This post appeared first in 2003 on the
Chimera site. It is reproduced here with minimal modifications. Also, I am involved right now in writing a more detailed and in-depth article on Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa" which should appear in the coming months
CELLINI’S MEDUSA
Ugo Bardi
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Benvenuto Cellini unveiled his
masterpiece in 1554 in the “Loggia de Lanzi” in Florence,
where it still stands today. We call this statuary group the
“Perseus” even though this is clearly unfair to Medusa. First, because Medusa is an essential part of the myth, second because in
Cellini’s work Medusa is sculpted with loving care and great
mastery, resulting in a figure which, although perhaps less
prominent than Perseus, is no less important in the group. We
could as well call Cellini’s piece “Medusa” and this is not
just a semantic detail. The relations male/female,
victor/vanquished, slayer/slain, oppressor/oppressed are the
fundamental theme of this statue, which, at the time of its
creation had a deep political meaning, a meaning that it still
maintains today as we have no lack of oppressed, vanquished, and
slain people in the world. These notes have the purpose of
retelling the story of the creation of Cellini’s masterpiece and
to discuss a little of its meaning. A second purpose is to show a
collection of digital images of the statue, a modest homage to the
greatness of Cellini, who, with this piece, crowned a whole age of
sculpture in the Italian Renaissance.
(Picture
on the left: Medusa’s head, photographed by Lamberto Perugi)
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Note:
all pictures shown in this page are believed by the author to be in
the public domain. This includes pictures taken by the author himself
and some pictures of Lamberto Perugi taken from “Il viaggio del
Perseo” (Pagliai ed. 2000). In the latter case, the public domain
status is inferred from the lack of a copyright notice in the book
and from the fact that some of these pictures have already been reproduced
in other internet sites. In any case, the reproduction of Perugi’s
pictures is intended as a homage to his splendid work as a
photographer and as an encouragement for the interested reader to get
the book with the complete set. As for the “Perseus” itself,
copyright expired more than four centuries ago.
B
envenuto
Cellini told us in his “Life” that a piece of statuary “must
have eight views, and it must be that all of them be of the same
quality”. Indeed, you may look at the Perseus from any of its
“eight sides” and for each one you’ll notice new details and
different qualities. The Perseus is, actually, a rich mix of elements
and details, not all of which are perfectly in tune with each other.
The majestic hero is what catches the attention first, but this hero
is at the same time a demi-god and a
very realistically cast human
being. For instance, clearly, Perseus’s belly is not as flat as it
would be fitting for such a radiant hero, actually it can be defined
as something of a paunch. Then, Perseus’ head is certainly handsome, but in its abstract perfection, it hardly fits with the rest of the
body which, as we said, is that of a real person. And other elements
of the piece are no less impressive, highly detailed and, in part, in
a less than perfect relation with each other. (
pictures above by the author)
The
body of Medusa is sculpted with loving care. She is not a monster, as
legend would have her, but a woman, headless of course, but a
beautiful woman. She lies on the pedestal, her right hand abandoned
on a side, her left hand clasping with great force her right ankle.
Medusa is dying, yes, but she is not completely defeated yet. Perseus
foot presses against her belly as if to keep her down. (
picture on
the right: by Parigi, center and left, by author).
The way
Medusa’s body lies has a strong sensual character and this
sensuality is enhanced by the thick flow of blood, which is
more of a coral-like intriguing substance rather than a repulsive
one. And then, Medusa’s head, held so high and in such a prominent position. Again, this is not a monster’s head, this much is obvious
even when observing it from the ground level. But from close range
pictures its sensual beauty is truly stunning: eyes closed, mouth
half open, a hint of teeth, the oval of the face framed in a mesh of
snakes above and the folds of the skin at the neck wound, where
neither the snakes nor the blood pouring out are shocking or
repulsive but instead carnally sensuous.
P
erhaps
the most peculiar feature here is how he two faces, Perseus and
Medusa, look like each other. The similarity is evident in several
details, especially the mouth and the nose (detail picture
by the
author, the two full heads by Parigi). In addition, Medusa’s hair,
made out of snakes, is nearly identical to Perseus' curly hair. The
similarity of the two heads is just one of a series of questions that
we may ask about the Perseus. Why are the two heads nearly identical?
What was that Cellini wanted to say
with that? What is the sense of
sculpting the Perseus in that way and not in another? And what is the
sense of sculpting a Perseus at all?
