The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

by Benvenuto Cellini

  129. Ambrogio Recalcati, first secretary to Pope Paul III, whose corruption eventually caused his disgrace and imprisonment in Castel Sant’Angelo.

  130. The original – in effect a provisional decree of amnesty – survived in the Vatican and was published in 1894 (Arch. Stor. dell’Arte, Anno VII, Fasc.V, Sett-Ott. p. 373).

  131. The inscriptions for this 29 mm coin were PAULUS III PONT. MAX. on the obverse showing the Farnese coat of arms and S. PAULUS. VAS. ELECTIONIS on the reverse with extant examples showing a full-length figure of St Paul. The significance was that the Pope, sharing the name of Paul, was elected by acclamation rather than majority vote.

  132. Pope Paul III’s hopelessly spoilt natural son Pier Luigi (1503–47), Gonfalonier of the Church, Duke of Nepi and Castro, Marquess of Novara, was created Duke of Parma and Piacenza in 1545 and was assassinated in 1547 when Spanish forces asserted Imperial control of Piacenza.

  133. Nicknamed so because he was always teasing and troubling himself and others (‘ sempre travagliava e tribolava…’) wrote his friend and admirer Vasari in his Life. Niccolò di Raffaello (1500–1550), sculptor and architect of Florence, trained under the carpenter Nanni Unghero and Jacopo Sansovino, copied in clay and briefly collaborated with Michelangelo on statues for San Lorenzo in Florence, completing the mosaic pavement for the Laurentian Library, and worked for Duke Cosimo on the enhancement of the villa of Castello, rapturously described by Vasari.

  134. Jacopo Tatti or Sansovino (1486–1570), a sculptor and architect, pupil of Andrea Sansovino, did most of his great work in Venice where he was appointed head architect to the Procurators of San Marco after his flight from Rome during the sack in 1527, and left as his finest monument the richly decorated but simply presented Library of St Mark’s.

  135. Brother of Cardinal Giambattista Cibo, Archbishop of Marseilles. Lorenzo was Marquess of Massa (near Pisa and famous for its marble quarries) through his (acrimonious) marriage. He served the Church as a condottiere, and was comandante generale of the papal troops from 1530 to 1534. He died in 1549.

  136. A Milanese, chancellor in Florence to the magistracy of the Eight, by all accounts an arrogant and cruel official.

  137. Ercole II d’Este (1534–59), son of the splendid ruler Alfonso I, the patron of Titian and Ariosto among others, married the daughter of King Louis XII of France, Renée d’Anjou. Belfiore was a superb villa near the city.

  138. Benintendi had been one of the Eight and captain of the Florentine troops in 1529 when he left Florence in defiance of the Signoria and the Medici and was sentenced to being ‘confined’ away from the city.

  139. Nardi (1476–1563), historian and translator of Livy, from a still celebrated Florentine family, served the Republic in high office and after the return of the Medici in 1512, like Machiavelli, stayed immersed in the study of contemporary politics and took part in an anti-Medicean uprising before the sack of Rome (when the raised arm of Michelangelo’s statue of David was broken by a bench hurled by rioting Florentines). In about 1531 he was banished, and from Venice he later went to Naples to present to the Emperor the grievances of the exiles againt Duke Alessandro. Primary sources for the history of Florence include Nardi’s Istorie della città di Firenze (ed. L. Arbib, 2 vols, Florence 1838–41).

  140. Cellini is punning on coregge, which means ‘straps’ or, vulgarly ‘wind’.

  141. For the wildly dissolute Alessandro, four coins were produced from Cellini’s designs: the ‘forty soldi’, the giulio, the half- giulio or grossone, each in silver, and the gold crown or scudo. For detailed descriptions see Pope-Hennessy (op.cit. pp. 74–5) who comments that the quaranta soldi’s figures of Saints Cosmas and Damian with their freely rendered poses and their loose classical robes ‘… possess some of the attributes of sculpture…’ On the obverse of the same coin the portrait of Alessandro had a subtlety ‘fully apparent only when it is enlarged’. Examples are in the Museo Nazionale, Florence.

  142. The marriage had taken place in Naples in February 1536; in May the arrival was magnificently celebrated in Florence of the 14-year-old bride, Margaret of Austria, natural daughter of the Emperor Charles V.

  143. Pietro Paolo of Monterotondo, family name Galeotti, was also with Cellini in Ferrara in 1540 and in Florence in 1552 when he helped clean the figures of the Perseus. He died in 1584.

