WHEN I had recovered my health, I returned to my old friend Marcone, the
worthy goldsmith, who put me in the way of earning money, with which I
helped my father and our household. About that time there came to
Florence a sculptor named Piero Torrigiani; [1] he arrived from England,
where he had resided many years; and being intimate with my master, he
daily visited his house; and when he saw my drawings and the things
which I was making, he said: “I have come to Florence to enlist as many
young men as I can; for I have undertaken to execute a great work of my
king, and want some of my own Florentines to help me. Now your method of
working and your designs are worthy rather of a sculptor than a
goldsmith; and since I have to turn out a great piece of bronze, I will
at the same time turn you into a rich and able artist.” This man had a
splendid person and a most arrogant spirit, with the air of a great
soldier more than a sculptor, especially in regard to his vehement
gestures and his resonant voice, together with a habit he had of
knitting his brows, enough to frighten any man of courage. He kept
talking every day about his gallant feats among those beasts of
Englishmen.
In course of conversation he happened to mention Michel Agnolo
Buonarroti, led thereto by a drawing I had made from a cartoon of that
divinest painter. [2] This cartoon was the first masterpiece which
Michel Agnolo exhibited, in proof of his stupendous talents. He produced
it in competition with another painter, Lionardo da Vinci, who also made
a cartoon; and both were intended for the council-hall in the palace of
the Signory. They represented the taking of Pisa by the Florentines; and
our admirable Lionardo had chosen to depict a battle of horses, with the
capture of some standards, in as divine a style as could possibly be
imagined. Michel Agnolo in his cartoon portrayed a number of
foot-soldiers, who, the season being summer, had gone to bathe in Arno.
He drew them at the very moment the alarm is sounded, and the men all
naked run to arms; so splendid in their action that nothing survives of
ancient or of modern art which touches the same lofty point of
excellence; and as I have already said, the design of the great Lionardo
was itself most admirably beautiful. These two cartoons stood, one in
the palace of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope. So long as
they remained intact, they were the school of the world. Though the
divine Michel Agnolo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope
Julius, [3] he never rose half-way to the same pitch of power; his
genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies.
Note 1. Torrigiani worked in fact for Henry VIII., and his monument to
Henry VII. still exists in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey. From
England he went to Spain, where he modelled a statue of the Virgin for a
great nobleman. Not receiving the pay he expected, he broke his work to
pieces; for which act of sacrilege the Inquisition sent him to prison,
where he starved himself to death in 1522. Such at least is the legend
of his end.
Note 2. The cartoons to which Cellini here alludes were made by Michel
Angelo and Lionardo for the decoration of the Sala del Gran Consiglio in
the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. Only the shadows of them remain to this
day; a part of Michel Angelo’s, engraved by Schiavonetti, and a
transcript by Rubens from Lionardo’s, called the Battle of the Standard.
Note 3. The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.