In the
Perseus we are seeing the work of a mature artist who was conscious
that he was creating his masterpiece. Born in Florence in 1500,
Benvenuto Cellini was around fifty when Duke Cosimo 1st
commissioned to him what was to be a major piece of statuary,
something that had to stand in the same square where some of the most
famous and renowned pieces of the older masters where, for instance
Michelangelo’s “David” and Donatello’s “Judith”. It was
an exceptional (and perhaps unexpected) chance for someone who so far
had been known mainly as a goldsmith but not as a master sculptor. So,
we may be sure that all the details of the Perseus were carefully
thought out even though, as it happens with any creative process, the
final outcome is not always consistent with the intentions of the
author. Benvenuto Cellini himself tells us something about how the
statue was made in his “Vita” (the life). Written in the late
years of his life (he died in 1571), Cellini’s autobiography is a
remarkable document which perhaps tells us more details about him
than we would care to know. But we can’t avoid to be fascinated by
this relation of a turbulent life, always a fight, always running,
always engaged in fights or in working with demonic energy in titanic
feats of creativity. Cellini was truly one of the geniuses of his
age. About the Perseus, Cellini tells us a wealth of details. The
description of the volcanic enterprise of fusing the statue is in
itself a good piece of literature as well as a small but
an illuminating treatise on the ancient art of bronze metallurgy. But
mastering the ways of fusing bronze is not enough for a masterpiece:
what counts is the idea, the form, what the sculptor wanted to
express with his statue. And on these points Cellini says little. We
are only told that the Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo 1st, wanted
a Perseus and that when Cellini showed him a model of the statue the
Duke was enthusiastic, telling him that for the finished statue he
could “ask him whatever he wanted” (a promise that was not kept).
But we have no comment from Cellini on why exactly the duke wanted a
Perseus.
Perhaps
it was just the whim of a capricious ruler that conceived the idea of
a giant Perseus in the main square of Florence, but it may also be
that there were deeper reasons. To examine this point we may look
first at the myth behind the statue, a well known classical myth.
Medusa had been a beautiful girl once, but she had been too proud of
h
er
beauty. According to the various versions of the story, she had
either allowed herself to be seduced by Neptune (or by Apollo) in a
sacred temple, thereby defiling it, or she had claimed that her hair
was more beautiful than that of the goddess Minerva. Either way, she
was punished by the Gods by having her hair transformed into snakes
and her face transformed into something so monstrous that all who saw
her were turned into stone (picture: Etruscan Medusa from the Firenze
Archeological museum). Perseus was the hero chosen to dispatch the
monster, something that he did, apparently, without many problems
because of all the powers that the Gods had bestowed on him for the
task: for instance he could fly and make himself invisible. According
to some versions, he even surprised Medusa sleeping, cutting off her
head before she could defend herself (not so glorious, indeed). It is
not difficult to see in this story the garbled rendition of a much
more ancient myth, with Medusa one of the aspects of the Moon
goddess. But this is not especially relevant here: we can be
reasonably sure that neither Cellini nor Duke Cosimo knew anything
of, or cared about, moon goddesses. Cosimo certainly knew the myth in
its classic version and if he wanted a Perseus it was because of that
version. And the classic version could be linked to the political
situation of Cosimo’s times (something that has been pointed out
already by many commentators, for instance by C.A. Galimberti).
Cosimo had been created Duke and ruler of Tuscany after the murder of
his uncle Alessandro who, in turn, had taken over after that the
Spanish army had crushed the Florentine Republic in 1530. In mid 16
th
Century Cosimo was the absolute ruler of Florence, but the memory of
the Republic was still fresh and for
Cosimo it was important to
repress this memory as much as possible. Getting back to statuary,
there was a
statue which was in many ways a symbol of the old
Florentine republic: the “Judith and Holophernes” by Donatello.
