I told him that there are two ways of making a profit; the first being that by which one saves for oneself, and the second that by which one saves for others; so I praised him for the second far more than for the first, since he had saved my life for me.
We were always chatting together like this, but I remember especially one day round about the Epiphany, when we were together near the Magliana,163 and it was already near to nightfall. That day I had shot a good number of ducks and geese; then, as I had almost decided to pack up for the day, we began moving back fairly smartly towards Rome. I called my dog, Barucco, and then, seeing that he wasn’t in front of me, I turned round and discovered that the well-trained animal was watching some geese that had settled in a ditch. So I at once dismounted, loaded my gun, and fired at them from a long way off, hitting two of them with a single shot. I never liked to use more than one ball and I could fire at a range of two hundred cubits and nearly always hit the target. My method was the only way to make sure of success. Anyhow, of the two geese I had hit, one was almost dead and the other was badly winged, though even so it flapped along painfully till my dog went after it and brought it back. Then, seeing that the other one was plunging into the ditch, I hurried forward after it. I relied on my boots, which were very tall and thrust one foot forward – but it sank down under the mud. So although I secured the goose, my right boot was filled with water. I lifted my foot up high and let the water run out. Then we mounted our horses and rode off swiftly towards Rome.
It was so bitterly cold that my leg felt as if it were freezing, and I called out to Felice: ‘We must do something about this leg – I can’t stand it any longer.’
Felice, like the good fellow he was, without saying a word leapt off his horse, gathered together some thistles and twigs and began to make up a fire, while I waited with my hands thrust into the breast-feathers of the geese, keeping very warm. When I noticed this I stopped him going on with the fire, and instead filled my boot with goose feathers. Almost immediately I felt so much better that I was completely reinvig-orated.
We mounted and rode off hurriedly towards Rome. Then as we arrived at the top of a gentle slope – it was already night – and looked towards Florence, both of us exclaimed in astonishment:
‘Good God! What’s that tremendous thing we can see over Florence?’
It was like a huge beam of fire, shining brightly and filling the sky with a brilliant light.
I said to Felice: ‘We shall certainly hear tomorrow of some great thing that has befallen Florence.’
It was pitch-black when we arrived in Rome. We were approaching the Banchi, and home, and my little horse was galloping along at a furious speed. So when we came to a great pile of plaster and broken tiles that had been left in the middle of the street neither my horse nor I saw it, and he charged up it only to stumble on the descent and come a complete cropper. He had his head forced between his legs, and only the power of God brought me through unscathed. Hearing the commotion all the neighbours rushed out with lights; but I had jumped to my feet, and, without remounting, I ran off home, laughing at having escaped unharmed when I might have broken my neck.
When I reached the house I found some of my friends waiting there, and while we were having supper together I told them how full of mishaps the day’s shooting had been, and about the diabolical beam of light that we had seen. They exclaimed: ‘What will tomorrow bring in explanation of this?’
I said: ‘Something new has certainly come to pass in Florence.’
We had supper together very agreeably, and then, late next day, the news of Duke Alessandro’s death arrived in Rome.164 As a result many of my acquaintances came up to me and said: ‘You were certainly right about something tremendous happening in Florence.’
In the middle of this Francesco Soderini came jogging along on a shambling old mule, laughing his head off like an idiot. He cried out to me:
‘This is the reverse of that wicked tyrant’s medal that your Lorenzo de’ Medici promised you.’
Then he added: ‘You wanted to make the dukes immortal – we want no more dukes!’
Then he started jeering at me, as if I had been the leader of those factions that set the dukes up. Meanwhile a certain Baccio Bettini,165 who had a head swollen like a pumpkin, joined us and took his turn in jeering at me about dukes.
‘We have unduked them,’ he said, ‘and we won’t have any more dukes – and you wanted to make them immortal!’
