after a way those Spaniards have; and my
ball, when it struck him, broke upon the blade, and one could see the
fellow cut in two fair halves. The Pope, who was expecting nothing of
this kind, derived great pleasure and amazement from the sight, both
because it seemed to him impossible that one should aim and hit the mark
at such a distance, and also because the man was cut in two, and he
could not comprehend how this should happen. He sent for me, and asked
about it. I explained all the devices I had used in firing; but told him
that why the man was cut in halves, neither he nor I could know. Upon my
bended knees I then besought him to give me the pardon of his blessing
for that homicide; and for all the others I had committed in the castle
in the service of the Church. Thereat the Pope, raising his hand, and
making a large open sign of the cross upon my face, told me that he
blessed me, and that he gave me pardon for all murders I had ever
perpetrated, or should ever perpetrate, in the service of the Apostolic
Church. When I felt him, I went aloft, and never stayed from firing to
the utmost of my power; and few were the shots of mine that missed their
mark. My drawing, and my fine studies in my craft, and my charming art
of music, all were swallowed up in the din of that artillery; and if I
were to relate in detail all the splendid things I did in that infernal
work of cruelty, I should make the world stand by and wonder. But, not
to be too prolix, I will pass them over. Only I must tell a few of the
most remarkable, which are, as it were, forced in upon me.

To begin then: pondering day and night what I could render for my own
part in defence of Holy Church, and having noticed that the enemy
changed guard and marched past through the great gate of Santo Spirito,
which was within a reasonable range, I thereupon directed my attention
to that spot; but, having to shoot sideways, I could not do the damage
that I wished, although I killed a fair percentage every day. This
induced our adversaries, when they saw their passage covered by my guns,
to load the roof of a certain house one night with thirty gabions, which
obstructed the view I formerly enjoyed. Taking better thought than I had
done of the whole situation, I now turned all my five pieces of
artillery directly on the gabions, and waited till the evening hour,
when they changed guard. Our enemies, thinking they were safe, came on
at greater ease and in a closer body than usual; whereupon I set fire to
my blow-pipes, [3] Not merely did I dash to pieces the gabions which
stood in my way; but, what was better, by that one blast I slaughtered
more than thirty men. In consequence of this manœuvre, which I
repeated twice, the soldiers were thrown into such disorder, that being,
moreover, encumbered with the spoils of that great sack, and some of
them desirous of enjoying the fruits of their labour, they oftentimes
showed a mind to mutiny and take themselves away from Rome. However,
after coming to terms with their valiant captain, Gian di Urbino, [4]
they were ultimately compelled, at their excessive inconvenience, to
take another road when they changed guard. It cost them three miles of
march, whereas before they had but half a mile. Having achieved this
feat, I was entreated with prodigious favours by all the men of quality
who were invested in the castle. This incident was so important that I
thought it well to relate it, before finishing the history of things
outside my art, the which is the real object of my writing: forsooth, if
I wanted to ornament my biography with such matters, I should have far
too much to tell. There is only one more circumstance which, now that
the occasion offers, I propose to record.

Note 1. The Mastio or main body of Hadrian’s Mausoleum, which was
converted into a fortress during the Middle Ages.

Note 2. 'S’aveva messo la spada dinanzi.' Perhaps 'was bearing his sword
in front of him.'

Note 3. 'Soffioni,' the cannon being like tubes to blow a fire up.

Note 4. This captain was a Spaniard, who played a very considerable
figure in the war, distinguishing himself at the capture of Genoa and
the battle of Lodi in 1522, and afterwards acting as Lieutenant-General
to the Prince of Orange. He held Naples against Orazio Baglioni in 1528,
and died before Spello in 1529.