  144. Bernardo Baldini (d. 1573), jeweller and goldsmith, who was later purveyor to the Mint in Florence.

  145. Reviled as Lorenzaccio, Lorenzino de’ Medici (1514–48) the son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici and Maria Soderini, after a dissolute life in Rome went to Florence to become the freakish, mysterious drinking companion of the debauched Alessandro whom, using a hired killer, he murdered atrociously on 6 January 1537.

  He was himself, after being hailed by many Florentine exiles as a new Brutus, assassinated in Venice in 1548, leaving a notorious written Apologia. His killing of Alessandro (subject of a play by De Vigny) led almost at once to the crucially decisive choice as capo and primario del governo della cittaà (the head and leader of the government) of Cosimo de’ Medici, the future Duke and eventual Grand Duke of Tuscany.

  146. This distant Medici relation and supporter had gained roughly used influence through marriage to Francesca di Jacopo Salviati, Cardinal Salviati’s sister.

  147. Bastiano di Domenico di Bernardo Cennini (1481–1535) is praised by Cellini in the introduction to his Treatise on goldsmithing as a craftsman of great talent who with his ancestors had made dies for the coinage of Florence up to the time of Duke Alessandro.

  148. A medal in the Museo Nazionale in Florence shows the bust of Alessandro facing to the right, on the obverse, and a laurel wreath on the reverse with the motto Solatio Luctus Exigua Ingentis and was attributed controversially by Plon to Cellini.

  149. This was between 20 March, the date of the safe-conduct, and 12 June when the poet Mattio Franzesi (see note 153) wrote to Benedetto Varchi in Florence about a medal Benvenuto was waiting for and sent his regards.

  150. Cellini uses the disparaging word mediconzolo, and this doctor may have been Bernardino Lilli of Todi, the Curia’s physician from 1528.

  151. The feast of the Assumption, il giorno delle Sante Marie, on the eve of which images of Christ and the Virgin Mary were carried in torchlit procession respectively from the churches of S. Giovanni in Laterano and Santa Maria Maggiore. Members of the Butchers’ Confraternity carrying firebrands surrounded the image of Christ to protect it from the crowds, but this confraternity was suppressed by Pope Julius III and nobles supplied the escort for the procession till the time of Pius V when their troop was disbanded in turn.

  152. The prosperous collector of ancient statues and living artists, Francesco Fusconi, physician to popes Adrian V, Clement VII and Paul III, who died in 1550.

  153. Florentine writer of humorous verse attached to the Curia and a familiar of many writers and artists, including Cellini.

  154. Canto III of Dante’s Inferno describes the approach of the demon boatman Charon who ferries the souls of the damned across the river Acheron to Hell:

  Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave

  un vecchio bianco per antico pelo,

  gridando: ‘Guai a voi, anime prave!’

  And see there coming in his bark

  an old man hoary with his ancient locks

  who shouts: ‘All woe to you, depraved souls!’

  155. The representation of God the Father on the morse for Clement VII.

  156. Cellini arrived in Florence on 9 November 1535, as noted in a letter from Varchi to Pietri Bembo.

  157. Giorgetto Vassellario, one of Cellini’s usually disparaging versions of Giorgio Vasari’s name. Vasari (1511–74), painter, architect and author of the Lives of the artists, referred quite often to Cellini, with circumspect praise as, for example, a peerless goldsmith when young, an incomparable medallist and the creator of the excellent Perseus, comparable to Donatello’s Judith, and the very beautiful Crucifix in marble. Cellini,
he remarked, was spirited, proud, vigorous, very resolute and truly terrible.

  158. Manno Sbarri (active 1548–61), a well-regarded Florentine goldsmith, with whom Vasari, his close friend, took refuge in Pisa when Florence was besieged in 1529.

  159. Francesco Catani da Montevarchi, patron of the arts as well as a physician, also lauded in Ercolane (Herculaneum) by Benedetto Varchi (whose love of literary Florentine did not stop him from declining Cellini’s request that he improve the language of Cellini’s Life).

  160. Another burlesque poet in the manner of the notorious Francesco Berni but also a courtier and scholar appointed by Duke Cosimo de’ Medici as Proveditore at Pisa in 1555. He too was a friend of Varchi.

  161. It was alleged that Alessandro was the son of Giulio de’ Medici, Pope Clement VII, and that his mother was a mulatto; but it is more likely that his father was Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, who had died in 1519.

  162. ‘I would call myself Felice Little-Profit, if you hadn’t won me such a great reputation that I can call myself Felice of the family of Great-Profit.’