He carried on talking stupid nonsense of this sort, till I grew sick of it and said:
‘You idiotic fools, I’m a poor goldsmith, and I work for anyone who pays me, and there you are jeering at me as if I were a political leader. All the same I shan’t throw the stupidity, and the greed and the laziness of your predecessors up at you now. But in return for your idiotic mockery I can tell you that before as many as two or three days have gone by you will have another duke, perhaps a great deal worse than the last.’
The very next day Bettini came to my shop and said:
‘It’s not worth spending money on couriers when you know things before they happen. What supernatural voice tells them to you?’
Then he told me that Cosimo de’ Medici, Giovanni’s son, had been made duke,166 but only under certain conditions that would stop him playing around just as he liked. At this it was my turn to laugh at them.
‘Those men at Florence,’ I said, ‘have set a young fellow up on a splendid horse, then they’ve given him spurs, and put the bridle freely in his hands, and they’ve let him loose in a beautiful meadow, full of fruits and flowers and other delights. Then they’ve told him not to ride beyond the boundaries marked out for him. Now you tell me – who’s going to stop him when he’s made up his mind to cross them? The laws can’t be enforced against the man who is the laws’ master.’
After this they left me alone, and I had no more trouble with them.
I started attending to my business, and I began working, but not yet on anything very important because I was waiting till my health was completely restored. I still reckoned I had not recovered from that dangerous illness. About this time the Emperor was returning in triumph from his expedition against Tunis, and the Pope had sent for me to discuss what suitable gift of honour I thought should be given to him. I replied that I thought it would be most suitable to give his Majesty a gold crucifix,167 and that I had almost completed such an ornament which would be very fitting, and would reflect great credit both on his Holiness and on myself.
I had in fact already made three little gold figures, in the round, about a palm’s length high (they were the ones I had begun to make for Pope Clement’s chalice, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity). So I completed the base of the cross, added a figure of Christ and many other fine embellishments – all in wax – and carried the result to the Pope. His Holiness was delighted with it, and before I left him we had agreed about everything that was to be done, and estimated what the work would cost.
This all took place one evening, about four hours after sunset, and the Pope ordered Latino Juvinale to have me paid the following morning. This Latino, who had an idiotic side to his nature, thought that he would present the Pope with an idea that he had thought up all by himself. By doing this he muddled up all the arrangements, and in the morning, when I called for my money, he said with his usual beastly arrogance:
‘It is for us to make the designs, and for you to execute them. Before I left the Pope last night, we thought of something far better.’
As soon as I heard him say this, without letting him add anything more, I broke in:
‘Neither you nor the Pope can ever think of anything better than a work where Christ appears – so now you can talk as much foppish nonsense as you like.’
Without another word he stalked off in a temper and tried to get the commission transferred to another goldsmith. But the Pope refused and in fact immediately sent for me and said that I was perfectly right, but that they wanted to make use of a Book of Offices of
Our Lady,168 which was superbly illuminated – it had cost Cardinal de’ Medici more than two thousand crowns to have it done. This, he said, would be a very suitable gift for the Empress, and then they would make the thing I had prepared for the Emperor, as it was certainly worthy of him.
He explained that this was only being done because there was very little time, seeing that the Emperor was expected to arrive in Rome within a month and a half. He wanted the book to be bound in a solid gold cover, richly ornamented and thickly studded with gems. The precious stones were worth about six thousand crowns. So when I had been given the gold and the gems I set to, and by working briskly for a few days made such a beautiful job of it that the Pope was astonished, heaped favours on me, and gave his word that I would not be bothered any more by that beast Juvinale.
The work was almost finished when the Emperor arrived.169 A great number of splendid triumphal arches were erected for him, and after his entry into Rome, with marvellous pomp (which I leave others to describe, as I want to deal only with what concerns me) he immediately presented the Pope with a diamond that he had bought for twelve thousand crowns. The Pope sent for me, and then gave me the diamond and asked me to make a ring that would fit his own finger; but first, he said, he wanted me to bring him the book at whatever stage I had brought it to. I carried the book to him, and he was more than satisfied; then he asked my advice as to what valid excuse he could give the Emperor for its not being completed.
