TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of the chapter.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
THE TREATISES OF BENVENUTO
CELLINI ON GOLDSMITHING AND
SCULPTURE.
[Illustration: (Decorative Flower)]
TO THE METAL
WORKERS OF
THE GUILD OF
HANDICRAFT,
FOR WHOM I
HAVE SET MY
HAND TO THIS
WORK, AND TO
WHOM I LOOK
FOR THE FRUIT
IT IS TO BEAR.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN &
OBJECT OF THE TREATISES AND OF CELLINI’S
POSITION AS CRAFTSMAN AND AUTHOR, BY
C. R. ASHBEE ix
THE TREATISE ON GOLDSMITHING.
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I. ON THE ART OF NIELLO 7
CHAPTER II. ON FILIGREE WORK 10
CHAPTER III. CONCERNING THE ART OF ENAMELLING 15
CHAPTER IV. JEWELLERY 22
CHAPTER V. HOW TO SET A RUBY 24
CHAPTER VI. HOW TO SET AN EMERALD AND A
SAPPHIRE 25
CHAPTER VII. HOW TO MAKE FOILS FOR ALL
SORTS OF TRANSPARENT JEWELS 28
CHAPTER VIII. ON THE CUTTING OF THE DIAMOND 31
CHAPTER IX. HOW YOU TINT A DIAMOND 35
CHAPTER X. HOW TO GIVE A DIAMOND ITS REFLECTOR 40
CHAPTER XI. ABOUT WHITE RUBIES & CARBUNCLES 42
CHAPTER XII. MINUTERIE WORK 45
CHAPTER XIII. ON CARDINALS’ SEALS 61
CHAPTER XIV. HOW TO MAKE STEEL DIES FOR
STAMPING COINS 67
CHAPTER XV. ABOUT MEDALS 72
CHAPTER XVI. HOW THE BEFORE-MENTIONED
MEDALS ARE STRUCK 75
CHAPTER XVII. ANOTHER WAY OF STRIKING
MEDALS WITH THE SCREW 77
CHAPTER XVIII. HOW TO WORK IN LARGE WARE,
IN GOLD AND SILVER AND SUCH LIKE 79
CHAPTER XIX. HOW TO BEGIN MAKING A VASE 80
CHAPTER XX. ANOTHER AND A BETTER WAY OF
CASTING 81
CHAPTER XXI. YET ANOTHER FURNACE. SUCH A
ONE AS I MADE IN THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO
AT THE TIME OF THE SACK OF ROME 82
CHAPTER XXII. HOW TO FASHION VESSELS OF
GOLD & SILVER, LIKEWISE FIGURES & VASES,
AND ALL THAT PERTAINS TO THAT BRANCH
OF THE CRAFT CALLED ‘GROSSERIA’ 83
CHAPTER XXIII. ANOTHER METHOD FOR GOLD
AND SILVER IN SUCH THINGS 89
CHAPTER XXIV. A THIRD METHOD FOR SIMILAR
THINGS 90
CHAPTER XXV. OF FIGURES MADE IN SILVER AND
GREATER THAN LIFE SIZE 91
CHAPTER XXVI. HOW TO GILD 96
CHAPTER XXVII. A RECIPE FOR MAKING COLOURS
AND COLOURING THE GILDED PARTS 98
CHAPTER XXVIII. A RECIPE FOR MAKING ANOTHER
SORT OF GILDING COLOUR 99
CHAPTER XXIX. HOW TO MAKE A THIRD GILDING
COLOUR FOR VERY THICK GILDING 100
CHAPTER XXX. HOW TO MAKE THE WAX FOR
GILDING 101
CHAPTER XXXI. HOW TO MAKE YET ANOTHER
COLOURING 102
CHAPTER XXXII. THE MANNER OF APPLYING THE
SAID COLOUR 103
CHAPTER XXXIII. WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU WISH TO
LEAVE BARE THE SILVER IN CERTAIN PLACES 104
CHAPTER XXXIV. HOW TO MAKE TWO KINDS OF
AQUAFORTIS, ONE FOR PARTING, THE OTHER
FOR ENGRAVING AND ETCHING 105
CHAPTER XXXV. HOW TO MAKE AQUAFORTIS
FOR PARTING 106
CHAPTER XXXVI. HOW TO MAKE ROYAL CEMENT 107
THE TREATISE ON SCULPTURE.
