Dagger and Jewel

Life of Benvenuto Ceffini. Translated by H. H. Hobart Cost. (The Navarre Society. 2 vols. 21s.) IN the year 1500 the Republic of Florence was aglow with artistic activity. Leonardo da Vinci had returned from fallen Milan, willing to enrich his native city with a masterpiece ; Michelangelo was striking out from the mighty mass of marble his young Titan of a David ; Perugine was painting sweet Umbrian saints in a thronging studio ; the young Raphael, with his Madonna eyes, was pensively considering the sketch- books of his elders. Cesare Borgia was flashing dangerously about the Rcmagna ; and Machiavelli was _ watching him with fascination and terror. It was Jubilee year ; and good men with twisted hoods trembled at the golden heathen revels of the Vatican. But Florcme was still secure and proud when, on the evening of All Saints' Day, Giovanni Cellini, engineer by trade and musician by preference, Was walking up and down his room, probably with his flute. The nurse entered with a new-born baby, unexpectedly a son. "Let him be welcome—Benuentdo," said the fond and fluting father. By the time that child was old enough to withstand the famous buffet. by which he remembered the salamander in the flames, Leonardo and figichelangeto had prepared those great _cartoons for the Sala del Consiglio that made Florence "the School of _ the World " ; and ,Renaissance art had _ imperceptibly begun to decline.

So Benvenuto Cellini distinguished among, Men by sheer exuberance" of his energy, Was born at the Renaissance prime and doomed to become part of its tragic insolent drama of decay. When, maddened by the exactions of the flute, he early begins to pia' his own fortunes ; Florence is already broken in her spirit, and the centre of the Renaissance is shifted to unhellenic Rome. The Renaissance gone cold is Benvenuto'S heritage—Roman pomp, and greed, and lust, the Sack of Rome, the Sack 'Of Floreitee, the• sbiftY Pope Clement, the shameless Paul III, Pierluigi Farnese, his horrible sOn, Duke Alessandro, Lorenzaccio; and finally the evasive, avaricious Grand Duke, Cosimo.

But Benvenuto Cellini was not cold. He was begotten in the burning time; and he- Was possessed by the Pride of per- s()nality.- With a wild zest he threw himself' upon life and sicked the marrow of every hour, loving, hating, killing, labouring, praying. The alienists, nowadays, take an interest in Cellini's fits, of homicidal frenzy, as well as in his ecstasy iq the dungeon of San Angelo. Even his own time considered him an, "extravagant." , But he could be kind and good, with the goodness of a reconciled Child; when his pity was moved. Also he could worship beauty like a true Platonistv He would even play his cornet, to see the melancholy pure oval of Faulino's face answer with delicate changes to the _music. But he would not be a musician, though his flute, a magic flute enough, sang him into the choir of Pope Clement's chapel and so to singular triumphs n "the lovely secrets and Wondrous methods of the glorious art of goldsmithery." For it was in his eyes that Cellini chiefly lived, and in his deft perilous hands.. On matter, -matter sumptuous and exquisite, he wreaked his joyous senses and his thoroughly romantic The appetite for core adorne - precious things that

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ace tokens of pers_onality, continued to be well served after the great arts bad passed into inanity.The -sincerity of rock- efystaranil- virgirt gold and diffi'euilt 'enamel :and Mysterious jqwel ahnostleiceS a quality on the eraftsmil. The frack o!ilenvenuto.was-splendid with urns or lapis and silver, howls of agate, cups of onyx, easques and sword hilts, chalices, , medals, • ewers, pendants—damascened, filigreed, graven images. He made rings that were exchanged between powers and dominations ; in gold he suspended dragons, unicorns, and sirens, all dripping with baroque pearls, to lie on regal breasts ; and his heart's-key silver girdles bound the newly wedded brides. He made a faery goblet of nacre and silver, a flowered cup of

crystal and gold enamel for the lips of Diane de Poitiers. He made the great morse of the cope of Pope Clement, and he charged with gold, enamel, and gems the illuminated missal

that Pope Paul gave the Emperor Charles when he rode over

• the razed houses through the antique Arches of Triumph. He made for King Francis the marvellous salt-cellar that was famous through Christendom. He knew the ways of the ruby and the taste and perfume of the diamond—he has said it. But he also moulded the waxen portrait that the Prince Francesco sent to Bianca Cappello. All with too brilliant bravura of Heaven and Olympos, perhaps, but with singular

