When the imperial army sacked Rome Cellini fled to the Castel Sant’ Angelo, and served as a gunner; it was one of his shots, he avers, that killed the Duke of Bourbon; and it was his expert marksmanship that kept the besiegers at a distance from the Castle, so saving the Pope, the cardinals, and Benvenuto. We do not know how true this is; but we have it on the same authority that when Clement returned to Rome he made Cellini a mace-bearer with a salary of 200 crowns ($2500?) a year, and said: “Were I but a wealthy emperor, I would give Benvenuto as much land as my eyes could survey; yet, being now but a needy bankrupt, I will at any rate give him bread enough to satisfy his need.”44
Paul III continued Clement’s patronage. Probably exaggerating to his heart’s delight, Cellini quotes Paul as saying, to one who protested his lenience with the artist: “Know then that men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, stand above the law; and how far more, then, he who received the provocation I have heard of.”45 But Paul’s son Pierluigi, as reckless a rascal as Benvenuto himself, turned the Pope against the artist. Even Cellini’s arts proved inadequate to overcome such influence, and in 1537 he abandoned his shop in Rome and made for France. On the way he was handsomely entertained by Bembo at Padua, made a small portrait of him, and was in return presented with horses for himself and his two companions. They mounted and descended the Grisons, and rode through Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, and Lyons to Paris. There too Benvenuto found enemies. Giovanni de’ Rossi, Florentine painter, wanted no more rivals for the King’s money; he put difficulties in the way of the newcomer; and when at last Cellini got to Francis he found him inextricably tangled in war. III and homesick, he climbed back over the Alps, made a pilgrimage to Loreto, and crossed the Apennines to Rome. To his dismay he found himself accused by Pierluigi of having embezzled papal jewelry. He was flung into the same Castello that he had helped to save, and suffered months of imprisonment. He escaped, but broke a leg in the process; captured, he was confined in an underground dungeon for two years. He was released at the request of Francis I, who now urgently solicited his services in France. Once more he clambered over the Alps (1540).
He found King and court at Fontana Belio—i.e., Fontainebleau; was warmly welcomed, and was assigned a castle in Paris for his workshop and home. When its occupants refused to leave he expelled them by force. The French did not like his manners or his language, and Mme d’Étampes, the King’s mistress, resented Cellini’s lack of courtesy to her high estate. When she heard how he had thrown out of the castle windows the furniture of the tenants whom he had dispossessed, she warned Francis that “that devil will sack Paris one of these days.”46 The merry monarch enjoyed the story, forgave Cellini’s violence for his artistry, and paid him 700 crowns a year ($8750?), 500 more for the expenses of his trip from Rome, and promised an additional sum for each work of art that Cellini should produce for him. Benvenuto was proud to learn that these were the same terms that had been given to Leonardo twenty-four years before.47
One of the dispossessed tenants sued him in court on a charge of stealing some effects. The court decided against Cellini. He reversed the judgment in his own striking way:
When I perceived that my cause had been unjustly lost, I had recourse for my defense to a great dagger which I carried; for I have always taken pleasure in keeping fine weapons. The first man I attacked was the plaintiff who had sued me; and one evening I wounded him in the legs and arms so severely, taking care, however, not to kill him, that I deprived him of the use of both his legs.48
Apparently the plaintiff dared not press the matter further, and Cellini could turn his energies to other outlets. He had in his Paris studio “a poor young girl, Caterina; I keep her principally for my art’s sake, since I cannot do without a model; but being a man also, I have used her for my pleasure.”49 However Caterina, with yielding largesse, slept also with his helper, Pagolo Micceri. Benvenuto, learning of it, beat her till he was exhausted. His servant Roberta reproved him for punishing so violently so ordinary an incident; did he not know that “there’s not a husband in France without horns”? The next day he modeled from Caterina again, “during which occurred some amorous diversions; and at last, on the same hour as on the previous day, she irritated me to such a pitch that I gave her the same drubbing. So we went on for several days, repeating the same round…. Meanwhile I completed my work in a style which did me the greatest credit.”50 Another model, Jeanne, presented him with a daughter; he settled a dowry on the mother, “and from that time I had nothing more to do with her.”51 The child was later smothered by its nurse.
