Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/32

Rh of his, in which the opportunity to model a nude female figure at full length should have put him on his mettle, but the figure is painfully untrue to life, and leaves not only an artificial but even a somewhat vulgar impression. The crucifix in the Escurial escapes this last danger, but, to the critical eye, its actual value as a work of religious art is far below its repute. Neither as a study of anatomical structure nor as an interpretation of a tragic theme does it rise above an ordinary level. There remains the bronze in the Loggia dei Lanzi,—the bronze which probably meant more to him than anything he did in the course of his whole career.

He seems to have been attracted at once by the subject when Cosimo proposed it to him, and, as we have seen from the words to the Duke already quoted, he was fired with the desire to show that he could produce a statue worthy of association with works by Donatello and Michael Angelo. The history of the enterprise is sufficiently traversed in the Autobiography and so need not be further dealt with here, nor, for that matter, need we pause very long upon the Perseus itself. The wax model, which is still preserved at Florence, shows that Cellini started with a capital idea, producing a lithe, slender figure of good proportions, and arranging it, with the headless body trampled under foot, in a composition both picturesque and graceful. If we look at the figure in the Loggia, enlarged, and marked everywhere with the signs of Cellini's