Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/196

 III. BENVENUTO CELLINI

HE Italian Renaissance produced many works, such as the polemics of the humanists upon subjects that have long since lost their significance, which are interesting rather as illustrations of cultural conditions than for their intrinsic value. Compositions like the pastoral romance of Sannazzaro, or the dramas based upon Senecan or upon Plautine and Terentian models, acquire importance as revivals of ancient literary types and as the seeds from which later great masterpieces were to be evolved. Much smaller is the number of works in which, as in the sonnets of Michelangelo, the absolute value preponderates over the historical. Still fewer, such as the writings of Machiavelli, have the distinction of possessing an equal interest archæologically and in themselves, and to this class the "Autobiography" of Benvenuto Cellini belongs. No other production of the period embodies more vividly the tendencies of the Renaissance or enjoys a more universal and enduring appeal. We can best appreciate it by considering it under these two aspects.

CELLINI AS A TYPE OF RENAISSANCE INDIVIDUALISM Its great importance as a document for the study of contemporary Italian life is obvious to the reader, but its temper also is strikingly related to certain spiritual movements of the day. Of the two determinative characteristics of the Renaissance, humanism, or the devotion to antiquity, and individualism, or the devotion to self-development, Benvenuto emphasizes the latter. The very natural transition from a study of self to the study of other personalities gave rise to the genre known as biography, eminent instances of