In reply to this I said that the best way out would be for me to tell him about my illness, and that his Majesty would readily accept this when he saw how wasted and pale I looked. The Pope said that he thought this was a very good idea, but that when presenting the book I was to add, from him, that he was also making the Emperor a present of myself. He told me exactly how I should behave, and what I was to say. I repeated the words I had to use, and asked the Pope whether he would be pleased if I spoke like that.
He said: ‘If you have it in you to speak to the Emperor in the same way as you’re talking to me, you’ll do it only too well.’
Then I said that I would be far more confident in speaking to the Emperor, because the Emperor dressed in the same way as I did, and I would imagine that I was talking to a man like myself; which was not the case when I spoke to his Holiness. In him, I said, I saw far greater signs of divinity, because of his ecclesiastical trappings, which gave him an aureole of holiness, and because of his impressive and venerable appearance. All these things made me stand more in awe of him than of the Emperor.
At this the Pope said: ‘Away with you, Benvenuto; you’re a very skilful man. Do us credit, and it will be worth your while.’
The Pope got ready two Arab horses, which had belonged to Pope Clement and which were the most handsome that had ever been brought to Christendom. He ordered his chamberlain, Messer Durante,170 to lead these two horses down through the corridors of the palace, and then present them to the Emperor, together with a little speech that the Pope prepared for him. We went along together, and when we reached the Emperor’s presence the two horses made their way through the halls with such dignity and spirit that his Majesty and everyone else marvelled at it.
At this point Durante stepped forward so awkwardly and said his piece in such a tongue-tied fashion, with some of his Brescian dialect thrown in, that one never saw or heard anything worse. The Emperor had to laugh a little. Meanwhile I had uncovered my work, and when I saw the Emperor look very graciously in my direction I stepped forward and said:
‘Sacred Majesty, our Holy Father Pope Paul sends this Book of Our Lady as a gift to your Majesty. It has been copied out by hand, and illuminated by the greatest craftsman who ever studied such an art. And this rich binding of gold and gems is incomplete, in the way that you see it, because of my indisposition. Therefore his Holiness presents me, as well as the book, so that I may come along with your Majesty in order to finish it; and in addition, in whatever your Majesty has a mind to have done, as long as I live I shall serve you.’
To this the Emperor replied: ‘I am pleased both with the book and with you yourself; but I want you to finish it for me in Rome; and when it is finished, and you are better, seek me out and bring it to me.’
Then, when he was talking with me, he called me by my name, which astonished me because so far it had not been mentioned; and he told me that he had seen the morse for Pope Clement’s cope, with all the wonderful figures I had executed on it.
We talked on in this way for an entire half-hour, discussing a whole host of pleasant, artistic subjects; and then, with the thought that I had carried the thing off with far greater credit to myself than I had anticipated, when there was a slight lull in the conversation I bowed and left. The Emperor was heard to say: ‘Have five hundred gold crowns given to Benvenuto at once’; and then the man who carried them in asked who was the Pope’s man who had spoken to the Emperor. And Durante stepped forward and filched my five hundred crowns. I complained to the Pope, who told me not to worry as he knew all that had happened, and how well I had conducted myself when I was talking to the Emperor; and he said that I would most certainly have my share of the money.
I returned to my shop and gave all my attention to finishing the diamond ring. Four craftsmen – the finest jewellers in Rome – were sent along to see me about it, because the Pope had been told that the diamond had been set in Venice by a man called Miliano Targhetto,171 and that he was the finest jeweller in the world, and that as the diamond was rather thin such a difficult undertaking would require great consideration. I was delighted to see these four jewellers, one of whom was a Milanese called Gaio.172 He was the most self-opinionated beast in the world, knowing least and thinking that he knew most; the others were very modest and very competent craftsmen. This Gaio started speaking before anyone else.