CHAPTER I. ON THE ART OF CASTING IN BRONZE 111
CHAPTER II. HOW THE ABOVE-MENTIONED CLAY
IS MADE 113
CHAPTER III. ANOTHER METHOD OF CASTING
FIGURES IN BRONZE OF LIFE SIZE OR A LITTLE
UNDER 114
CHAPTER IV. HOW TO CONSTRUCT FURNACES
FOR CASTING BRONZE, WHETHER FOR STATUES,
ORDNANCE, OR OTHER SUCH-LIKE
THINGS 127
CHAPTER V. HOW TO CARVE STATUES OR INTAGLIOS,
OR OTHER WORKS, SUCH AS DIVERS
BEASTS, IN MARBLE OR OTHER STONES 134
CHAPTER VI. OF CARRARA MARBLES 135
CHAPTER VII. A DISQUISITION ON COLOSSAL STATUES
WHETHER MODERATELY OR VERY
GREAT 139
CHAPTER VIII. THE MYSTERY OF MAKING GREAT
COLOSSI 141
A GLOSSARY OF ITALIAN TECHNICAL
TERMS FOR THE USE OF
STUDENTS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND DIAGRAMS.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
To face page
A page of reputed Cellini Jewellery 22
Another page of the same 24
King Francis’ Salt, first view 58
King Francis’ Salt, second view 60
Specimens of Cardinals’ Seals 66
Coins and Medals from various collections 68
The South Kensington Breviary and another Cellini attribution 32
A Wax Model for the Perseus 54
The Crucifix in the Escurial 134
The Perseus 114
The Nymph of Fontainebleau 110
DIAGRAMS.
page
Diagram illustrating the _specchietto_ for the diamond 40
Diagram illustrating the application of the _cire perdue_
process to seals 64
Diagram illustrating the _coniare_ process of striking medals 76
Diagram illustrating the process of striking medals
with the screw 78
Diagram illustrating the process of casting silver 79
Diagram illustrating the _rasoio_ for paring metal 83
Biringoccio’s Furnace from the ‘Pirotechnica’ 133
AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF THE TREATISES &
OF CELLINI’S POSITION AS CRAFTSMAN AND AUTHOR.
This translation is intended for the workshop; & to bring home to
English craftsmen, & more particularly to my colleagues and pupils
at Essex House, the methods and practice of the Goldsmith of the
Renaissance. It is with this end in view that the work has been
undertaken, and I am in hopes that the knowledge of this may induce
my critics to give it a kindlier reading, aware as I am of its many
shortcomings.
To the translator of the treatises two things are necessary, Italian
scholarship and a thorough knowledge of workshop technicalities;
these two qualities are difficult—perhaps impossible—to combine, and
I am conscious of grave deficiencies in both, but more especially in
the former. My endeavour has been to follow the lead set me by John
Addington Symonds and to make this first English translation of the
treatises serve, if but in some far-off measure, as a continuation
volume to his masterly translation of the Autobiography. I have in
many cases, therefore, adopted his manner of handling the subject,
but inasmuch as the more technical and less directly personal
matter with which the treatises deal, demands a somewhat different
treatment, I have sought to retain what I would call the workshop
vernacular, without at the same time sacrificing the archaism of the
old Italian dialect.
Cellini’s graphic touch, which gives their manifold brilliancy to
the varying passages of that wonderful autobiography, is equally
evident in the treatises. But this very vividness increases the
translator’s difficulty. The book is full of amusing workshop
pictures and anecdotes; but it is always a workshop book. Cellini
sees each process before him as he describes it, we, however, only
hear the description, we do not see the process, hence it is often to
the expert metal worker alone that some of the more complex technical
narrations appeal, while the translator is as frequently in doubt as
to whether he has realised the picture the author sought to draw.
If, in my English rendering of some of these pictures, I have gone
astray, I trust that my errors may be pointed out by those who are
better able to follow the author’s meaning.
Apology is perhaps scarcely necessary for what will often appear to
be loose or ungrammatical English; this may be an offence to the
stylist or the pedant, & it certainly at first sight jars in what
purports to be a scientific text book. It would have been perfectly
easy for me to cut out the improper stories, trim up the phrases
and give precision, accuracy, and even grammar to certain of the
sentences, but this would not have been Cellini. We have him not
writing, but rapidly & with a delightful forgetfulness and confusion,
talking his treatises to a scribe, and then omitting to revise them;
it is the spirit, therefore, of the spoken word, not the careful
writing, that I have sought to render.
Another difficulty hampers the translator: the absence of any living
workshop tradition upon which to fall back when his subject becomes
too technical. In our day of the subdivision of labour the study
of the ‘_Eight branches of the glorious Art of Goldsmithing_’ as
it was in Benvenuto’s time is a thing of the past. Except in a few
instances where workshops are conducted with the enthusiasm of the
artist rather than with the itching fingers of the tradesman, there
is no such thing as an all round grasp of the Art such as Cellini
postulates. To the tradesman, the sculptor’s ghost, the working
jeweller, whether of Birmingham, Bond Street, or Clerkenwell, in
the thousand and one gimcrack shops where they sell ‘merry-thought
brooches,’ & ‘our latest stock of Christmas presents,’ the glorious
Art of Goldsmithing has no meaning, or rather is a thing not of eight
branches but of a hundred subdivisions, fanned into existence by a
hundred callous machines, and workshop tradition has been destroyed
by ‘the Trade.’ For the same reason the circle of readers will be
small. To those of us who in recent years have been seeking to lift
the art of the goldsmith out of the slough of industrial despond,
to show once more what the human hand and fancy can create, and to
relegate, without repudiating it, the machine to its right place in
relation to human endeavour, all this manifold production of rubbishy
trinkets, useless ornaments, and things made for ‘the Market,’ is
stupid and wasteful, and makes for the destruction not the ennobling
or beautifying of life.
