Now as to the way of making a great statue of silver; and when I say
a great statue I mean as big as a live man or bigger. Statues of
one-and-a-half cubits high I have of course seen plenty of in Rome on
the altar of St. Peter’s, and albeit the making of these is pretty
difficult and many excellent masters employ on them much admirable
work, still these smaller statues present no great difficulties in
the way of soldering, because they can be handled in the furnace
entire; moreover they are made of thinner plates[158] of silver than
the large ones. The actual process of both is much the same, but the
large ones are so much harder to manage that I for my part have never
seen any that were presentable. According to my promise of giving you
some practical example either of work I have seen of others or of my
own making, I’ll tell you the following.
The Emperor Charles V. was passing through France in the time of
Francis I., for the great war had ended, and Francis, my glorious
king, among the other wonderful presents he had given to the
Emperor, gave him a silver statue of a Hercules with two columns,
which was about three and a half cubits high. You remember how I
described above the beauty of all the things made in that great city
of Paris—well, I have never seen anywhere else in the world such
perfect hammer work as in that city, but with all their technique
(in the methods of embossing) not even the best masters were able
to give to that statue either grace, beauty or style;[159] and for
the simple reason that they did not know how to solder properly, and
so had to stick on the legs and the head and the arms by means of
fastening[160] them with silver wire. Now King Francis wanted to have
eleven statues like this made, and he complained to me that those men
of his had not been able to undertake such a job, and he asked me if
it lay in the art to do it & if I saw my way through. I replied that
most assuredly did I see my way through, that I could do these things
much better than talk about them, and that when done they would be
one hundred times finer than was anticipated. And this was the way in
which I began explaining it to that great king, and quoth I:
‘There are many different ways of doing the thing & each master
chooses the method to which his technical excellence or his fancy
guides him. First of all you make a statue in clay of the size you
want your silver statue to be, then you make a gesso mould of it in
many pieces, and this is the way: The whole breast to the middle of
the ribs at the sides, & to the juncture of the throat above & the
legs at the groining below, forms one piece. The next piece comprises
the back from the juncture of the neck and contains the shoulders and
down to the buttocks. These are the two main pieces. In like manner
must the arms, legs, and head all be formed into two pieces. And
because the undercuttings would impede the removal of the pieces,
these are filled up with wax. The gesso moulds are then respectively
cast in bronze. And you have your sheet of silver handy of such size
as may be deemed expedient by the skilful master, & commence to
hammer it over the bronze with wooden hammers, carefully rounding
the silver over the various forms; by means of frequent annealing
these forms come to be beautifully covered. The discreet and cunning
master in order to just connect separate pieces together[161] applies
a few additional hammer strokes to their edges, and expands them to
about two knife backs one over the other. These edges he cuts into
jags about two fingers apart with a pair of scissors, fits the one
into the other, and with nice judgment tightens them with a hammer,
holding them over a round stake, or some other piece of iron as shall
hinder the hammer from indenting the silver where it has nothing to
back it. In this way all the pieces are done, first the body, then
the legs, arms and head. After this they are filled with pitch, and
wrought over with hammer & punches to an exact likeness with the
original clay model, & finally soldered together into one.’
When I had delivered myself of these words to the King, he said it
was all so clear & he had understood it all so well that he very
nearly thought he would himself be able to undertake such work. Then
I told his Majesty that there were other methods which a master
thoroughly conversant with his craft might employ, and that these
methods were really easier in execution though they seemed harder
of explanation. Whereupon his Majesty retorted that verily he was a
great lover of genius,[162] that I had spoken so convincingly of the
first that he would willingly take my word for the other.
One of them was as follows: when I had cast the King’s silver into
sheets in the way I told above, and had my clay model of the
subsequent size of the silver ready completed, I went straight at the
job, with sheer ability of hammer work[163] together with my general
skill of craftsmanship, striking from front and from back in whatever
way the art demanded. By this method I got through much quicker than
the first. Arms, legs and body I hammered out in separate pieces, and
the head in one whole piece just as it were a vase, & in the manner I
told of once before. When I had given them all their shape I soldered
& fitted them together as before. The solder I used was _ottavo_,
that is a solder composed of one-eighth part of an ounce of copper to
one of silver. To do the soldering I had fixed to the tube of my big
bellows several channels of such length as I deemed necessary for the
purpose of blowing from below on the beds of coal that I had placed
under the back of my work. When this and the coal was aglow, that is,
of a golden colour, I blew the bellows on it gradually and made the
solder run, and I kept on with this, now applying it from above, now
from below, wherever I thought it necessary, and going from point to
point.[164] I have said nothing about borax, for it stands to reason,
as anyone who knows anything about his business is aware, that no
soldering can be done without it. If it turn out that, owing to the
length of the pieces, some of them are not completely soldered and
that fresh solder and borax is needed, I used instead of water to
take a bit of tallow candle in order not to have to cool the whole
of my large piece, & on this ointment I put my new solder and borax,
and this had the same effect as the water. Thus did I solder all the
different members, head, arms, feet, each for itself, filled them
with pitch, & with my punches gave the last finish but one[165] to my
work. Then came the job of soldering the big pieces together, & that
was where those great French experts failed.
