Bindo backed Piero Strozzi’s opposition to the Medici, was declared a rebel, and suffered the confiscation of his belongings in Florence.
317. One of the three Councils created in 1532 for the government of Florence; alongside the Two Hundred (Dugento), the Forty-Eight formed a senate from which were chosen four persons to hold office as Gli Ottimati for three months.
318. This letter dated 14 March 1560 to Cellini’s Eccellentissimo et divino precettor mio said that all Florence and especially its most glorious Duke wished fervently for Michelangelo’s return home, which now seemed certain. But Michelangelo never went back. (Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, Vol. V, p. 208, MCCCXX.)
319. Cellini must have meant either that five thousand two hundred crowns were lent to the Duke, or that three thousand eight hundred of the five thousand crowns were Altoviti’s. The page which has been struck out in the manuscript confirms that Cellini’s share was twelve hundred.
320. Francesco di Bernardino d’Amadore of Casteldurante (c. 1515–55), from about 1530, Michelangelo’s assistant, helpmate and factotum to whom he was profoundly attached and whose death pained him grievously. One of Urbino’s two sons by Cornelia Colonelli was christened Michelangelo.
321. Castello was the villa acquired by the Medici family in the late fifteenth century which housed, among other treasures, many of the family’s commissioned paintings. It was restored by Duke Cosimo using Bronzino and Pontormo.
322. The Italian for the act of abject buffoonery by which, Cellini suggests, Bernardo would invite the Duke to slap his cheeks is per via del gonfiare. The song ‘La bella Franceschina’ was a popular ballad celebrating a beautiful little Francesca.
323. This was following the rebellion of Siena in 1552. Subsequently, with French support, Piero Strozzi, a marshal of the King of France, after his arrival in Siena was attacked by Cosimo de’ Medici, seeking to assert Florence’s domination of the strategically important city. After a famous Florentine victory at Marciano and a harsh siege, Siena capitulated to Cosimo on 12 April 1555.
324. Among those allocated gates along with Cellini and Bandinelli, Pasqualino of Ancona was a member of this provincial city’s Boni family; Giuliano, the son of Baccio d’Agnolo, was an architect who succeeded his father as director of works at the cathedral of Florence; Antonio Particino was admired by Vasari as a ‘rare master’ in woodcarving; Francesco, the son of Giuliano da San Gallo (1494–1576) was a sculptor and architect who had also been employed as an engineer of the defences of Florence, notably during the siege of 1529–30 after Michelangelo, the supervisor of the fortifications, had fled the city.
325. The brave but refined captain who captivated Cellini has been variously identified, most convincingly with Giovanni Masini from Cesena (son of the Giacomo Masini who bravely opposed Cesare Borgia) who served Duke Cosimo in the 1550s before and during the war with Siena. Cosimo made him a knight and then the governor of the Order of Santo Stefano, and he died childless c. 1587. (Cf. Cust, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. II, pp. 352–3, n.1.)
326. In February 1543 the Imperial commander tried to smuggle some of his own men into the French-occupied city by hiding them in six carts laden with hay. The plot was discovered, the portcullis descended on the carts, and the invading soldiers were attacked. (Cf. Cust, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. II, p. 352, n.2.)
327. In Greek myth, the Chimera was a fire-breathing monster with the body of a she-goat, lion’s head and snake’s tail. Vasari in the Preface to his Lives, recording that sculpture was esteemed and perfected by the Etruscans, cites the discovery in 1554 of the bronze Chimera of Bellerophon when ditches and walls were being made to strengthen Arezzo’s fortifications.
328. In Cellini’s common speech, il signor don Garzia, this child was the fourth of Cosimo’s five sons, who died aged seventeen in 1562. Cosimo’s three daughters were Maria, Isabella and Lucrezia.
329. Cosimo’s first-born son, ‘the Prince’, was Francesco de’ Medici (1541–87) who succeeded as the second Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1574. Giovanni de’ Medici (1543–62) was made a cardinal by Pope Pius IV in 1560, in gratitude to Cosimo for supporting his election, and died from a fever aged nineteen at about the same time as Garzia. Arnando or Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609) was also made a cardinal in 1563 and succeeded as Grand Duke in 1587. Pietro de’ Medici (1554–1604) the youngest son, was notorious as a promiscuous waster who strangled his wife through jealousy.
When Francesco, Giovanni, Garzia and Ferdinando teased Cellini they were respectively aged twelve, ten, six and four.