But though small, the circle of my readers will be an earnest one. To
such as are setting the standard of modern Art and Craft, to those
who are fighting the trade, and seeking to relate the creations of
their hands to their reasons for existence in life, this book of the
aspirations & traditions of the old Italian will have some value.
Fortunately their number is increasing, not only in England, but in
Europe & in the United States. In the workshops of men like Frampton,
Alfred Gilbert, Simmons, Fisher, Nelson Dawson; among the artists of
Glasgow & Birmingham, or among the keener creative spirits in New
York, whom I have found ready to welcome every genuine inspiration
of the hand, will the real readers be found.
It is perhaps not my province as a translator to criticise the
artistic merit of Cellini’s work, but as my hope in placing his
treatises before English craftsmen is to familiarise them with his
methods, I may perhaps be allowed to give a few words of warning.
We must not take Cellini at his own valuation, and we must remember
that he did not draw that subtle distinction between designer and
executant that we nowadays are wont to do. The fact that every
aesthetic criticism is inevitably biased by the style of its period
must be taken into account by the student, if such criticisms as I
myself, speaking as an artist, should venture to make, are to be
of value to him. To Cellini’s best-known critics this applies in
equal measure. Vasari, Delaborde, Milanesi, Brinckman, Symonds, have
each had their point of view so to speak. To some, like Vasari, it
has been coloured by what the Germans call ‘die Voll-Renaissance,’
of which Cellini in the art of goldsmithing was undoubtedly the
central figure. To others, like Delaborde, it was influenced by
the Romantic Reaction of the early Nineteenth Century, and to them
his work was ‘an exploded myth.’ Criticised from the modern point
of view—the point of view that distinguishes between goldsmith and
sculptor, between craftsman & designer—we cannot rank him among the
highest. There is a want of feeling for proportion in such work as
we have of his, & the whole is marred by the overcrowded detail,
often very exquisite in itself, of the parts; the craftsman indeed
invariably overpowers the artist. Above all there is a want of
spirituality in all his more important work, a want of refinement
of soul, if one might so term it—a vulgarity. There is none of the
εὐηθεια of Donatello, the graciousness of Ghiberti or Duccio, the
mingled strength and sweetness of Verocchio, the simple grandeur of
Pisanello. Michael Angelo’s manner perhaps we can trace, but of his
inspiration and his self-control there is none.
If we take Cellini from the point of view he would himself have
wished us to criticise him, he challenges us first as a sculptor & a
designer of the figure. In this sphere, however, he falls far short
of the standard he calls upon us to judge him by. Affected & uneven
and imperfect in handling is his work when set beside that of earlier
masters. Attenuated as we see in the nymph of Fontainebleau, thick
& exaggerated as in the Perseus at Florence, leaden and stiff as in
the Neptune and Cybele of the salt, there is about his figures always
something _manqué_, they seem indeed to have in them the effort of a
decaying school.
Much the same criticism applies to his work as a medalist. There is
an absence of reserve & the fine feeling for his limitations which
puts him to my mind far beneath Sperandio, Marende, Francia, or other
of the great Cinquecento medalists, and it needs no artist to point
to the superiority of the Greek coins with which with redoubtable
modesty he compares his own.
To estimate his position as a jeweller is all but impossible, as
there is not one jewel remaining that can be authenticated as his.
If, however, we may be allowed to gauge his position as an artist
from such pieces as are attributed to him in the Rothschild, Vienna,
Paris, & Chantilly Collections, and of which I give some specimens
on pages 22 and 24, I should be inclined to place him on an equal
footing with any of the great masters of the early Renaissance or
the Middle Ages in any country. The reasons of this are not far to
seek. Jewellery is, before all others, an art of limitations. An
artist cannot but put less of himself into a gem than into a statue,
he is necessarily more cabined. Further, Cellini made most of his
jewellery as a young man in Florence & Rome, when the traditions
of the Florentine workshop which reared Brunelleschi, Donatello,
Ghiberti, were still fresh upon him, & before he had as yet attempted
the impossible task of translating the _gusto grando_ of Michael
Angelo into minor craftsmanship. Subject to the disproving of the
attributions, I give therefore to Cellini as a jeweller an equal
place with the artists of Greece and Japan, with those of Spain,
England and Germany in the Middle Ages & the Renaissance, whose works
are known to us; but as medalist, goldsmith and sculptor, I would
place him on a much lower footing. My whole criticism might be summed
up briefly thus: he was a very first-rate craftsman, but a very
second-rate artist.