  163. A hunting lodge on the bank of the Tiber, near Rome, built for Pope Innocent VIII and much used by the pleasure-loving Pope Leo X.

  164. The assassination took place during the night of 5–6 January 1537.

  165. Bartolomeo Bettini, a Florentine in Rome, whose bank was often used by Michelangelo to transmit or receive money and letters and who later (1549) wanted to have one of his nieces married to Michelangelo’s nephew – ‘He’s not our equal,’ Michelangelo warned Lionardo. According to Vasari, Michelangelo presented him with a ‘divine’ drawing of Cupid kissing Venus.

  166. Cosimo (1519–74), descended from Lorenzo de’ Medici, brother of Cosimo, pater patriae – the ‘father’ of the country, was proclaimed as head of state by the Council of the Forty on 9 January 1537. Later that year, with the approval of the Emperor, he assumed the title of Duke of the Republic.

  167. Never executed but also described in Chapter VIII of Cellini’s Treatise on goldsmithing as a Christ of gold set on a ground of lapis lazuli with three gold figures for narrative medallions on the base of the crucifix symbolizing Faith, Hope and Charity.

  168. This, according to Cellini in his Treatise, had been made for Giulia Gonzaga at the behest of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici with a cover already put together and looking splendid ‘with all its gorgeous jewels set upon it…’

  169. This was on 5 April 1536. Charles and his six thousand-strong retinue passed through the Porta San Sebastiano and the arches of Constantine, Titus and Septimius Severus over the Capitoline Hill to the Vatican. Artists who contributed to the statues and decorations for the triumphal visit included Piloto and Antonio da San Gallo. The Emperor made the pilgrim’s traditional round of the seven churches and delivered a diatribe in Spanish against the King of France. He left on 18 April.

  170. Durante Durante of Brescia (d. 1558), was Prefect of the Apostolic Chamber to Pope Paul III who made him a cardinal in 1544.

  171. Emiliano Targhetta also mentioned in Cellini’s Treatise on goldsmithing as the master.

  172. Giovanni Pietro Marliano of Milan was jeweller to Pope Paul III from 1528 to 1548 and at one time Solicitor of Letters Apostolic.

  173. Alfonso d’Avalos (1502–46), Marchese del Vasto, heir to his cousin the Imperial commander Ferdinando Francesco d’Avalos, Marchese di Pescara, who after a brilliant career died suspected of treachery, leaving his widow the childless Vittoria Colonna who then adopted Alfonso. He made a pious death in 1546.

  174. There is no record of what happened to the ‘richly embellished’ little book though in the past several beautifully bound books have been wishfully ascribed to Cellini.

  175. This sixteen-year-old Sforza, son of Bosio, Count of Santa Fiora and Costanza Farnese, natural daughter of Pope Paul III, had been appointed captain-general of the Italian and Spanish cavalry in the army of Charles V. He died in 1575 after soldiering with the French.

  176. Ascanio de’ Mari, from Tagliacozzo, later followed Cellini to Paris where he stayed to become one of the court goldsmiths to Henri II. He married Costanza, a daughter of one of the della Robbia family.

  177. Girolamo Pascucci who was often at odds with Cellini, whom he later accused of stealing Pope Clement’s precious stones during the sack of Rome and from whom after a dispute in 1538, he received a guarantee that Cellini would not injure him.

  178. This was just after Easter, 1537.

  179. Bembo (1470–1547) was a noble Venetian scholar and writer whose fastidious published works include innumerable letters modelled on Cicero, the book Gli Asolani (a highly polished disquisition on love from differing viewpoints) and the Prose della Volgar Lingua (influential rules for the literary use of Tuscan speech). From being member of the refined court circles at Urbino and Ferrara, he became a papal secretary under Leo X and after retirement to Padua was made a cardinal by Paul III in 1539.

  180. It is generally supposed that Cellini never did finish the medal for Bembo on which he began to work in Padua and which had been under discussion since 1535.

  181. Antonio di Bartolomeo Cordinai (c. 1484–1546), called Antonio da San Gallo the Younger, trained in Rome as an architect with his uncles Giuliano and Antonio. A skilful architect of palaces and also a military engineer, under Pope Leo X (1520) he became chief architect of St Peter’s, his grandiose plans for which were dramatically modified and enhanced by Michelangelo.

  182. Andrea Sguazzella or Chiazzella was a follower of Andrea del Sarto whom he accompanied to France where he remained in the service of Francis after del Sarto’s return to Italy in 1519.