Francis bore patiently with all this lawlessness; but finally Benvenuto had so many enemies in Paris that he begged the King’s permission to visit Italy. Consent was not given, but Cellini took French leave, and, after an arduous trip, found himself in his native Florence (1545). There he showed a better side of his nature, contributing materially to the support of his sister and her six daughters. He found Cosimo less openhanded than Francis. He made the usual enemies, but he cast a good portrait bust of the Duke (in the Bargello), and produced for him his most celebrated work—the Perseus that still stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi. He tells a vivid story of the casting. His anxieties, toil, and exposure to heat and cold culminated in a severe fever that compelled him to take to his bed just when the furnace that he had designed especially for this work was melting the metal, and this proved insufficient to fill the gigantic mold. The labor of months was about to be spoiled when Cellini rose from his bed and threw into the furnace a block of tin and two hundred pewter vessels. These proved enough; the casting was a complete success; and when the work was exposed to public view (1554) it was praised as highly as any statue made in Florence since Michelangelo’s David; even Bandinelli said a good word for it.
From this climax the story descends to prosaic pages of haggling with the Duke about the fee for the Perseus. Benvenuto was long on expectations, Cosimo was short of funds. The narrative abruptly ends at 1562. It does not mention the fact, otherwise fairly well established, that in 1556 Benvenuto was twice imprisoned, apparently on charges of criminal immorality.52 In these late years Cellini composed a treatise on the goldsmith’s art—Trattato… dell’ Orificeria. Having sown wild oats for half a century, he married in 1564, and had two legitimate children to add to one illegitimate child begotten in France and five generated in Florence after his return.
Of his works—usually small enough to be readily movable—only a few can now be located and identified. The Treasury of St. Peter’s has an ornate silver candelabrum attributed to Cellini; the Bargello preserves his Narcissus and his Ganymede, both in marble, and both excellent; the Pitti has a salver and a pitcher in silver; the Louvre has his fine medallion of Bembo, and a lovely bronze relief called The Nymph of Fontainebleau; Vienna claims the saltcellar made for Francis I; the Gardner Collection in Boston has his bust of Altoviti; his large Crucifixion is in the Escorial. These scattered specimens hardly equip us to judge Cellini as an artist; they seem too slight for his fame, and even the Perseus, violent and overwrought, inclines to the baroque. Yet Clement VII (we have it on Benvenuto’s word) rated him as “the greatest artist in his craft who was ever born”;53 and an extant letter of Michelangelo to Cellini reads: “I have known you all these years as the greatest goldsmith of whom the world has ever heard.”54 We may conclude that Cellini was a genius and a ruffian, a master craftsman and a murderer, whose spirited Autobiography outshines his silver and gold and cameos, and reconciles us to the morals of our time.
VI. LESSER LIGHTS
This age of decline for Italy was a resurrection for Savoy. As a lad of eight Emmanuel Philibert might have seen the French invade and conquer the duchy (1536). At twenty-five he inherited its crown but not its soil; at twenty-nine he played a leading part in the victory of the Spanish and the English over the French at St. Quentin (1557); and two years later France surrendered to him his ruined country and bankrupt throne. His regeneration of Savoy and Piedmont was a masterpiece of s
tatesmanship. The Alpine slopes of his duchy were the haunts of Vaudois heretics, who were progressively transforming Catholic churches into whitewashed conventicles of Calvinist worship. Pope Pius IV offered him a year’s ecclesiastical revenues to suppress the sect; Emmanuel took some drastic measures; but when these resulted in large-scale emigration he turned to a policy of tolerance, checked the ardor of the Inquisition, and gave asylum to Huguenot refugees. He founded a new university at Turin, and financed the compilation of an encyclopedia—Teatro universale di tutte le scienze. He was always courteous, and repeatedly unfaithful, to his wife, Margaret of Valois, who gave him wise counsel and diplomatic aid, and who presided over the bright social and intellectual life of Turin. When Emmanuel died (1580) his duchy was one of the best-governed lands in Europe. From his line in the nineteenth century would come the kings of united Italy.