The Autobiography and the Treatises of Cellini must be read together,
they tail into one another, the former gives the life of the man,
the second the methods of the craftsman; both alike bring out the
writer’s strong personality. A few words are needed as to their
bearing upon one another, and the original of the present translation.
Both the ‘Vita’ & the ‘Trattati’ were dictated by Cellini to
amanuenses; &, feeling their stylistic imperfections, he offered
both, after their completion, to literary friends to polish and
refine before publication. The ‘Vita’ he sent to the great historian
Benedetto Varchi, who had the good taste and the wisdom to leave the
MS. as it was, saying that he preferred it in its rough & unpolished
condition; the latter was placed in less tactful hands,[1] & Gherardo
Spini, a literateur[2] of the Florentine Academy, to whom this task
has with good reason been attributed, undertook its recasting, to the
no small detriment of the original. In this polished and emasculated
form the ‘Trattati’ first appeared & for 300 years remained; the
Editio Princeps[3] being published in Florence in the shape of a very
beautiful volume in 1568, three years before Cellini’s death. It was
not till 1857 that Carlo Milanesi, working on the lines of Francesco
Tassi, who had in the Marciana re-discovered the original MS., gave
to the world the work as Cellini had originally dictated it. It is on
the ‘Trattati’ of the Marcian Codex, therefore, & not of the first
edition, that this translation is based.
Cellini is fortunate in having been handled in our own day by four
eminent and scholarly men, and to the work of each of these am I
indebted. Milanesi,[4] 1857, may be placed first, and his admirable
and exhaustive edition of the ‘Trattati’ cannot be too highly
praised. Herr Justus Brinckman[5] followed him, in 1867, with his
excellent translation of the ‘Trattati’ into German, and his very
able comparative treatment of the work of the monk Theophilus[6]
with that of the Cinquecento artist. In 1883 Eugène Plon[7] brought
out his splendid volume on the life and works of Cellini, especially
valuable for its illustrations and the critical investigation of the
authentic and attributed works of the master. The work of our own
John Addington Symonds is familiar to most English readers, and it
is to the study of his masterly translation of the ‘Vita’ that I owe
my first introduction to Cellini. To his memory I would wish here to
express my gratefulness, and perhaps the best expression of this is
in the assurance that through his introduction to Cellini has grown
up the wish to familiarise the methods of the Renaissance workshop
among English metal workers, & particularly among the metal workers
of the Guild of Handicraft for whom this book is written.
My thanks are due to Messrs. Plon & Cie. for their kind permission
to reproduce the blocks originally used in M. Eugène Plon’s volume,
and which illustrate in this book the various examples as Cellini
describes them; and I am indebted to many friends, artists & scholars
for the most part, who have helped me with difficulties both in
the text and in the workshop. To Mr. and Mrs. de Morgan and Captain
Victor Ward for many hours of helpful, and, I fear, sometimes tedious
revision; to Miss Constance Blount for her great assistance with
the enamelling chapter, to Mr. Virtue Tebbs for his advice among
the coins, to Mr. Wenlock Rollins & Mr. T. Stirling Lee in the
complicated passages dealing with casting and the making of furnaces,
and above all to Professor Roberts-Austen and Professor Church, not
only for their invaluable help on all points dealing with metallurgy
& stones, but also for their kind assistance in correcting the proofs
of the whole book. I have likewise to thank for their courtesy in
allowing me to refer to them in one way or another over technical &
literary difficulties Mr. Heywood Sumner, Mr. M. Hewlett, Professor
Giglioli of Naples, and Professor Fergusson of Glasgow.
C. R. ASHBEE.
Essex House, Bow, E.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Plon, 117._
[2] _See Milanesi. ‘I. Trattati,’ &c., novamente messi alle stampe,
&c._
[3] _Pub. Firenze, 1568. Valentini Panizzi e Marco Peri, 8vo._
[4] _Milanesi. ‘Due Trattati,’ &c._
[5] _‘Abhandlungen über die Goldschmiedekunst und die Sculptur v.
Benvenuto Cellini.’ Justus Brinckman. Leipzig, 1867._
[6] _Theophilus lived in the early half of the 11th century. See his
‘Diversarum Artium Schedula.’ Hendrie’s translation. Murray, 1847._
[7] _‘Benvenuto Cellini, orfèvre, medailleur, sculpteur, &c.’ Eugène
Plon. Paris, 1883._
THE TREATISE ON GOLDSMITHING.
INTRODUCTION.
