‘If it hadn’t been for my killing that young man, in another minute he would have routed the lot of us with great slaughter.’
I realized that the constant state of passion I was in from seeing him so often was keeping me from my food and sleep, and I was becoming a wreck. So I stopped debating with myself whether what I had in mind was too degrading and dishonourable and one evening I made up my mind to rid myself of my torment.
The fellow had lodgings near to a place called Torre Sanguigna,96 next door to the house of one of the most popular courtesans in Rome, called Signora Antea. It was nightfall, and the clock had just struck the hour. The arquebusier had finished supper and was standing in his doorway with his sword in his hand. I crept upon him, grasping a Pistoian dagger, and aimed a sudden back-stroke with the idea of cutting his head clean off. But he turned in a flash and the blow landed on the edge of his left shoulder, shattering the bone. He staggered up, was so dazed by the terrible pain that he let go his sword, and then took to flight. I went after him and caught him up in a few steps. Then I raised my dagger above his bent head and drove it exactly between his neckbone and the nape of his neck. The dagger went in so deeply that although I used tremendous force it was impossible to withdraw it, because just then four soldiers, with drawn swords in their hands, burst out from Antea’s lodgings, and I was forced to draw my own sword to defend myself. I abandoned the dagger and took to my heels. Then, for fear of being recognized, I made my way to Duke Alessandro’s palace, which stood between the Piazza Navona and the Rotunda.
When I arrived I had the Duke informed of what had happened and he gave me to understand that, if I were by myself, I should lie low and not worry, but just carry on working at the job that the Pope was so anxious to have finished. He added that I had better do my work indoors for a week. On top of this, the soldiers who had interrupted me now appeared on the scene. They had my dagger with them, and they described what had happened, and how they had found it almost impossible to wrench the dagger out of the dead man’s neck, who was someone they didn’t know. Then, in the middle of all that, Giovan Bandini 97 came in and told them that it was his dagger, and that he had lent it to me and that I wanted to revenge my brother. When they heard this, the soldiers kept on apologizing for having interrupted me though I had had my revenge in good measure.
More than a week went by without the Pope sending for me in the usual way. Eventually he sent word to me through his chamberlain, the Bolognese gentleman I have already spoken of. He warned me very gently that the Pope knew everything, but that I was still in his Holiness’s good books and that I should give my mind to my work and keep quiet. When we saw the Pope, he stared at me grimly, the threat in his eyes being enough to frighten the life out of me. But then he began examining my work, his face brightened up and he praised me to the skies, saying that it was a magnificent achievement in so short a time. After that he looked me straight in the eyes and said: ‘Now you’re cured, Benvenuto, mind out how you go.’
I grasped his meaning, and replied that I certainly would. Immediately after this I opened a very fine shop in the Banchi, opposite Raffaello’s; and there, a few months later, I finished the work I was doing for the Pope.
Except for the diamond, which he had been forced to pawn to some Genoese bankers, the Pope had sent me all the jewels that were to adorn the morse. So although I had only a cast of the diamond, all the other stones were in my possession. At that time I had five very skilful workmen assisting me, because besides what I was doing for the Pope I had a great deal of other work on hand. As a result of this the shop was chock-full of valuable stuff, including jewels, gold, and silver.
I did in fact keep a house-dog – a beautiful, large, shaggy brute that Duke Alessandro had given me. It was a first-rate hunting dog, and when I was out shooting used to bring me back any bird or animal that I hit, but it was also a splendid house-guard. As it happened, at that time, as was only fitting at the age of twenty-nine, I had taken a charming and very beautiful young girl as my maid-servant; I used her as a model, and also enjoyed her in bed to satisfy my youthful desires. Because of this, I had my room at quite a distance from where the workmen slept, and also some way from the shop. I kept the young girl in a tiny ramshackle bedroom adjoining mine. I used to enjoy her very often, and although I am the lightest sleeper in the world, after sexual pleasure I sometimes used to sleep very heavily and deeply.