XXXVIII

I SHALL skip over some intervening circumstances, and tell how Pope
Clement, wishing to save the tiaras and the whole collection of the
great jewels of the Apostolic Camera, had me called, and shut himself up
together with me and the Cavalierino in a room alone. [1] This
cavalierino had been a groom in the stable of Filippo Strozzi; he was
French, and a person of the lowest birth; but being a most faithful
servant, the Pope had made him very rich, and confided in him like
himself. So the Pope, the Cavaliere, and I, being shut up together, they
laid before me the tiaras and jewels of the regalia; and his Holiness
ordered me to take all the gems out of their gold settings. This I
accordingly did; afterwards I wrapt them separately up in bits of paper
and we sewed them into the linings of the Pope’s and the Cavaliere’s
clothes. Then they gave me all the gold, which weighed about two hundred
pounds, and bade me melt it down as secretly as I was able. I went up to
the Angel, where I had my lodging, and could lock the door so as to be
free from interruption. There I built a little draught-furnace of
bricks, with a largish pot, shaped like an open dish, at the bottom of
it; and throwing the gold upon the coals, it gradually sank through and
dropped into the pan. While the furnace was working I never left off
watching how to annoy our enemies; and as their trenches were less than
a stone’s-throw right below us, I was able to inflict considerable
damage on them with some useless missiles, [2] of which there were
several piles, forming the old munition of the castle. I chose a swivel
and a falconet, which were both a little damaged in the muzzle, and
filled them with the projectiles I have mentioned. When I fired my guns,
they hurtled down like mad, occasioning all sorts of unexpected mischief
in the trenches. Accordingly I kept these pieces always going at the
same time that the gold was being melted down; and a little before
vespers I noticed some one coming along the margin of the trench on
muleback. The mule was trotting very quickly, and the man was talking to
the soldiers in the trenches. I took the precaution of discharging my
artillery just before he came immediately opposite; and so, making a
good calculation, I hit my mark. One of the fragments struck him in the
face; the rest were scattered on the mule, which fell dead. A tremendous
uproar rose up from the trench; I opened fire with my other piece, doing
them great hurt. The man turned out to be the Prince of Orange, who was
carried through the trenches to a certain tavern in the neighbourhood,
whither in a short while all the chief folk of the army came together.

When Pope Clement heard what I had done, he sent at once to call for me,
and inquired into the circumstance. I related the whole, and added that
the man must have been of the greatest consequence, because the inn to
which they carried him had been immediately filled by all the chiefs of
the army, so far at least as I could judge. The Pope, with a shrewd
instinct, sent for Messer Antonio Santacroce, the nobleman who, as I
have said, was chief and commander of the gunners. He bade him order all
us bombardiers to point our pieces, which were very numerous, in one
mass upon the house, and to discharge them all together upon the signal
of an arquebuse being fired. He judged that if we killed the generals,
the army, which was already almost on the point of breaking up, would
take flight. God perhaps had heard the prayers they kept continually
making, and meant to rid them in this manner of those impious scoundrels.

We put our cannon in order at the command of Santacroce, and waited for
the signal. But when Cardinal Orsini [3] became aware of what was going
forward, he began to expostulate with the Pope, protesting that the
thing by no means ought to happen, seeing they were on the point of
concluding an accommodation, and that if the generals were killed, the
rabble of the troops without a leader would storm the castle and
complete their utter ruin. Consequently they could by no means allow the
Pope’s plan to be carried out. The poor Pope, in despair, seeing himself
assassinated both inside the castle and without, said that he left them
to arrange it. On this, our orders were countermanded; but I, who chafed
against the leash, [4] when I knew that they were coming round to bid me
stop from firing, let blaze one of my demi-cannons, and struck a pillar
in the courtyard of the house, around which I saw a crowd of people
clustering. This shot did such damage to the enemy that it was like to
have made them evacuate the house. Cardinal Orsini was absolutely for
having me hanged or put to death; but the Pope took up my cause with
spirit. The high words that passed between them, though I well know what
they were, I will not here relate, because I make no profession of
writing history. It is enough for me to occupy myself with my own
affairs.

Note 1. This personage cannot be identified. The Filippo Strozzi
mentioned as having been his master was the great opponent of the
Medicean despotism, who killed himself in prison after the defeat of
Montemurlo in 1539. He married in early life a daughter of Piero de’
Medici.

Note 2. 'Passatojacci.'

Note 3. Franciotto Orsini was educated in the household of his kinsman
Lorenzo de’ Medici. He followed the profession of arms, and married; but
after losing his wife took orders, and received the hat in 1517.

Note 4. 'Io che non potevo stare alle mosse.'

XXXIX

AFTER I had melted down the gold, I took it to the Pope, who thanked me
cordially for what I had done, and ordered the Cavalierino to give me
twenty-five crowns, apologising to me for his inability to give me more.
A few days afterwards the articles of peace were signed. I went with
three hundred comrades in the train of Signor Orazio Baglioni toward
Perugia; and there he wished to make me captain of the company, but I
was unwilling at the moment, saying that I wanted first to go and see my
father, and to redeem the ban which was still in force against me at
Florence. Signor Orazio told me that he had been appointed general of
the Florentines; and Sir Pier Maria del Lotto, the envoy from Florence,
was with him, to whom he specially recommended me as his man. 1

