Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/31

Rh undisguised satisfaction. "My dear Benvenuto," he says, "I have known you for many years as the greatest goldsmith of whom we have any information; and henceforward I shall know you for a sculptor of like quality. I must tell you that Master Bindo Altoviti took me to see his bust in bronze, and informed me that you made it. I was greatly pleased with the work; but it annoyed me to notice that it was placed in a bad light; for if it were suitably illuminated, it would show itself to be the fine performance that it is." One does not need to give Michael Angelo's polite expressions to a junior an exaggerated value in order to find in them the evidence that Cellini had surpassed himself in this bust. For once he seems to have fitted his style to his theme and to have carried on a piece of work from beginning to end in an unqualifiedly sculptural vein. The bust of Cosimo de' Medici is less successful because it is less simple. The ornamentation is overdone, and the whole work has an artificial, even theatrical air. When he was portraying Bindo Altoviti it is obvious that he worked from nature, endeavouring merely to get a good likeness in a straightforward way. When he undertook the bust of Cosimo we cannot help but feel that there was hovering in the back of his mind a notion that he would make his patron look as much as possible like a Roman emperor. How often was he betrayed by this confusion of mind! Nature should have had her chance, if anywhere, in that large Nymph of Fontainebleau