Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/27

Rh issue forth from the sun-warmed earth. In a word, Cellini's limitations, which are to be ascribed first and last to the caprice of destiny, are understood the better if we remember the character of the period into which he was born. It needed a fiercer, more masterful nature than his—and his was masterful and fierce enough in all conscience—to conquer the deadening tendency of the time. One might say that it was pathetic, too,—if pathos had not a certain incongruity where Cellini is concerned,—to observe the depth and strength of his faculty of appreciation. He knew the right thing when it was put before him, and there is nothing more ingratiating about him than the gusto with which he lauds a great artist. He alludes to Leonardo as "a veritable angel incarnate;" and of "that divinest painter," Michael Angelo,he speaks with positively passionate warmth. The treatment of the moving soldiers in the famous cartoon of "The Bathers M moves him to this outburst: "He drew them at the very moment the alarm is sounded, and the men all naked run to arms; so splendid is their action that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art which touches the same lofty point of excellence." When Cosimo de Medici asked him to model a Perseus for the Loggia dei Lanzi, which was already adorned by Donatello's "Judith" and Michael Angelo's "David," he replied after this fashion: "Most excellent, my lord, upon the piazza are now standing works by the great Donatello and the incomparable Michael Angelo, the two greatest men who have