In course of time I came to Florence in the company of several comrades.
The plague was raging with indescribable fury. When I reached home, I
found my good father, who thought either that I must have been killed in
the sack of Rome, or else that I should come back to him a beggar.
However, I entirely defeated both these expectations; for I was alive,
with plenty of money, a fellow to wait on me, and a good horse. My joy
on greeting the old man was so intense, that, while he embraced and
kissed me, I thought that I must die upon the spot. After I had narrated
all the devilries of that dreadful sack, and had given him a good
quantity of crowns which I had gained by my soldiering, and when we had
exchanged our tokens of affection, he went off to the Eight to redeem my
ban. It so happened that one of those magistrates who sentenced me, was
now again a member of the board. It was the very man who had so
inconsiderately told my father he meant to march me out into the country
with the lances. My father took this opportunity of addressing him with
some meaning words, in order to mark his revenge, relying on the favour
which Orazio Baglioni showed me.

Matters standing thus, I told my father how Signor Orazio had appointed
me captain, and that I ought to begin to think of enlisting my company.
At these words the poor old man was greatly disturbed, and begged me for
God’s sake not to turn my thoughts to such an enterprise, although he
knew I should be fit for this or yet a greater business, adding that his
other son, my brother, was already a most valiant soldier, and that I
ought to pursue the noble art in which I had laboured so many years and
with such diligence of study. Although I promised to obey him, he
reflected, like a man of sense, that if Signor Orazio came to Florence,
I could not withdraw myself from military service, partly because I had
passed my word, as well as for other reasons; He therefore thought of a
good expedient for sending me away, and spoke to me as follows: “Oh, my
dear son, the plague in this town is raging with immitigable violence,
and I am always fancying you will come home infected with it. I
remember, when I was a young man, that I went to Mantua, where I was
very kindly received, and stayed there several years. I pray and command
you, for the love of me, to pack off and go thither; and I would have
you do this to-day rather than to-morrow.”

Note 1. Pier Maria di Lotto of S. Miniato was notary to the Florentine
Signoria. He collected the remnants of the Bandle Nere, and gave them
over to Orazio Baglioni, who contrived to escape from S. Angelo in
safety to Perugia.

XL

I HAD always taken pleasure in seeing the world; and having never been
in Mantua, I went there very willingly. Of the money I had brought to
Florence, I left the greater part with my good father, promising to help
him wherever I might be, and confiding him to the care of my elder
sister. Her name was Cosa; and since she never cared to marry, she was
admitted as a nun in Santa Orsola; but she put off taking the veil, in
order to keep house for our old father, and to look after my younger
sister, who was married to one Bartolommeo, a surgeon. So then, leaving
home with my father’s blessing, I mounted my good horse, and rode off on
it to Mantua.

It would take too long to describe that little journey in detail. The
whole world being darkened over with plague and war, I had the greatest
difficulty in reaching Mantua. However, in the end, I got there, and
looked about for work to do, which I obtained from a Maestro Niccolò of
Milan, goldsmith to the Duke of Mantua. Having thus settled down to
work, I went after two days to visit Messer Giulio Romano, that most
excellent painter, of whom I have already spoken, and my very good
friend. He received me with the tenderest caresses, and took it very ill
that I had not dismounted at his house. He was living like a lord, and
executing a great work for the Duke outside the city gates, in a place
called Del Te. It was a vast and prodigious undertaking, as may still, I
suppose, be seen by those who go there. [1]

Messer Giulio lost no time in speaking of me to the Duke in terms of the
warmest praise. [2] That Prince commissioned me to make a model for a
reliquary, to hold the blood of Christ, which they have there, and say
was brought them by Longinus. Then he turned to Giulio, bidding him
supply me with a design for it. To this Giulio replied: “My lord,
Benvenuto is a man who does not need other people’s sketches, as your
Excellency will be very well able to judge when you shall see his
model.” I set hand to the work, and made a drawing for the reliquary,
well adapted to contain the sacred phial. Then I made a little waxen
model of the cover. This was a seated Christ, supporting his great cross
aloft with the left hand, while he seemed to lean against it, and with
the fingers of his right hand he appeared to be opening the wound in his
side. When it was finished, it pleased the Duke so much that he heaped
favours on me, and gave me to understand that he would keep me in his
service with such appointments as should enable me to live in affluence.