What first prompted me to write, was the knowledge of how fond
people are of hearing anything new. Then in the second place, &
this perhaps had greater weight still, I felt much troubled in mind
because of all sorts of annoying things the which I purpose in the
following treatise, with due modesty, to recount. That they will
move my readers to great pity & no little anger in my behalf I am
quite positive. Forsooth you can often attribute to difficulties
of this kind the most opposite turns, to the greatest of evil the
greatest of good, and had the troubles in question never come upon
me, I for sure should never have set about writing down these most
useful things. Thus it was that I did what no one had done before,[8]
viz., undertook to write about those loveliest secrets and wondrous
methods of the great art of goldsmithing. Things such as neither
your philosopher, no, nor any other kind of man neither, if he be
not of the craft, durst write about. But since they of the craft are
for the most part better at work than at talk, they fall into the
error of silence. This at least I determined to avoid and so set
myself strenuously to the task. Perhaps never before, or at least so
rarely that it has never been recorded, has a man been found who was
a specialist in more than one or at most two of the eight different
branches of this goodly art, but where he is, he knows, as you may
imagine, how to make a good thing of them. Mind you, I don’t intend
to talk about those kinds of muddlers who set themselves busily
dabbling in all the eight branches at once, and who many and many
a time are employed by such as either couldn’t or wouldn’t decide
whether a bit of work was good or whether it was bad. Men of that
ilk methinks may be likened to the sort of small shopkeeper who
hangs out in the slums or suburbs of the town and does a little now
in the bakery line, now in the grocery line, now in the apothecary
line and now in general retail business—in fact, a little bit of
everything and nothing good in anything. These sorts of fellows I
don’t intend to talk about, but only of such as have come to the
front in what they have done; and only of the right workmanlike way
of doing things. Well, then, I mind me to begin with, of our city of
Florence and of how we there were the first to revive all those arts
that are the sisters of this art of mine; of how the earliest light
dawned in the time of that first magnificent Cosimo de Medici; of
how under him flourished Donatello the great sculptor, and Pippo di
Ser Brunelleschi the great architect, and of that wondrous Lorenzo
Ghiberti, in whose time were made the beautiful gates for what was
once the ancient temple of Mars and is now the baptistry of our
patron St. John.
_Lorenzo Ghiberti._ He was a goldsmith indeed! Not only in the
wonderfulness of his own peculiar style, but because of his unwearied
power of marvellous finish, and his exceeding diligence in execution.
This man, who must be counted among the most admirable of goldsmiths,
applied himself to everything, but especially to the casting of
smaller work. And though now and then he set about doing large
pieces, yet one can see that his particular line was the production
of small work, and in this branch we may well call him a master in
the art of casting. Indeed he pursued this with such excellence that
as is still obvious to all, no man can touch him.
_Antonio Pollajuolo, or the poulterer’s son_, as he is always called,
was likewise a goldsmith, and a draughtsman too of such skill, that
not only did all the goldsmiths make use of his excellent designs,
but the sculptors and painters of the first rank also, and gained
honour by them, what was more! This man did little else beside his
admirable drawing, but at this he was always busy.
_Maso Finiguerra_ pursued only the art of engraving niello, in which
craft he had no rival, and he too always made use of the designs of
the aforesaid Antonio.
_Amerigo_ wrought in the art of enamel, & was by far away the first
craftsman in it either before or after his time. He too, great as he
was, made use of the designs of Antonio del Pollajuolo.
_Michaelangelo_, the goldsmith of Pinzidimonte, was a capital
fellow, and worked in a variety of divers things, and especially
in the setting of gems. He wrought and designed well in niello, in
enamel, in hammered work, and though he come not up to the other
distinguished men just named, he deserves much praise. He was the
father of Baccino[9] whom Pope Clement made a Knight of St. John. He
added the surname Bandinelli on his own account, and since he had
neither family nor arms really, he took the sign of his knighthood
for a coat. About this man I shall have more than enough to tell as
we go along.
_Bastiano del Bernardetto Cennini_ was a goldsmith and worked also
in a number of different things. His forefathers and he for many
years made the dies for the coins of Florence, until the time that
Alexander de Medici, the nephew of Pope Clement, became Duke. This
Bastiano in his youth did admirable large metal ware—grosserie[10]
and hammered work,[11] and verily he was a first-rate craftsman. And
though I said above I wasn’t going to talk about bunglers who take up
a number of different things indifferently, one must none the less
distinguish between those who _are_ bunglers & those who are good
craftsmen and worthy of praise.
_Piero_, _Giovanni_, and _Romolo_, were brothers, the sons of one
_Goro Tavolaccino_; they were goldsmiths too, they did good work
and made good designs. Amongst other things they were very good at
setting jewels in pendants, rings and so forth, and this they managed
so tastefully that at that time, 1518, they had no equal. They also
worked in intaglio, in bas-relief, and were not bad at hammered work.
