The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Date read: 2019-11-15
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Key ideas: Cellini Florentine, an excellent sculptor and goldsmith who worked for Medici at the end of is life, is best known for his entertaining autobigraphy. While some events in the book may be exaggerated, it is still considered an excellent firsthand account of life in 16th century Rome, Florance, Siena, Paris, and other locales.


NOTES

I chose to be my own master and not the man of others

After undertaking some new commissions, I took it into my head, as soon as I had finished them, to change my master; I had indeed been worried into doing so by a certain Milanese, called Pagolo Arsago. My first master, Firenzuola, had a great quarrel about this with Arsago, and abused him in my presence; whereupon I took up speech in defence of my new master.

I said that I was born free, and free I meant to live, and that there was no reason to complain of him, far less of me, since some few crowns of wages were still due to me; also that I chose to go, like a free journeyman, where it pleased me, knowing I did wrong to no man...

I chose to be my own master and not the man of others.

Sense of humor

While I was standing there and talking, one of them, named Gherardo Guasconti, their cousin, having perhaps been put up to it by them, lay in wait till a beast of burden went by. It was a load of bricks. When the load reached me, Gherardo pushed it so violently on my body that I was very much hurt. Turning suddenly round and seeing him laughing, I struck him such a blow on the temple that he fell down, stunned, like one dead.

Then I faced round to his cousins, and said: “That’s the way to treat cowardly thieves of your sort;” and when they wanted to make a move upon me, trusting to their numbers, I, whose blood was now well up, laid hands to a little knife I had, and cried: “If one of you comes out of the shop, let the other run for the confessor, because the doctor will have nothing to do here.”

Plague in Rome

AT that time, while I was still a young man of about twenty-three, there raged a plague of such extraordinary violence that many thousands died of it every day in Rome. Somewhat terrified at this calamity, I began to take certain amusements, as my mind suggested, and for a reason which I will presently relate. I had formed a habit of going on feast-days to the ancient buildings, and copying parts of them in wax or with the pencil; and since these buildings are all ruins, and the ruins house innumerable pigeons, it came into my head to use my gun against these birds.

So then, avoiding all commerce with people, in my terror of the plague, I used to put a fowling-piece on my boy Pagolino’s shoulder, and he and I went out alone into the ruins; and oftentimes we came home laden with a cargo of the fattest pigeons...

It is true that the great delight I took in this exercise bid fair to withdraw me from my art and studies; yet in another way it gave me more than it deprived me of, seeing that each time I went out shooting I returned with greatly better health, because the open air was a benefit to my constitution.

In France

On one occasion, when two gentlemen were pushing their way in as spectators, and the porter was opposing them with violence, the judge raised his voice, and spoke the following words precisely as I heard them: “Keep peace, Satan, begone, and hold your tongue.” These words in the French tongue sound as follows: Phe phe, Satan, Phe, Phe, alé, phe!

Now I had learned the French tongue well; and on hearing this sentence, the meaning of that phrase used by Dante came into my memory, when he and his master Virgil entered the doors of Hell. Dante and the painter Giotto were together in France, and particularly in the city of Paris, where, owing to the circumstances I have just described, the hall of justice may be truly called a hell.

Dante then, who also understood French well, made use of the phrase in question, and it has struck me as singular that this interpretation has never yet been put upon the passage; indeed, it confirms my opinion that the commentators make him say things which never came into his head.

Capital control in France

I handed over the vases immediately, two of them being my own property, together with the silver and much else besides I had meant to take them to the Cardinal of Ferrara’s abbey at Lyons; for though people accused me of wanting to carry them into Italy, everybody knows quite well that it is impossible to export money, gold, or silver from France without special license.