Cosimo’s daughters Maria and Lucrezia died young, at seventeen and sixteen respectively. Isabella married an Orsini – Paolo Giordano, Prince of Bracciano, the then head of the doomed family – who strangled her at the urging of his mistress.
330. The originals are now in the Museo Nazionale, Florence.
331. Pontormo (1494–1556), often classified as one of the first Mannerists and arguably the finest painter of his generation; most of his paintings, fully described in Vasari’s Lives, have survived. They include the Borgherini panels in the National Gallery, London. His diary reveals his amazing eccentricity. His early work was highly praised by Michelangelo.
332. Angelo di Cosimo Tori (1503–72) was taught by Pontormo, and was also influenced by Michelangelo but, in contrast to both, was a stylistic, coldly restrained and polished artist, albeit brilliantly accomplished. He was Grand Duke Cosimo’s court painter and a fluent versifier.
333. Alessandro Allori (1535–1607) was adopted by Bronzino, a friend of his father, and became the painter’s pupil. He has been described as an imitator rather than an innovator. For Michelangelo’s lavish obsequies in 1564 this ‘excellent painter’ (as Vasari claimed him to be) depicted Michelangelo in the Elysian fields surrounded by famous sculptors and painters of antiquity and great artists from Giotto and Cimabue onwards.
334. The work of the painter and sculptor Verrocchio (1435–88) mentioned by Cellini is on the façade of the church of Orsanmichele in Florence. Describing the commissioning of this bronze group in his Life of Verrocchio, Vasari says the figures of Christ and St Thomas were ‘solid, complete, and beautifully fashioned’, worthy of being set up in a shrine made by Donatello.
335. Unveiled in April 1554, the Perseus for which Cellini had foolishly not insisted on a contract, was part of Cosimo de’ Medici’s programme for the artistic enrichment of the Palazza della Signoria and the piazza, meant as a counterpart to Donatello’s Judith with which (as with Michelangelo’s David) it challenged and still challenges comparison. Based on life studies rather than academic exercise, it also challenged the artistic intention and style of Cellini’s hated rival Bandinelli and the coarseness of his Hercules and Cacus.
The total height of all the sculptured surface – the Perseus, the base with its beautifully modelled figures (now in the Museo Nazionale of the Bargello) and the bronze narrative relief of Perseus rescuing Andromeda – is about 600 cm. The progress of Cellini’s work on this superbly elegant sculptural complex, charged with political and artistic significance, is followed scrupulously by Pope-Hennessy in his Cellini (op.cit.) where the critically relevant chapter ends by recording ‘the simple fact that in the Perseus Cellini, through imaginative effort and creative intelligence, produced a work which, in the pantheon of Renaissance sculpture, still stands, in terms of people appeal, second only to the David of Michelangelo’.
336. From 1547 to 1557 this was Don Juan de Vega.
337. Usually known as Montorsoli (as he came from this village near Florence) this sculptor (1507?–63) designed the fountain for Messina’s Piazza del Duomo completed in 1553. In his Life of the generous, prosperous and pious Fra Giovanni Agnolo Montorsoli, Vasari especially praised him for his help in establishing the Academy of Design after his final return to Florence in 1561.
338. The Baths of Santa Maria: Bagni di Santa Maria or Bagno in Romagna. Below, Cellini refers simply to ‘Bagno’.
Sestile
should perhaps be Sestino, now Foglia, where Florentine exiles under Piero Strozzi were badly defeated in 1536.
The monasteries of Vallombrosa, Camaldoli and La Vernia are on the slopes of the Apennines to the north-east of Florence and the last is especially renowned as the spot where St Francis received the stigmata, the signs of the wounds of Christ.
339. Cesare di Niccoloò di Mariani Federigi (c. 1530–64) had studied sculpture under Tribolo and worked with Cellini on the base of the Perseus before leaving for Milan to study the crafts of glass and cameo cutting. His uncle was Federigo Federigi who died in 1562.
340. Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514–74) succeeded his father Francesco Maria in 1538 and was commander of the Venetian and pontifical armies as well as a thoughtful patron of the arts. As an heir to Pope Julius II, he was involved in protracted negotiations with Michelangelo over the latter’s contractual obligations regarding Julius’s tomb.
341. Secretary to Duke Cosimo who was made Bishop of Penna (now Penne) by Pope Pius IV in 1561 and attended the Council of Trent as an ecclesiastical lawyer.