_Stefano Salteregli_ was a goldsmith too, a good man in his day,
working like the others in a number of different things, but he died
young.
_Zanobi_, son of _Meo del Lavacchio_, whose craft he followed, was a
goldsmith also, had a charming way of working and designed admirably;
but he died just when his beard began to bloom, at about the age of
20.
Indeed at that time there were many young fellows, whose equal and
colleague I was, who promised great things to begin with; but the
most of them has death snatched away, and the rest have either not
stuck to the drudgery, or with undeveloped talents have got no
further. As for me, I have heard myself blamed because I have talked
so much about such excellent men in one profession only; but I have
still to tell of work in filigree, an art though the least beautiful
of many beautiful arts, still very beautiful for all that.
_Piero di Nino_ was a goldsmith, who worked only in filigree, an art
which, while it affords great charm, is not without its difficulties.
He, however, knew how to work in it better than anyone else. Inasmuch
as there was great riches in those days within the town, so was it
likewise in the country, especially among the peasant folk of the
plain, who used to get made for their wives a sort of velvet girdle
with buckle and pin, about half a cubit long and covered all over
with little spangles. These buckles and pins were all wrought in
filigree with great delicacy and fashioned in silver of excellent
setting. When later on I shall show how these things are made, I
am sure the reader will find delight in them. I knew this Piero de
Nino when an old man of near 90 years. He died partly from fear of
dying of hunger, and partly from a shock he got one night. As for
the dying of hunger it was this way: An edict had been issued in the
city that no more belts should be worn either by peasants or others;
and the poor old fellow, who knew no other branch of goldsmithing
but this, was always grieving, and cursing from the bottom of his
heart all those who had a hand in making this law. He lived near a
draper’s shop, where was a young rogue of an urchin, the son of one
of them that had made the law. The boy, hearing him thus continually
cursing his father, ‘Oh, Piero,’ said he, ‘if you go on swearing like
that, some fine day the devil will come and carry you off, bones and
all!’ Now one Saturday night, when the old chap had worked right up
to midnight to finish some job he was engaged on that was to go to
Bologna, the urchin took it into his head to play him a practical
joke and give him a fright. So he stood on the watch for the old man
on his way home. The latter, as was his wont, locked up his shop,
took his lantern in his hand, and, with the lappet of his cloak
thrown over his head, trudged along ever so slowly, and as lonely as
a ghost, home to his house, which stood in the via Mozza. Just as he
was turning the corner of the old market the urchin, who was awaiting
in ambush for him, and had tricked himself out with rag-tag, sulphur
lights, blue fire, and such-like horrible devilries, suddenly jumped
out upon him. The poor old thing was so terrified at the fearful
monster thus suddenly coming at him, that he lost his senses; so
much so that the boy, seeing he had played the fool, had to lead the
old man home as well as he could, and consign him to the care of his
grandsons, among whom was one called Meino, a courier, who afterwards
became warden of Arezzo. Suffice it, the fright had been so great,
that soon after the poor old fellow died. This is usually stated as
the actual cause of Piero’s death, and I have myself ofttimes heard
it narrated.
_Antonio di Salvi_ was another of our Florentine goldsmiths, a
capital grosserie worker. He died at a very great age.
_Salvatore Pilli_ likewise was a first-rate man, who also died very
old; but he never worked in a shop of his own, but always in someone
else’s.
_Solvatore Guasconti_ was an all round man, more especially good in
small things. His work in niello and enamel is well worthy of praise.
You must know too that there were ever so many others, all of them
fellow Florentines, who commenced in the goldsmith’s art and took
their inspiration from it for various other arts, such as sculpture,
architecture, and other notable lines of work.
_Donatello_, for instance, the greatest sculptor that ever lived,
about whom I shall have plenty to say later on, stuck to the
goldsmith’s art right along into manhood.
_Pippo di ser Brunellesco_, the first who gave new vigour to the
glory of architecture, he too was a goldsmith for a long time.
_Lorenzo della Golpaia_ also was a goldsmith, and always continued
true to the art. As for him, he was a very prodigy of nature, for he
specialised in clock making, and finding his own peculiar bent in
this line, so wonderfully reproduced the secret of the heavens and
the stars that you really might have thought he lived up in the sky!
Amongst other things he showed his cunning in a clock he made for the
magnificent Lorenzo de Medici. In this clock he put the Medici arms,
making them represent the seven planets; these used to move round
slowly, and revolve just like the planets in the sky do. This clock
is still in its place, but it is not what it used to be because it
has been so badly taken care of.
_Andrea del Verocchio_, the sculptor, remained a goldsmith up to the
time of manhood. He was the master of Lionardo da Vinci, painter,
sculptor, architect, philosopher, musician;—a veritable angel
incarnate of whom I shall have heaps to tell whenever he comes to
mind.