virtuosity: - r •

Yet this was only half his life. Not even the Perseus, decadent masterpiece of a corrupted Florence, thick, heavy, though with a perversely charming head and a silhouette of

enchanting grace, is his greatest achievement. His astonishing power of adventure was squired by a superb narrative style, so he made a great book without knowing it. The sincerity

of the goldsmith's craft is part of his literary manner. He can tell a story like Boccaccio, and he has great respect for his matter. Meditative at-fifty-eight, he sits down at leisure to

dictate his memories to a little scribe of fourteen. And, as lie remembers, popes, kings, cardinals, rival artists, bravi,

comrades, and light loves come_ alive again, and the speaker becomes so excited that _the writing child cannot cope with these rich vehement sentences, hurtling with excess of experience. •

It is one long romance of dagger and jewel. Whatever else may be in Benvenuth's life, ennui has no place; though melan-

cholia sometimes had. Do you like the quiet and gracious passage when the noble lady Porzia talks with the handsome young man in Agostino Chigi's great Roman villa, painted with Pagan loves by Raphael and Sodoma ? Or do you prefer that Decameronian supper when he brings the Spanish Diego, beautiful as Antinous, to sit singing against the jasmine trellis, disguised as a lovely lady ? His greatest hour probably comes to him in San Angelo, during the Sack of Rome, when in his high chamber he seems to fire at rose-clad cavaliers with one hand, and melt tiaras with the other, having possibly slain that "dominant figure," the Constable of Bourbon, with an arquebus. His most terrified hour, though he would not allow

it, is probably when, for-the sake of Sicilian Angelica, he goes

to do black magic with the Priest in the Coliseum, and the vast terrible place is crimsoned by unearthly fires. His most

illuminated hour came in the dungeon of San Angelo, where he was held by that unforgettable Castellan who imagined be was a bat. In the lowest pit he lay, and a beautiful angel came and caught him to the seventh heaven, so that he melted into the glory of God, and ever after kept a shadowy halo from that wonder. Yet it was a blithe hour also when, with "a little poignard well sharpened," he suddenly replied to all the insults of Pompeo. He had good moments when he shot wild peacocks near Belfiore, fair palace of Ferrara, where he made the silver ewer and basin that his friend the Cardinal Iipolito showed to King Francis. Well 1 The happiest hours ?were in France. He could amuse that indulgent prince, now .so anxious to forget Pavia and Madrid. . In Paris he conquered his noble house with prowess, and there the king would surprise him with a great company,- and the beautiful spoilt Ascanio, _his apprentice, would hide his sweetheart in the head of a :colossal statue. There he made the triumphal Salt, and the Jong rigid nymph for the satyr-bordered door of Fontainebleau, And revealed the grandiose silver Jupiter bearing a torch in the .darkness. there he was paid like the great Leonardo. Ben- venuto's voice falters over "Francis, my glorious king" Why did he retire from Prithatiecio and Madame d'Etampes, and wilfully refuse to return without a special summons ? This Florence of Duke Cosimo is formal and difficult: The Duke is a bad paymaster; the pale Spanish Duchess, who looks always as if she had passed through a rain of pearls, is easily offended. Nevertheless he has had one such exultant hour as he loves when he was casting his adored Perseus, when the .rain came down and the furnace failed, till he went out in his !fever and threw in all his pewter so that the statue was saved,

• a little sullen from the chilling of the metal. "Then I went to Pisa," Benvenuto concludes suddenly. He was hesitating then between the Church and marriage. He received the tonsure ; and married. And the Duke got away from him the gentle Christ he made for his own tomb, so that it passed to the haughty Escorial.

When you want to meet Benvenuto Cellini again, offering a cardinal's seal or a golden gem bearing Leda and the Swan, while the other hand rests on his dagger, you cannot do better than read him in Mr. Cust's sympathetic translation. That of John Addington Symonds has the rich Renaissance flavour, that of Miss Anne lVfacdonnell is spirited and scholarly. Do not neglect them. But Mr. Cust probably gives you more exactly the colloquialism and excitement of Cellini's language. This is a republication, admirably supplied with introduction, notes, and a careful bibliography. The illustrations are also welcome. They show how the excess of Cellini's vitality often overcomes his designs with a riot of beasts and flowers, and foams in lavish ornament about the bases of his statues.

RACHEL ANNANO TAYLOR.