I built in the middle of one of my large rooms—and I mean exactly in
the middle—a little wall about one cubit from the ground, four cubits
long, and one-and-a-half wide; and after fitting the parts to the
body I bound them on with silver wire instead of iron wire which is
usually employed, and in this way, doing three fingers’ width at a
time, and not without the greatest difficulty, I bound the two legs
to the body. Then I laid it on the wall over a good fire, and applied
_quinto_ to it, _i.e._, solder composed of one-fifth of an ounce of
copper to one of silver—I say copper not bronze,[166] because copper
is easier to treat with the punches and holds better, albeit it does
not run quite so easily. As I worked with eleven-and-a-half silver
to half copper[167] I had nothing to fear as far as the latter was
concerned; & I would have everyone aware that if he wish to make his
job succeed he must not employ inferior silver.
When my work lay in position I began, with four of my young men, to
blow the fire with the aid of fans and hand-bellows until I saw the
solder run, when I every now and then sprinkled a little soft ash
over it, for if one were to use water instead of ash, one would not
be able to add fresh solder where the old has run imperfectly. In
this manner, following just the method I have described, I happily
succeeded in soldering the whole piece with breast, legs, arms, &
head; & ere ever a piece cooled I managed to solder it on; the whole
thing succeeded most admirably, & was just lovely! So the entire
statue, which was about four cubits high, was lifted off the fire
all soldered; I cleaned it up with the tools for cleaning, which I
described before, filled it with pitch, and gave it the final polish
with the punches. Then I fixed it on a base of bronze, the latter
about two-thirds of a cubit high, with sundry little subjects in
bas-relief gilded and beautifully executed. The statue in question
was a figure of Jupiter[168] holding the lightning bolt in his right
hand, and from the lightning a torch was kindled; in his left he
held a ball to symbolise the world. Round the head and the feet was
abundance of ornamental detail; & all this was admirably gilded, the
which was most difficult to do.
Nor will I omit to tell how I cleaned[169] up the silver of so large
a piece of work, albeit I have already described to you the process
of cleaning silver, for there were exceptional difficulties in this
case. I did it thuswise: I went to the shop of a dyer of woollen
cloth and got one of his big vessels,[170] large enough to put my
figure in, which, as I said, was about four cubits high, and weighed
about 300 lbs.; then I took four iron rods, each about four cubits
long, and four chestnut staves, somewhat longer than the iron rods.
When the figure was carefully cleaned of its solder, and made smooth
and polished and carefully pumiced over, we lifted it with the four
iron rods on to a big bed of coal spread out on the ground, and large
enough to hold the figure. This we did not do, however, till the
coals were burnt out, had lost their vigour, and were well spent;
then we covered the figure all over, shovelling the embers upon it,
a very tiring job this, as you may imagine, because of the heat and
fume of the embers. We went on shovelling them about over the statue
wherever the need was, till the whole piece was of an equal red heat
all over. Then we raised it with the four iron rods, let it cool,
and when it was cold had ready our vessel[171] with the blanching
solution,[172] that is to say, water with tartar and salt composed as
I described to you above, and into it we placed the figure by means
of the four wooden staves, for the solution must not be touched by
iron. When inside we stirred it about and scrubbed it all over with
certain big hog sable brushes much like those used for whitening
walls & objects of similar size. When we saw it getting white, we
took it with great care out of this vessel and put it into another
similar one, but filled with pure water, & here we carefully washed
all the blanching solution off it. Then we poured off the water and
dried it very carefully; after which we set to gilding whatever parts
had to be gilded. Though the gilding of this statue was a much harder
job than you can possibly imagine, I do not intend here to enter
into those difficulties of detail, but will confine myself to saying
a word or two about gilding in general. Forsooth, it is a beautiful
and marvellous craft this, & it well becomes your big masters to
know of it, so that they may guide such as practise professionally.
I knew many, both in France and in Rome, who applied themselves only
to gilding. But none the less I say that great masters ought not to
practise this themselves, for the quicksilver that has to be used for
it is a deadly[173] poison, and so wears out the men that practise
in it that they live but a few years.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] _Lamine._
[159] _From the point of view of the Italian cinquecento Master it
would be correct thus to render the word ‘arte’ in this context._
[160] ‘_Legar la_’ _Brinckman translates ‘rivetting.’_
[161] _I am not sure whether this gives the right shade of meaning
to_ ‘_attestarsi_,’ _but I follow Brinckman_.
[162] _Virtù._
[163] _Virtù del martello._
[164] _E nulla spequevo_, _etc. I take this to mean that he moved the
heat of the flame about and about from point to point._
[165] _Penultima mana._
[166] _Ottone._ _Cellini would have used the pure copper, not any
alloy, for this purpose._
[167] _Argento di undici leghe e mezzo._ _Twelve being quite pure,
this would give about as little alloying metal as will work well._
[168] _See references to this in the ‘Vita,’ p. 145, and elsewhere._
[169] _Bianchire._
[170] _Caldare._
[171] _Caldare._
[172] _Bianchimento._
[173] _Smisurato_: _Cellini refers to the fumes_.