‘Benvenuto,’ he said, ‘preserve Miliano’s tint, and in fact touch your hat to it; for as to giving diamonds a tint, that is the finest and hardest part of the jeweller’s art. Now, Miliano is the greatest jeweller the world has ever known, and this is the most difficult diamond.’
My answer to this was that competition with such an accomplished craftsman would only bring me greater glory; then I turned to the other jewellers and said:
‘Look, I have kept Miliano’s tint, but I shall see whether I can better it with something of my own composition. If not, I shall use Miliano’s again.’
That beast Gaio said that if I made a foil like that, he would be only too ready to take his hat off to it.
I replied: ‘Then if I do it better it will deserve two marks of respect.’
He said, yes, it would. And so I began work on my tints. I set out to make them very carefully, and in the proper place I shall give instructions as to how it is done. It is certainly true that that diamond was the most difficult I have ever come across, either before or since, and Miliano’s tint was brilliantly made; but I wasn’t frightened by that. I sharpened up my wits, and I did so well that I not only rivalled but surpassed it. Then, knowing that I had beaten him, I set out to beat myself; by using new methods I made a tint which far surpassed the one I had made first of all. Then I sent for the jewellers. First I tinted the diamond with Miliano’s foil, and then I cleaned it thoroughly and tinted it with my own.
When I showed it to the jewellers, one of the most accomplished of them, Raffaello del Moro, took the diamond in his hand and said to Gaio:
‘Benvenuto has beaten Miliano’s work.’
Gaio was reluctant to believe this but he took the diamond all the same, and then said:
‘Benvenuto, this diamond is worth two thousand ducats more than it was with Miliano’s tint.’
And then I replied: ‘Since I’ve surpassed Miliano’s effort, let’s see if I can surpass myself.’
I begged them to hold on for a minute, went up to a little alcove of mine, and there, out of sight, I retinted the diamond. Then I brought it back to them. At once Gaio exclaimed:
‘In all my life, I’ve never s
een anything more wonderful; this diamond is worth more than eighteen thousand crowns, and we reckoned it was hardly worth twelve thousand!’
The other jewellers turned to Gaio and said: ‘Benvenuto is the pride of our profession, and it is only right that we should take off our hats, both to his work and to him.’
Then Gaio replied: ‘I will go and tell the Pope about this, and I want Benvenuto to have a thousand gold crowns for setting this diamond.’
He ran off to the Pope and told him everything. In consequence, three times that day the Pope sent to find out if the ring was finished. An hour before sunset I brought the ring to him. I was allowed to come and go as I liked, and so I discreetly lifted the door-curtain, and there I saw the Pope, together with the Marquis of Guasto.173 He must have been urging the Pope to do something against his will; and I heard his Holiness say: ‘I tell you, no. It’s my duty to be neutral, and nothing else.’
Straight away I began to withdraw, but as I was doing so the Pope himself called me in. So I immediately stepped forward, holding that exquisite diamond in my hand; and the Pope beckoned me to him, while the Marquis walked away from us. As he was examining the diamond, the Pope said to me:
‘Benvenuto, start talking to me, and make it seem important: and don’t stop once till the Marquis has left the room.’
Then he began to walk up and down the room. This idea, which was likely to be to my advantage, tickled me, and I began discussing the method I had used to tint the diamond. The Marquis stayed where he was, reclining against an arras, and balancing now on one leg, now on the other.
The subject-matter of my talk was of such importance that to have dealt with it adequately would have taken at least three hours; it delighted the Pope so much that he quite forgot how annoyed he had been with the Marquis, who was still standing there. I brought into the discussion that branch of philosophy which deals with our profession, and then, after I had been discussing it for nearly an hour, the Marquis ran out of patience and went off in a huff. Then the Pope treated me with extraordinary courtesy, and said:
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Page 22