Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/37

Rh craftsmanship, and if, as we look, we deliberately put out of mind the whole dramatic story of its casting, so that no elements of personal sympathy are left to affect our view of the matter, we are constrained to admit that the sculptor lost his grasp on his original idea as the work went on. The Perseus should have been executed in silver on a modest scale, it should have been made not a statue but a statuette. As it is, Cellini strove in vain to rise to the level of his great opportunity. Once more the sculptor and the craftsman in him were antipathetic where they should have worked together, and he fell, as it were, between two stools. The Perseus is brittle, finikin, where it should be heroic, and at the same time it is badly proportioned and heavy where it should have been light and elegant. Cellini was in his prime when he put forth this dearest work of his ambition, and by it his rank as an artist may fairly be fixed. It is the subordinate rank of a temperament that paid the penalty of its own ingratiating vivacity. Cellini himself, in his account of his life, suggests that he was not steadfast enough to reach perfection in any form of art, that he relied too much on the sudden jet of emotion, on the excitement which goes with the tour de force. One suspects that he would sometimes take up a task in a fury of interest and then execute it with doubtful success, largely for the reason that it had ceased to appeal to him, only a sort of burning pride keeping him at it. It was not for him to penetrate gravely, tenderly, into