_Desiderio_, too, was a goldsmith in his youth, who took to sculpture
later, and was a great master in the art.
I can’t possibly recount all our Florentines who were adepts in the
great goldsmiths’ art, suffice it that I have mentioned most of those
who became famous therein. But I will say a word or two about some of
the foreigners who seem to me pre-eminent, and I will begin with such
as wrought in niello.
_Martino_[12] was a goldsmith from beyond the Alps, who came from
some German town or other. He was a first-rate fellow in designing,
& in intaglio work in the way they do it there. It was just about
the time when the fame of our Maso Finiguerra spread abroad, who
did those wonderful niello intaglios,—by the way, you may still see
preserved in our lovely Church of St. John of Florence a silver pyx
of his, with a crucifix above it, & the two malefactors, with a lot
of detail of horses and other things. Antonio del Pollajuolo, whom I
mentioned before, did the design, and Maso the niello work.
Well, then, this good German Martino set to with great diligence
and zeal to practise the art of niello, and turned out a number
of excellent things. But because he saw that he could not produce
work that should come up to our Finiguerra’s for beauty and go, yet
being a right-minded man, and wishing to do something that should
be generally useful, he set to cutting his intaglios on copper
plates with the graver (_bulino_) for so is the little steel tool
called with which you engrave. In this wise he engraved a number
of pretty little picture-tales, very well composed, and with great
understanding of light & shade, in fact as far as one can say such a
thing of a piece of German work, they were charming.
_Alberto Duro_ also tried his hand at engraving, and with much
greater success than Martino. He too was not satisfied with the
results of his work in niello, and so determined to do engravings,
and this he did so well that no one can hold a candle to him. He too
was a goldsmith, nor was he satisfied with niello only, he resorted
in addition to his engraving, and did extraordinarily well in that
line.
_Andrea Mantegni_, our great Italian painter, tried it too, but
couldn’t do it, so the less said about it the better.
_Antonio Pollajuolo_, the same happened with him, and because both
these men could make nothing of it, I’ll say naught but that Mantegni
was an excellent painter, and Pollajuolo an excellent draughtsman.
_Antonio da Bologna_[13] & _Marco da Ravenna_ must also be counted
among the goldsmiths. Antonio was the first who began to engrave in
the manner of Alberto Duro. He studied closely the work of the great
painter Raphael of Urbino. He engraved beautifully, could design in
the right good Italian manner, and studied closely the style and
methods of those old Greeks, who always know how to do things better
than other folk. Many others pursued this branch of engraving, but
because none of them came up to the great Alberto Duro, & even also
a long way behind our Italian Antonio of Bologna, I’ll not mention
them; more especially as to do so would be to go beyond the limits of
our inquiry, which is to consider the lovely art of niello and all
its many difficulties.
Now you must know that when I first was a goldsmith’s apprentice in
the 15th year of the century, which was my 15th year too, the art of
engraving in niello had quite fallen into disuse. It was only because
a few old men still living did nothing else but talk of the beauty of
the art and of the great masters who had wrought in it, & above all
of Finiguerra, that I was seized with a mighty desire to learn it; so
I set to diligently to master it, & with the examples of Finiguerra
before me, made many good pieces.
My difficulty, however, was how to find out after I had engraved
the intaglio how the niello that was to fill it ought to be made.
So I went on trying ever so hard until I not only mastered the
difficulties of making the material, but the whole art became a mere
child’s play to me. Here, then, is the way in which niello work is
done.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Cellini had of course never heard of Theophilus, the monk of the
11th century, and his great treatise ‘Diversarum Artium Schedula.’_
[9] _Baccio Bandinelli, the sculptor, one of Cellini’s bitterest
enemies._
[10] _Grosseria. Cellini uses this term for all large ware as
distinguished from ‘minuteria’ or small ware._
[11] _Di cesello: what we should call repoussé._
[12] _Martin Schongauer._
[13] _Marcantonio Raimondi._
CHAPTER I. ON THE ART OF NIELLO.
Take an ounce of the finest silver, two ounces of copper well
purified, and three ounces of lead as pure as you can possibly get
it. Then take a little goldsmiths’ crucible sufficiently big to
melt the three in together. You must first take the one ounce of
silver & the two ounces of copper and put the two together in the
crucible, and the crucible in a goldsmiths’ blast-furnace, and when
the silver and the copper are molten & well mixed together, add the
lead to them. Then quickly draw the crucible out, and with a bit of
charcoal held in your tongs, stir it round till it is well mixed. The
lead, according to its wont, will make a little scum, so with your
charcoal try and take this off as much as possible, until the three
metals are fully & cleanly blended. At the same time have ready a
little earthenware flask about as big as your fist, the neck of which
should, however, not be wider than might hold one of your fingers.