342. Gerolamo degli Albizzi (d. 1555) was related to, and a staunch supporter of, the Medici, becoming Commissary-General of the Florentine Ordnance under Duke Cosimo.
343. Alamanno was the son of Jacopo Salviati, Duke Cosimo’s maternal uncle, and apparently a loafer.
344. From 1553 to 1562, Antonio de’ Nobili was Comptroller-General of Duke Cosimo’s Treasury, having supported the Medici when they were out of power. He was painted by Vasari.
345. The former, father of a talented painter Lucrezia praised by Vasari and taught by Alessandro Allori, Bronzino’s pupil, was auditor of the Exchequer in Florence, then Captain of Justice at Siena. Polverino, Cosimo’s fiscale, was among the Duke’s most hated ministers, among other things for having devised an especially harsh law (The Polverina) against the sons of rebels.
346. Onofrio Bartolini (c. 1501–56), made Archbishop of Pisa by Pope Leo X in 1518 (when he was about seventeen) was all his life a staunch supporter of the House of Medici. He was one of the hostages handed over to the Imperialists after the sack of Rome in 1527, was declared a rebel against Florence in 1529, and accompanied Alessandro de’ Medici on the latter’s expedition to Naples in 1535.
347. After serving Catherine de’ Medici, wife of the Dauphin of France, as cup-bearer, Pandolfo di Luigi della Stufa was imprisoned for allegedly revealing King Francis’s military plans to Cosimo de’ Medici. He was then freed on condition that he left France. Cosimo de’ Medici appointed him one of Florence’s Forty-Eight Senators in 1561.
348. Torelli (1489–1576), from Fano, was successively Duke Cosimo’s chief auditor and first secretary. A writer on law and of verse, he was made a senator in 1571.
349. It was his father Baccio d’Agnolo, not Giuliano himself, who designed the gallery for the dome. (Cf. Cust, Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. II, p. 391.)
350. Cellini is referring to Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Porta del Paradiso on the Florence Baptistery. Completed in 1452, it consisted often large panels with scenes from the Old Testament and broke new ground in the depiction of space and narrative.
351. Piero d’Alamanno d’Averardo Salviati (1504–64), after being prominent in opposing the Medici grew friendly as he grew older with Duke Cosimo who appointed him one of the Forty-Eight.
352. Cellini did start work on the reliefs, the pulpits and the door for the (third) choir of Santa Maria del Fiore, which had been commissioned from Bandinelli and Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo in 1547. In July 1563 Cellini was working on a ‘scene with Adam’ modelled in wax on slate for casting in bronze; but probably from impatience over the progress being made, his involvement stopped. (Cf. Pope-Hennessy, Cellini, pp. 269–70.)
353. There is a gap of several years in Cellini’s narrative at this point. It picks up with his inspection of the marble for the statue of Neptune in 1559. In 1556, after brutally assaulting the goldsmith Giovanni di Lorenzo with a cudgel, he was imprisoned for forty-six days before being released on bail. In February 1557 came his imprisonment after he had confessed to sodomy with Ferrando da Montepulciano. (Cf. Introduction p. xii.) Chi dice ch’io son per Ganimede, Cellini wrote in a Sonnet (XXXIV) composed in gaol, alluding to this episode. He was released on 27 March and confined to his house.
354. Florence was a notoriously competitive city, at least for artists. The competitions for the cupola of the Duomo and the Baptistery doors respectively, to which Cellini refers, are dramatically described in Vasari’s Lives of Brunelleschi and Ghiberti; see also Ghiberti’s Second Commentary.
355. By the time Bandinelli died in February 1560, five other sculptors were competing to make the figure of Neptune: Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giovanni Bologna, Vincenzo Danti, Francesco Moschino and Vincenzo de’ Rossi, Bandinelli’s inept pupil. The Fountain of Neptune carved by the winner Ammanati is on the Piazza della Signoria, Florence. For its development cf. Pope-Hennessy Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, pp. 374–6. A record of one of the wax models may be provided by the bronze statuette of Neptune in the North Carolina Museum of Art. (See also Pope-Hennessy, Cellini, p. 274.)
356. Bandinello or Bandinelli was aged seventy-two when he died on 7 February 1560, according to Vasari, who noted that he left to his family many possessions in land, houses and money and to the world works in sculpture and many excellent drawings.
