WHILE I was thus pleasantly engaged in entertaining the Duke, a page
happened to leave the wardrobe, and at the same moment Bandinello
entered. When the Duke saw him, his countenance contracted, and he asked
him drily: “What are you about here?” Bandinello, without answering,
cast a glance upon the box, where the statue lay uncovered. Then
breaking into one of his malignant laughs and wagging his head, he
turned to the Duke and said: “My lord, this exactly illustrates the
truth of what I have so often told your Excellency. You must know that
the ancients were wholly ignorant of anatomy, and therefore their works
abound in mistakes.” I kept silence, and paid no heed to what he was
saying; nay, indeed, I had turned my back on him. But when the brute had
brought his disagreeable babble to an end, the Duke exclaimed: “O
Benvenuto, this is the exact opposite of what you were just now
demonstrating with so many excellent arguments. Come and speak a word in
defence of the statue.” In reply to this appeal, so kindly made me by
the Duke, I spoke as follows: “My lord, your most illustrious Excellency
must please to know that Baccio Bandinello is made up of everything bad,
and thus has he ever been; therefore, whatever he looks at, be the thing
superlatively excellent, becomes in his ungracious eyes as bad as can
be. I, who incline to the good only, discern the truth with purer sense.
Consequently, what I told your Excellency about this lovely statue is
mere simple truth; whereas what Bandinello said is but a portion of the
evil out of which he is composed.” The Duke listened with much
amusement; but Bandinello writhed and made the most ugly faces--his face
itself being by nature hideous beyond measure--which could be imagined
by the mind of man.
The Duke at this point moved away, and proceeded through some ground
floor rooms, while Bandinello followed. The chamberlains twitched me by
the mantle, and sent me after; so we all attended the Duke until he
reached a certain chamber, where he seated himself, with Bandinello and
me standing at his right hand and his left. I kept silence, and the
gentlemen of his Excellency’s suite looked hard at Bandinello, tittering
among themselves about the speech I had made in the room above. So then
Bandinello began again to chatter, and cried out: “Prince, when I
uncovered my Hercules and Cacus, I verily believe a hundred sonnets were
written on me, full of the worst abuse which could be invented by the
ignorant rabble.” [1] I rejoined: “Prince, when Michel Agnolo Buonarroti
displayed his Sacristy to view, with so many fine statues in it, the men
of talent in our admirable school of Florence, always appreciative of
truth and goodness, published more than a hundred sonnets, each vying
with his neighbour to extol these masterpieces to the skies. [2] So
then, just as Bandinello’s work deserved all the evil which, he tells
us, was then said about it, Buonarroti’s deserved the enthusiastic
praise which was bestowed upon it.” These words of mine made Bandinello
burst with fury; he turned on me, and cried: “And you, what have you got
to say against my work?” “I will tell you if you have the patience to
hear me out.” “Go along then,” he replied. The Duke and his attendants
prepared themselves to listen. I began and opened by oration thus: “You
must know that it pains me to point out the faults of your statue; I
shall not, however, utter my own sentiments, but shall recapitulate what
our most virtuous school of Florence says about it.” The brutal fellow
kept making disagreeable remarks and gesticulating with his hands and
feet, until he enraged me so that I began again, and spoke far more
rudely than I should otherwise have done, if he had behaved with
decency. “Well, then, this virtuous school says that if one were to
shave the hair of your Hercules, there would not be skull enough left to
hold his brain; it says that it is impossible to distinguish whether his
features are those of a man or of something between a lion and an ox;
the face too is turned away from the action of the figure, and is so
badly set upon the neck, with such poverty of art and so ill a grace,
that nothing worse was ever seen; his sprawling shoulders are like the
two pommels of an ass’ pack-saddle; his breasts and all the muscles of
the body are not portrayed from a man, but from a big sack full of
melons set upright against a wall. The loins seem to be modelled from a
bag of lanky pumpkins; nobody can tell how his two legs are attached to
that vile trunk; it is impossible to say on which leg he stands, or
which he uses to exert his strength; nor does he seem to be resting upon
both, as sculptors who know something of their art have occasionally set
the figure. It is obvious that the body is leaning forward more than
one-third of a cubit, which alone is the greatest and most insupportable
fault committed by vulgar commonplace pretenders. Concerning the arms,
they say that these are both stretched out without one touch of grace or
one real spark of artistic talents, just as if you had never seen a
naked model. Again, the right leg of Hercules and that of Cacus have got
one mass of flesh between them, so that if they were to be separated,
not only one of them, but both together, would be left without a calf at
the point where they are touching. They say, too, that Hercules has one
of his feet underground, while the other seems to be resting on hot
coals.”
Note 1. Vasari confirms this statement. The statue, which may still be
seen upon the great piazza, is, in truth, a very poor performance. The
Florentines were angry because Bandinello had filched the commission
away from Michel Angelo. It was uncovered in 1534, and Duke Alessandro
had to imprison its lampooners.
Note 2. Cellini alludes of course to the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo,
designed by Michel Angelo, with the portraits of the Medici and statues
of Day, Night, Dawn, and Twilight.