Meanwhile, I had paid my duty to the Cardinal his brother, who begged
the Duke to allow me to make the pontifical seal of his most reverend
lordship. [3] This I began; but while I was working at it I caught a
quartan fever. During each access of this fever I was thrown into
delirium, when I cursed Mantua and its master and whoever stayed there
at his own liking. These words were reported to the Duke by the Milanese
goldsmith, who had not omitted to notice that the Duke wanted to employ
me. When the Prince heard the ravings of my sickness, he flew into a
passion against me; and I being out of temper with Mantua, our bad
feeling was reciprocal. The seal was finished after four months,
together with several other little pieces I made for the Duke under the
name of the Cardinal. His Reverence paid me well, and bade me return to
Rome, to that marvellous city where we had made acquaintance.

I quitted Mantua with a good sum of crowns, and reached Governo, where
the most valiant general Giovanni had been killed. [4] Here I had a
slight relapse of fever, which did not interrupt my journey, and coming
now to an end, it never returned on me again. When I arrived at
Florence, I hoped to find my dear father, and knocking at the door, a
hump-backed woman in a fury showed her face at the window; she drove me
off with a torrent of abuse, screaming that the sight of me was a
consumption to her. To this misshapen hag I shouted: “Ho! tell me,
cross-grained hunchback, is there no other face to see here but your
ugly visage?” “No, and bad luck to you.” Whereto I answered in a loud
voice: “In less than two hours may it [5] never vex us more!” Attracted
by this dispute, a neighbour put her head out, from whom I learned that
my father and all the people in the house had died of the plague. As I
had partly guessed it might be so, my grief was not so great as it would
otherwise have been. The woman afterwards told me that only my sister
Liperata had escaped, and that she had taken refuge with a pious lady
named Mona Andrea de’ Bellacci. 6

I took my way from thence to the inn, and met by accident a very dear
friend of mine, Giovanni Rigogli. Dismounting at his house, we proceeded
to the piazza, where I received intelligence that my brother was alive,
and went to find him at the house of a friend of his called Bertino
Aldobrandini. On meeting, we made demonstrations of the most passionate
affection; for he had heard that I was dead, and I had heard that he was
dead; and so our joy at embracing one another was extravagant. Then he
broke out into a loud fit of laughter, and said: “Come, brother, I will
take you where I’m sure you’d never guess! You must know that I have
given our sister Liperata away again in marriage, and she holds it for
absolutely certain that you are dead.” On our way we told each other all
the wonderful adventures we had met with; and when we reached the house
where our sister dwelt, the surprise of seeing me alive threw her into a
fainting fit, and she fell senseless in my arms. Had not my brother been
present, her speechlessness and sudden seizure must have made her
husband imagine I was some one different from a brother-as indeed at
first it did. Cecchino, however, explained matters, and busied himself
in helping the swooning woman, who soon come to. Then, after shedding
some tears for father, sister, husband, and a little son whom she had
lost, she began to get the supper ready; and during our merry meeting
all that evening we talked no more about dead folk, but rather
discoursed gaily about weddings. Thus, then, with gladness and great
enjoyment we brought our supper-party to an end.

Note 1. This is the famous Palazzo del Te, outside the walls of Mantua.
It still remains the chief monument of Giulio Romano’s versatile genius.

Note 2. Federigo Gonzago was at this time Marquis of Mantua. Charles V
erected his fief into a duchy in 1530.

Note 3. Ercole Gonzaga, created Cardinal in 1527. After the death of his
brother, Duke Federigo, he governed Mantua for sixteen years as regent
for his nephews, and became famous as a patron of arts and letters. He
died at Trento in 1563 while presiding over the Council there, in the
pontificate of Pius IV.

Note 4. Giovanni de’ Medici, surnamed Delle Bande Nere.

Note 5. 'I. e.,' your ugly visage.

Note 6. Carpani states that between May and November 1527 about 40,000
persons died of plague in Florence.

XLI

ON the entreaty of my brother and sister, I remained at Florence, though
my own inclination led me to return to Rome. The dear friend, also, who
had helped me in some of my earlier troubles, as I have narrated (I mean
Piero, son of Giovanni Landi)-he too advised me to make some stay in
Florence; for the Medici were in exile, that is to say, Signor Ippolito
and Signor Alessandro, who were afterwards respectively Cardinal and
Duke of Florence; and he judged it would be well for me to wait and see
what happened. [1]

At that time there arrived in Florence a Sienese, called Girolamo
Marretti, who had lived long in Turkey and was a man of lively
intellect. He came to my shop, and commissioned me to make a golden
medal to be worn in the hat. The subject was to be Hercules wrenching
the lion’s mouth. While I was working at this piece, Michel Agnolo
Buonarroti came oftentimes to see it. I had spent infinite pains upon
the design, so that the attitude of the figure and the fierce passion of
the beast were executed in quite a different style 

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