357. The marble Crucifix (overall height 185 cm, height of figure 145 cm) is in the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, Escorial, Spain. Reconstructed by P. Calamandrei (Scritti e inediti Celliniani, Florence, 1971, pp. 59–98) the story of the Crucifix is summarized admirably by Pope-Hennessy from the time of Cellini’s vision in Castel Sant’Angelo in 1539, to its installation in the Escorial in 1576. Following Michelangelo’s perfected marble carving technique, using life-size models, Cellini challenged the beauty of Michelangelo’s Risen Christ to produce with the full resources of his visionary power a work conceived as drama, ‘a work of incomparable accomplishment’ embodying ‘the technical sophistication, the humanity, and the imaginative sweep of the Renaissance at its height’ (Cellini, pp. 255–60).
358. Bartolomeo d’Antonio Ammannati (1511–92), Florentine sculptor and architect, studied with Jacopo Sansovino. In his Life of Sansovino, Vasari told how he found work for his friend Ammannati with Pope Julius III and Duke Cosimo e.g. statues in marble and bronze and on the fabric of the Pitti palace as well as the numerous fortifications throughout Tuscany. He is credited with reconstructing Ponte SS Trinita after the great flood of 1557.
359. Giambologna (c. 1529–1608) was born at Douai in Flanders, then a flourishing and innovative artistic centre, studied with Vasari in Rome, and after producing numerous secular, sensuous works under the Grand Duke in Florence, turned to religious themes to ‘forge virtually single-handed an acceptable Counter-Reformation style of sculpture’. (Cf. Charles Avery, Giambologna, London 1987, p. 28.)
360. Danti (1530–76) worked for Duke Cosimo in bronze (not always successfully) and marble, and was befriended by Vasari as ‘a young man truly rare and of fine talent’. (Cf. Vasari’s Lives ‘Degli Accademici del Disegno’.) His brother was a renowned mathematician, the Dominican friar Ignazio Danti.
361. In fact it was Moschino (Francesco di Simone Mosca 1546–78) who began the model. In his short life he worked in the Duomo at Orvieto, was then attached by Duke Cosimo to the Office of Works of the Duomo at Pisa and then briefly joined the Farnese at Parma.
362. Giorgio Vasari.
363. With his family and courtiers, Duke Cosimo made a state entry into Siena on 28 October 1560.
364. Two wax models of Neptune were listed in the inventory of Cellini’s possessions when he died: a modellino non finito and a modello, the latter definitely related to the fountain. A bronze statuette in the North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh may well record one of the wax models. (Cf. Pope-Hennessy Cellini, pp. 274–5.) Cellini, through illness and perhaps disappointment with it, never finished his N
eptune.
Ammannati’s figure on the Piazza della Signoria speaks dismally for itself; Giambologna’s lost model of Neptune, which was followed by the execution of his ‘magnificent colossus’ of the same sea god for Bologna in 1566, was surely the best. (Cf. Avery, Giambologna, p. 18 and pp. 206–7.)
365. A criminal lawyer, of peasant origins, who flourished in the service of Duke Cosimo and was eventually created Duke of Penna.
366. The Crucifix was bought from Cellini by Duke Cosimo in 1565 and it stayed in the Pitti palace till 1576. Grand Duke Francesco I – creator of the Uffizi picture gallery – sent it with other gifts to Madrid to propitiate King Philip II of Spain.
367. Daniele Ricciarelli of Volterra (1509–66) was a pupil of Peruzzi and assisted and then succeeded the painter Perino del Vaga in numerous projects in Rome where he emulated and became a staunch professional friend of Michelangelo. He became obsessed with sculpture and through Vasari’s influence won commissions from Duke Cosimo. Catherine de’ Medici had him make a bronze horse to take the statue of her dead husband King Henri II which was eventually re-used to take the figure of Louis XIII in the Place Royale (now the Place des Vosges) in Paris where it stayed till 1792 after which it was melted down. It was he who painted over parts of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel deemed to be indecent, after Michelangelo’s death. For this, he was nicknamed Braghettone (Breeches Maker).
368. The Prince, Francesco de’ Medici, left Livorno (Leghorn) for Spain in May 1562. While he was away, Cosimo renounced the government of the Grand Duchy in his favour.
369. Going by Siena and Grosseto, Cosimo, with his wife and children, left Florence for the fortress of Rosignano in October 1562.
370. Cardinal Giovanni, the Duke’s second eldest son, died at Rosignano in November 1562.
371. Giovanni’s brothers, Don Garzia and Don Ferdinando, also fell ill at this time. Garzia died at Pisa on 6 December and 12 days later his mother Eleonora of Toledo also died.
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Page 56