So it happened when one night a thief broke into the shop. Under the cloak of being a goldsmith he had managed to spy out the land, had a good look at my jewels, and made his plans to rob me of them. He got into the place and found quite a few little gold and silver articles. But while he was busy forcing open some of the drawers to get his hands on the jewels he had seen, my dog sprang at him, and he had to defend himself, rather awkwardly with his sword.
Then the dog started running up and down the house and tore into the workmen’s quarters, which were open as it was summer. He barked away furiously, but they paid no attention, and he began pulling the clothes off them. They still ignored him, so he seized them one after the other by the arm till he forced them to wake up. Then he barked fiercely and tried to show them where to go by running on in front of them. But the rascals had no intention of following him. They started to get angry, and began throwing stones and sticks at him. They could do this easily enough, since I had told them to keep a light burning all night. In the end they shut the doors tight, and the dog, giving up hope of getting any help from those villains, went off to do the job himself. He tore downstairs, found that the thief was no longer in the shop, and dashed off in pursuit. After he met up with him, he attacked him and had already torn the cloak off his back when the thief called some tailors to his help, begging them for the love of God to protect him from a mad dog. They believed what he said, rushed out, and with a great deal of trouble drove the dog away.
Next morning my workmen entered the shop, saw that it had been broken into and the drawers had been smashed, and started to scream: ‘Help! Thieves!’
The noise they were making woke me up, and I rushed out panic-stricken. When I appeared on the scene, they cried out: ‘God help us! Some thief has broken in and ransacked everything.’
I was so shaken by this that I hadn’t the courage to go to my chest and see if the Pope’s jewels were still there. I was almost blind with terror and anxiety, and I ordered the workmen themselves to open the chest and see how many of the jewels were missing. All my young men, by the way, were standing there dressed only in their shirts. They opened the chest, and there were all the jewels and the gold work, with nothing gone. At once they began shouting joyfully: ‘Everything’s all right – your work and the jewels are all here. But as for us, the thief has robbed us of everything but our shirts!’
Then they explained that the night before, because of the great heat, they had undressed in the shop and left their clothes there. I recovered myself straight away, began to thank God, and said to them:
‘All of you – go along and buy some new clothes. I shall pay for them later on, when I hear exactly what happened.’
What I found most upsetting – indeed quite unlike myself I was in a terrible state of funk – was that everyone might think I had invented the story of the robber as a cover for stealing the jewels myself. In fact, one of his most trusted servants (as well as a number of others,98 including Francesco del Nero, the Pope’s accountant Zana de’ Biliotti, and the Bishop of Vasona) had said to Pope Clement:
‘Holy Father, why do you trust with such valuable jewels a hot-blooded young firebrand, who isn’t yet thirty, and who is more given to fighting than to art?’
The Pope had replied by asking if any of them knew whether I had ever done anything to justify their suspicion. Francesco del Nero, his treasurer, answered him quickly: ‘No, Holy Father, because he hasn’t had the chance yet.’
Clement’s reply to this was that he regarded me as thoroughly trustworthy, and that even if he saw me do wrong he would no
t believe it.
It was when I suddenly remembered all this that I became really agitated. After I had instructed my young men to buy themselves some new clothes, I took the gold work, arranging the jewels in position as best I could, and immediately carried them to the Pope. Francesco del Nero had already told him something of the stories that were going round about what had happened in my shop, and the Pope’s suspicions were aroused at once. He jumped to the conclusion that the worst had happened, glared at me fiercely, and said in a stern voice: ‘Why have you come here? What is it?’
‘Look – here are all your jewels, and the gold as well. Nothing is missing.’
Then, with his face clearing, the Pope said: ‘Now you are living up to your name – you are welcome.’
I showed him what I had done so far, and while he was looking at it, I told him all about the thief, and my anxieties, and what had worried me most. As I was talking he kept looking up and staring me straight in the eyes: Francesco del Nero was present, and for that reason the Pope seemed half annoyed at having doubted me.