Meanwhile Andrea Doria, who in the late wars had passed from the French to the Spanish side with timely treachery, maintained his leadership in Genoa. The bankers there had helped to finance the campaigns of Charles V, who repaid them by leaving undisturbed their domination of the city. Not as badly hurt as Venice by the movement of commerce out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, Genoa became again a great port and strategic citadel. Galeazzo Alessi of Perugia, a pupil of Michelangelo, built sumptuous churches and palaces in Genoa. Vasari described the Via Balbi as the most splendid street in Italy.*
When Francesco Maria Sforza, last of his line as rulers, died in 1535, Charles V appointed an imperial vicar to govern Milan. Subjection brought peace, and the ancient city prospered once more. Alessi built there the handsome Palazzo Marino; and Leone Leoni, engraver in the Milan mint, rivaled Cellini in the miniature plastic arts, but found no Cellini to publish his excellence. The most distinguished Milanese of the age was San Carlo Borromeo, who re-enacted at the close of the Renaissance the role played by St. Ambrose in the decline of antiquity. He came of a rich patrician family; his uncle Pius IV made him a cardinal at twenty-one, and archbishop of Milan at twenty-two (1560). He was probably at that time the richest prelate in Christendom. But he renounced all his benefices except the archbishopric, gave the proceeds to charity, and consumed himself in almost fanatical devotion to the Church. He founded the order of Oblates of St. Ambrose, brought the Jesuits into Milan, and vigorously supported all movements for ecclesiastical reform that remained loyal to Catholicism. Accustomed to wealth and power, he insisted on the full medieval jurisdiction of his episcopal court, took into his hands much of the work of maintaining law and order, filled his archiepiscopal dungeons with criminals and heretics, and for twenty-four years was the real ruler of the city. Literature and art suffered under his passion for conformity and morality; but Pellegrino Tibaldi, architect and painter, flourished under his patronage, and designed the grandiose choir of the great cathedral. All the cardinal’s severity was forgiven when, in the plague of 1576, while most notables fled, he stayed at his post and comforted the sick and bereaved with tireless visits, vigils, and prayers.
At Cernobbio, on Lake Como, Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, perhaps not sure of another heaven, built the Villa d’Este (1568). At Brescia Giambattista Moroni, pupil of Moretto, painted some portraits worthy to stand beside most of Titian’s.* In Cremona Vincenzo Campi carried on the family tradition of painting less than immortal pictures. At Ferrara Ercole II compromised the long quarrel of his state with the papacy by paying Paul III 180,000 ducats, and pledging 7,000 ducats tribute per year. Alfonso II gave the city another era of prosperity (1558–97), which culminated in the Gerusalemme liberata of Torquato Tasso and the Pastor fido of Giovanni Guarini. Girolamo da Carpi learned the art of painting from Garofolo, but (Vasari says) spent too much time on love and the lute, and married too soon, to indulge himself in the selfcenteredness of genius.
Piacenza and Parma rose to excited prominence in this age. Though they had for centuries belonged to Milan, and that duchy was now a dependency of Charles V, Pope Paul III claimed the two cities as papal fiefs, and invested his son Pierluigi Farnese with them in 1545. Not quite two years later the new duke was assassinated at Piacenza by a revolt of nobles reconciled to his lechery but resenting his monopoly of power and plums. Paul rightly ascribed the initiative in the conspiracy to Ferrante Gonzaga, then ruling Milan as vicar for Charles; and noted that imperial troops, providentially at hand, at once took possession of Piacenza for the Emperor (1547). Soon after Paul’s death Julius III appointed Pierluigi’s son Ottavio Duke of Parma; and as Ottavio was also Charles’s son-in-law, he was allowed to rule Parma till his death (1586).
No decline was visible in Bologna. Here Vignola designed the Portico de’ Banchi for a group of traders; Antonio Morandi added to the University an Archiginnasio famous for its noble cortile; and Sebastiano Serlio wrote an architectural treatise that rivaled Palladio’s in influence. In 1563 Pope Pius IV commissioned Tommaso Laureti of Palermo to set up a fountain in the Piazza di San Petronio. The sculptural part of the undertaking was offered to a young Flemish artist, who now came from Florence and perhaps received his name from the city in which he produced his greatest work. Giovanni da Bologna, or Gian Bologna, molded nine figures for the immense Fontana di Nettuno. At the summit of the group he raised a gigantic god of the waters, naked and strong; on the corners of the basin he cast in bronze four happy children in a game with leaping dolphins; at the feet of Neptune he placed four graceful maidens squeezing streams of water from their breasts. Bologna sent Gian back to Florence with florins and praise, and did not grudge the 70,000 florins ($875,000?) that it had spent on the magnificent fountain. The spirit of civic art was still alive in Italy.