Fill this flask about half full with very finely ground sulphur,
& empty into this your molten mass, while quite fluid & hot. Then
quickly stuff it up with moist earth, and holding it in your hand
wrapped up in a stout bit of canvas, say for instance an old sack,
shake it to & fro while it is cooling. As soon as it is cold, break
the flask and take out the stuff, and you will see that by virtue of
the sulphur it will have got the black colour you want. But mind you
take care that the sulphur is the blackest you can get.[14] As for
the flask, you may take one of those which are generally used for
separating gold from silver. Take then your niello, which will now be
in a number of little grains,—for you must know that the object of
all this shaking up and down whilst cooling in the sulphur is to make
it combine,—& put it anew into a crucible, then melt it in a moderate
fire, adding to it a grain of borax. When you have recast it two or
three times, and after each casting broken up your niello, take it
out, for you will see it will now be splendidly broken up,[15] and
that is as it ought to be,—and that will do.
Now I’ll show you how to apply and make up your niello; but first
a word or two about the plate on which your intaglio is to be
engraved, whether in silver or in gold, for niello is used only on
these metals. If you want to get the plate on which you have cut
your work nice and smooth & without holes,[16] you must boil it in a
solution of clean water mixed with a deal of very clean charcoal,
the best for this purpose being charred oak. When your work has
cooked in the pot for about a quarter of an hour or so, transfer it
to a beaker of clean fresh water, and scrub it for a long time with
a clean brush till every particle of dirt be rubbed off it. Then see
that you have ready a bit of iron long enough to hold the work to
the fire: its length should be about three or four palms, more or
less in accordance with what the nature of your work may seem to you
to need. But mind you look out that the iron to which your work is
fixed be neither too thick nor too thin; for it should be of such
sort that when you put both to the fire they should heat equally; for
if either the iron or the plate become heated first, you’ll make a
mess of it, so pay great attention to this. Next take your niello, &
crush it on an anvil, or on a porphyry stone, & do this with a pair
of pliers or a copper rod, and so that it does not spring aside.
Take care, too, that it is crushed to grains and not to a powder, &
these grains should be as equal as possible, and about the size of
a grain of millet or sago, if not less. After this put the niello
grains into some sort of vase or glass bottle, and with fresh clean
water wash it out well till it be quite purified from any dust or
dirt that may have got into it during the pounding. This done, take
a spatula of brass or copper, and spread the niello evenly over your
engraved plate to about the thickness of the back of a table-knife.
Then powder over it a little well-ground borax, but mind it be not
too much. Put a few pieces of wood or charcoal so that you can blow
them into flame with your bellows, and this done, put your work very
slowly to the wood fire & subject it to the heat very dexterously
till you see the niello beginning to melt. But look out that, when
it does begin to melt, you don’t get it too hot, or into a red heat,
for if it gets too hot, it will lose its natural character and become
soft, because, the principal component of niello being lead, this
lead will begin to corrode the silver, or even the gold of which your
work is made; in this way you might have all your pains for nothing.
Have great heed to this, therefore, which is as important as your
good engraving to begin with.
Now before we follow the work through to the end, we will pause and
consider things a bit. I advise you when you are holding your work
over the fire and see the niello begin to disintegrate, to have at
hand a fairly stout iron rod, with a flatted end: this end hold in
the fire, and when the niello begins to run, rapidly put your hot
iron over it, and, treating it as if it were wax, spread it well,
until it has quite filled all the graven part of your intaglio. After
this, when your work has got cold, take a delicate file, and file off
your niello, & after you have removed a certain quantity, not so as
to graze your intaglio, but sufficient to lay it bare, take your work
and put it on the hot ashes or the live charcoal.
When it is a little hotter than the hand can bear, or even a bit
hotter still, but before it gets too hot, take your steel burnisher,
well-tempered, & with a little oil burnish your niello as firmly as
the work would seem to admit of, and with due discretion in every
case. The only object of this burnishing, is to stop up certain
bubble holes[17] that sometimes come during the process. You’ve only
got to have patience enough, and with a little practice you’ll find
this burnishing stops all the holes up beautifully.
After this, take your knife & touch up the intaglio. Then to finish
with take some Tripoli powder and pounded charcoal, & with a reed
peeled down to the pith, scrub your work till it is smooth and
beautiful.
Oh thou discreetest of readers, marvel not that I have given so much
time in writing about all this, but know that I have not even said
half of what is needed in this same art, the which in very truth
would engage a man’s whole energies, and make him practise no other
art at all. In my youth from my 15th to my 18th year I wrought a good
deal at this art of niello, always from my own designs, and was much
praised for my work.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _This is obscure, as the purest yellow sulphur would answer._
[15] _Perhaps: ‘have a fine fracture.’_
[16] _Bucolini. Perhaps: ‘specks.’_
[17] _Spugnuzze._