In the end he burst out laughing at my long rigmarole and said: ‘Keep on being the honest man that I know you are, Benvenuto.’
I pressed on with what I was doing for the Pope, and at the same time I was continually employed for the Mint. Meanwhile some counterfeit money, stamped with my own dies, began to circulate in Rome. Some of the coins were at once brought to the Pope and suspicion was cast on me. The Pope, however, told Jacopo Balducci,99 who was in charge of the Mint, to do everything he could to find the real criminal, because he knew that I was honest. This treacherous man, who was an enemy of mine, replied: ‘I hope to God, Holy Father, that what you say is right. But we have our reasons for suspecting him.’
At this the Pope merely turned to the Governor of Rome and told him to be quick about finding the criminal. In the meantime, his Holiness sent for me. He very cleverly led up to the subject of the coinage, and at the crucial moment he said: ‘Benvenuto, would you have it in you to make false money?’
My reply to this was that I could certainly make a better job of it than the men who did do such foul things. Men who are as crooked as that, I said, have no idea how to earn money, and are not very good craftsmen. On the other hand, with what skill I had I earned as much as I needed, since when I made dies for the Mint, every morning before having dinner I came by at least three crowns. I added that it had always been the custom to pay that much, and that that cheat who was in charge of the Mint hated me, because he would like to have got them for less. What God and the world allowed me to earn, I concluded, was good enough as far as I was concerned, and I would be less well off if I were to turn to coining.
The Pope saw what I was getting at, and whereas he had ordered that I should be closely watched in case I tried to leave Rome, he now ordered a thorough search to be made for the real culprit and said that I was to be left untroubled since he had no wish to offend me, for fear I left him. These strict instructions were given to some of the clerks of the Camera, and after they had carefully carried out their orders, they found the man they were after almost immediately. He was a coiner, working in the Mint itself, called Ceseri Macherone; and he was a Roman citizen. They arrested with him one of the Mint’s metal-founders.
That very same day I happened to be walking through the Piazza Navona, with my beautiful spaniel by my side. As I reached the gate of the police headquarters the dog started barking like mad, and then hurled himself through the gate on to a young man who was there. This fellow had been arrested for robbery on the accusation of a man called Donnino, a goldsmith from Parma who had once been a pupil of Caradosso. The dog tried so hard to tear the young man to pieces that the police were moved to take pity on him. They felt all the more sorry for him in view of the fact that he defended himself boldly and eloquently, and Donnino could not bring enough evidence against him, and, what was more, one of the police corporals was from Genoa and knew the young fellow’s father. So what with the dog and all the rest of it, it looked as though they wouldn’t hesitate to let him off scot-free.
As soon as I came up, however, the dog, who was not at all frightened of swords or sticks, flew at him again, and they threatened to kill the animal if I did not hold him off. I kept him back as best I could, but then, as the young man was drawing back his cloak, some paper packages fell out of the hood. Donnino recognized them as belonging to him, and then my eye fell on a little ring that belonged to me. Straight away I cried out: ‘This is the thief who broke into my shop and robbed me – that’s why the dog knows him.’
I released the dog, and as he flew back to the attack, the young fellow began to beg for mercy and said that he would give me everything he had belonging to me. I held the dog off, while he returned the gold and silver, the little rings he had that were mine, and twenty-five crowns besides. Then he begged for mercy again. I said that if he wanted mercy he had better say his prayers to God, since I would neither help nor hinder him.
I went back home and carried on with my business; and then, a few days later, Ceseri Macherone, the forger, was hanged in the Banchi in front of the Mint, and his accomplice was sent to the galleys. The Genoese thief was hanged in the Campo di Fiore; and I was left with a better reputation for honesty than I had ever had before.