  183. Giuliano Buonaccorsi (d. 1563) was born in Florence and moved to France in 1507. He rose quickly to prominence through his involvement in royal finances and became close to Francis I. He was also a friend of Alamanni.

  184. Called Fontana Beliò by Cellini. Italian artists working at the court of Francis I included Rosso (who died the year Cellini arrived) and Primaticcio and, later (arriving with Cellini) the architect Sebastiano Serlio, and their many assistants.

  185. Ippolito d’Este (1509–72) son of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, Archbishop of Milan at the age of fifteen, was created a cardinal by Paul III in 1539 and even aspired to be pope on the death of Julius III. He had built the magnificent Villa d’Este at Tivoli.

  186. The shrine at Loreto in the Marches famous for the belief that the Santa Casa, the house of the Virgin Mary, had been transported there miraculously from Nazareth by angels in stages in the thirteenth century.

  187. Cellini arrived in Rome on 16 December 1537.

  188. The shop was kept loyally by Felice Guadagni till his death, when in his will (date of execution 31 August 1543): legavit Jacobo filio Antonii Mannelli omnes massaritias existentes in apotecha sua aurificine ad illius usum pertinentes (exceptis illis que spectant ad magistrum Benvenutum Cellinum aurificem, cui per infrascriptam heredem suam restitui mandavit).

  He left to Jacopo, son of Antonio Mannelli, all the goods in his goldsmith shop that pertain to his use (with the exception of those which belong to master Benvenuto Cellini goldsmith, to whom he ordered that they were to be restored through the heiress mentioned below).

  189. Gerolamo Orsini, lord of Bracciano, famous as a condottiere, whose son Paolo was made a duke. After Cellini’s goods had been impounded and Cellini imprisoned in 1538, Orsini moved quickly to recover the gems and gold he had entrusted to him, as described in the inventory drawn up at the time. (Cf. Cust, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. I, p. 386; Sansovino, Degli uomini illustri della casa Orsina, Lib. IV, and Ratti, Della famiglia Sforza, parte I, p. 226.)

  190. Pier Luigi Farnese was made Duke of Castro by the Pope in 1538.

  191. Isabella de’ Medici.

  192. Conversini (1491–1553) was appointed Governor of Rome on 21 March 1538 and on 15 October 1538 was appointed vice camarlengo & auditore generale delle cause della Curia della Camera Apostolica. He was also appointed Governor of Bologna i
n 1542. Bishop of Forlimpopoli since 1537 he was transferred to the See of Jesi in 1540.

  193. Cellini’s Italian for this was voi cicalate o [che] voi favellate.

  194. In fact Giovan Bartolomeo Gattinara, nephew of Mercurio di Gattinara, Grand Chancellor and Regent in Naples of the Emperor Charles V, concluded the terms of the – never observed – capitulation of Pope Clement on 5 June 1527.

  195. Sculptor (1504–66) from the Sinibaldi family of Montelupo who worked in Florence under Michelangelo in the sacristy of San Lorenzo and later in Rome as an architect of Castel Sant’Angelo. In his Life of Raffaello and his father, Baccio da Montelupo, Vasari praised his draughtsmanship and said he followed Michelangelo’s style in his architectural decorations.

  196. Jean de Morluc, brother of Blaise de Morluc, Marshal of France, who was made Bishop of Valence in 1554.

  197. This Giorgio Ugolino, who was succeeded by his brother Antonio (see below), is mentioned in papal account books and in Varchi’s Storia fiorentina.

  198. Very little is known about this Pallavicino save that he was an impressive preacher and his imprisonment lasted seven months and eighteen days.

  199. Antonio Pucci (d. 1544) nephew of Roberto Pucci and a respected Vatican diplomat, was made a cardinal in 1531, taking his title, as did other members of the Florentine Pucci family, from the church of Quattro Santi Coronati.

  200. This was Enrico di Oziaco, gunner in charge of the sanitation at Castel Sant’Angelo.

  201. Margaret of Austria whose second marriage to Ottavio Farnese, the Pope’s nephew, was arranged in 1538 at the meeting in Nice between Pope and Emperor to settle treaty terms with the French king. She made her state entry into Rome on 5 November 1538 when Cellini had been in prison eighteen days. She was still under fifteen.

  202. Pope Pius II (1458–64) founded the College of Abbreviators in 1463. The abbreviatores de parco majori and de parco minore were a subgroup of this College and in the Roman Curia (the main judicial, financial and administrative body of the Catholic Church) the abbreviators worked in the general administrative section (the Chancery) concerned with papal letters, including solemn bulls, producing and able to suggest corrections to these documentary decisions and instructions.