As we take our parting look at Renaissance Rome, we are struck by the rapidity of her recovery from the disaster of 1527. Clement VII had shown more skill in remedying the ruin than in preventing it. His surrender to Charles had saved the Papal States, and their revenues helped the papacy to finance the restoration of Church discipline and the partial reconstruction of Rome. The full effect of the Reformation in reduced income was not yet felt in the papal treasury; and under Paul III the spirit and splendor of the Renaissance seemed for a moment revived.
Some arts were dying, others were being born or changing form. Giulio Clovio, a Croatian domiciled with Cardinal Farnese, was almost the last of the great illuminators of manuscripts. But in 1567 Claudio Monteverdi was born at Cremona; soon opera and oratorio would be added to the arts; and the polyphonic masses of Palestrina were already celebrating the reinvigoration of the Church. The great age of Italian painting was ending; Perino del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, epigoni of Raphael, turned the art toward decoration. Sculpture was becoming baroque; Raffaello da Montelupo and Giovanni da Montorsoli exaggerated the exaggerations of their master Michelangelo, and produced statues with limbs contorted into original but bizarre and ungainly poses.
Architecture was now the most flourishing of the arts. The Farnese Palace and Gardens on the Palatine were improved by Michelangelo (1547) and completed by Giacomo della Porta (1580). Antonio da Sangallo the Younger designed the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican (1540). In the Sala Regia—leading to the Pauline and Sistine Chapels—Pope Paul III had the marble floor and paneling designed by this Sangallo, the walls frescoed by Vasari and the Zuccari brothers, the ceiling beautifully carved in stucco by Daniele da Volterra and Perino del Vaga. The papal apartments in Sant’ Angelo were embellished with frescoes and carvings by Perino, Giulio Romano, and Giovanni da Udine. The second Cardinal Ippolito d’Este built near Tivoli (1549) the earlier of two famous Villas d’Este; Pirro Ligorio prepared the plans, the Zuccari decorated the casino; and the terraced gardens still attest the fine taste and reckless wealth of the Renaissance cardinals.
The most popular architect in or about Rome in this age was Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. Coming from Bologna to study the classic ruins, he formed his style by marrying the Pantheon of Agrippa to the Basilica of Julius Caesar, seeking to combine cupola and arches, columns and pediments; and, like Pal
ladio, he wrote a book to propagate his principles. He achieved his first triumph at Caprarola, near Viterbo, by designing for Cardinal Farnese another vast and luxurious Palazzo Farnese (1547–9); and ten years later he built a third at Piacenza. But his most influential work was done at Rome in the Villa di Papa Giulio for Pope Julius III, the Porta del Popolo, and the church of the Gesù (1568–75). In this famous edifice, built for the rising Jesuits, Vignola designed a nave of impressive breadth and height, and converted the aisles into chapels; later architects would make this church the first clear manifestation of the baroque style—curved or contorted forms surfeited with ornament. In 1564 Vignola succeeded Michelangelo as chief architect at St. Peter’s, and shared in the honor of raising the great dome that Angelo had designed.
VII. MICHELANGELO: THE LAST PHASE: 1534–64
Through all these years Michelangelo had survived as an unruly ghost from another age. He was fifty-nine when Clement died, but no one seemed to think that he had earned the right to rest. Paul III and Francesco Maria of Urbino fought over his living body. The Duke, as executor for Julius II, clamored for completion of his uncle’s tomb, and flourished a contract long since signed by Angelo. But the imperious pontiff would not hear of it. “For thirty years,” said Paul to Buonarroti, “I have wanted you to enter my service; and now that I am Pope will you disappoint me? That contract shall be torn up, and I’ll have you work for me, come what may.”55 The Duke protested, but finally settled for a much smaller mausoleum than Julius had dreamed of. The knowledge that the tomb was an abortion shared in darkening the Titan’s later years.