I was on the last stages of my work for the Pope when there occurred that tremendous flood that put all Rome under water. It was two hours before sunset, the clock had just struck, and as night came on I waited to see what would happen. The water kept rising very rapidly. The front of my house and workshop faced on to the Banchi, and the rear of the house, which looked towards Monte Giordano, was several feet higher. My first thought was to save my life and, after that, my honour. So I put all the jewels in my pocket, left the gold morse in the charge of my workmen, and then in my bare feet I climbed out through the back window. I waded through the water as best as I could till I reached Monte Cavallo, and there I found Giovanni Gaddi, a clerk at the Camera, and with him the Venetian painter Bastiano. Giovanni was as fond of me as if I were his own brother; so when I came up with him I handed him over all the jewels and asked him to look after them for me.
A few days later the fury of the flood abated, and so I was able to return to the shop and finish the morse. Thanks to God – and my own efforts – I did this so successfully that everyone said it was the most beautiful piece of craftsmanship ever seen in Rome. When I took it along to the Pope he could not praise me highly enough.
‘If only I were a rich emperor,’ he said, ‘I would give my Benvenuto as much land as his eye could reach. But nowadays we princes are poor and bankrupt. All the same I’ll at least make sure he has enough bread to satisfy his few wants.’
I waited for this torrent to exhaust itself, and then, as one of the posts of mace-bearer was vacant, I asked him if I could have it. He replied by saying that he meant to give me something much more important than that. And then I said that, for the time being, perhaps he would grant me what I had asked as a sort of security.
He burst out laughing and said that he was only too willing to give it to me, but that he did not want me to fill the post in an active capacity, and that I should arrange this with the mace-bearers; at the same time, he granted them the favour they had already asked, of being given authority to recover their fees. It was all arranged. This post I was given brought me in just under two hundred crowns a year.
I carried on working for the Pope, now doing one little thing and now another; and then he commissioned me to design him a very rich chalice. I made both a drawing and a model. The model was constructed of wood and wax, and in place of the node I designed three fair-sized figures in full relief, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. Then, to balance this, at the base of the chalice I designed in three little circles some scenes in low relief; one showed the Nativity, another the Resurrection, and the third, St Peter being crucified upside down. These were what I was told to do.
While I was busy on the chalice the Pope ke
pt on wanting to have a look at it. It occurred to me that his Holiness had forgotten to follow up his previous grant and so, as a post in the office of the Piombo was vacant, one evening I asked him for it. All the enthusiasm he had shown when I finished the morse for him now slipped his memory, and he said:
‘That post in the Piombo brings in more than eight hundred crowns, and if I gave it to you, you’d spend all day scratching your belly, lose all your marvellous skill, and get me blamed for it.’
My answer to this was that the purest-bred cats made better mousers when they were fat than when they were starving; and in the same way honest craftsmen did much better work when they had plenty to live on. I said that he should remember that princes who enabled artists to prosper were watering the roots of genius, which to start with were weak and diseased. And anyhow, I added, I did not ask for the post with the idea of obtaining it, since I was quite happy with the miserable post of mace-bearer and was only day-dreaming about the other.
‘As your Holiness does not want to let me have it,’ I concluded, ‘you would be well advised to give it to some artist worthy of it, and not to some ignoramus who would only scratch his belly, as your Holiness said.’
As a parting shot I told him to follow the example of his worthy predecessor Pope Julius, who gave such a post to the wonderful architect, Bramante. 100 Then I bowed abruptly and left in a rage.
When I had gone Bastiano Veneziano, the painter, came forward and said to the Pope:
‘Holy Father, why don’t you give the post to someone who devotes all his time to his art? I give myself wholeheartedly to my work, and I beg you to consider whether I am worthy of the position.’
The Pope answered: ‘That devil Benvenuto cannot bear anyone telling him off. As a matter of fact I was inclined to let him have it – but it’s not a good thing to stand on one’s dignity in front of a pope. So I’m not sure what I shall do.’
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Page 14