Donatello
had fused his “Judith” about one century before Cellini’s
Perseus (photo by the author). In terms of style and meaning the
Judith is both symmetric and opposite to the Perseus. The roles, for
instance, are reversed. Judith, Jewish heroine, had used a ruse to
get close to Holophernes, commander of the Philistine army, and had
killed him by cutting his head as he was drunk and sleeping (just as
Perseus had surprised Medusa sleeping). In the statue of Judith by
Donatello we have again a masterpiece where the characters of the
figures are dramatically enhanced by their posture and even by their
facial traits. The “Judith” was more than an artistic
masterpiece, it was ethically and politically charged. In a symbolic
way, the story was understood as the triumph of humility against
arrogance and this statue can certainly be seen as representing just
that. But, more than that, the figure of Judith could be seen (and
was seen in Florence) as representing the people killing a tyrant. In
this latter view it was surely something that Cosimo wasn’t so
happy about, especially in having it in a prominent place in Piazza
della Signoria, the very center of Florence. However, Cosimo was
a prudent man and also liked to present himself as patron of the
arts, so he couldn’t conceive to destroy the Judith or hide it in a
basement. What he thought as more clever and perhaps even more
effective was to have it dwarfed by a larger and more spectacular
piece. A piece that would proclaim the exact opposite than the Judith
did, a triumphant hero killing a woman. A piece which would represent
and proclaim the death of the republic. The Duke even saw himself as
Perseus the slayer. In an earlier piece by Cellini, Duke Cosimo’s
portrait, we have him wearing the head of Medusa on his chest,
something indeed that only Perseus could have done.
So, we
may be reasonably sure that duke Cosimo and Cellini both understood
the symbolic relations duke/Perseus and republic/Medusa. There
remains to be seen how Cellini interpreted this symbolism, and how
enthusiastically he agreed with representing in bronze the slaughter
of the republic. And, we may ask: if the political position of the
Duke is obvious, how about Cellini’s one? Here, things are not so
clear and Cellini himself is, understandably, reticent about this
point. When he wrote his “life” he was an old man living in
Florence under what we would call today a dictatorship. Duke Cosimo
liked to appear as a benevolent ruler, but when it was a question of
showing his teeth, he was ruthless and heads rolled not only in a
figurative sense. So, Cellini’s “life” is outspoken and
detailed on many things, but nearly silent about others, for instance
about the siege of Florence in 1530. A few years before, in 1527,
Cellini had fought as a gunner against the Spanish army at the siege
of Rome and he tells us a number of spectacular deeds that he
performed there. But when it was Florence’s turn to be besieged by
the Spanish troops, Cellini tells us only that he was there (it was
his home town) but little else. No mention is made that he fought the
Spanish in 1530, he only says that in that year he was recalled to
Rome by the Pope and that later on he moved to France to work for
King Francis 1st. If we consider that it was the Spanish
army that had reinstated the Medici family in Florence and hence,
indirectly, Cosimo 1st, we may understand that Cellini was
reticent in telling us anything about what he had done during the
turbulent year 1530 and why he had deemed a good idea to take refuge
in France afterwards.
Was
Cellini a republican at heart? We cannot say, he doesn’t tell us.
Maybe he himself didn’t know for sure. The only mention in this
sense we find in the “life” in something that happened when he
was in Rome, after the Medici restoration in Florence. In the
community of Florentine Republican exiles that Cellini knew so well
(a revealing detail), there came news that Duke Alessandro had been
assassinated in Florence. The exiles rejoiced, thinking that the
republic would be restored, but Cellini told them “isciocconi”
(“fools”), “in three days we’ll have another duke”, which
is exactly what came to pass. Not exactly a republican position, but
hardly an enthusiastic one for the Duchy. In general, anyway, we
know that Cellini’s whole life was a series of fights and battles.
A man of such independent spirit hardly submits to the power of an
absolute ruler, be that a Duke or an emperor. Yet, even independent
spirits must at some point come to compromises and in the “life”
many times we find a Cellini eager to please the despot Cosimo, even
too much, we are tempted to say.
G
iven
this somewhat conflicting background, how exactly could Cellini
interpret the myth of Perseus in a piece of statuary?
What could have
been his models, and did the duke have in mind something specific? It
seems that this subject had never been attempted before by
Renaissance artists, surely not on such a grand scale. And Cellini
could hardly find inspiration in classical art. In ancient art Medusa
is always shown as a monster. She has a large Moon-like face, the
tongue outstretched, few, if any, feminine attributes. Such images are
far away from anything that a Renaissance artist would consider as a
proper subject for his art.
It seems therefore that Cellini did not
have a specific model to follow, so he could invent the statuary
group more or less as he saw fit. A lot of freedom for an artist, but
also too much freedom sometimes causes problems. Cellini was under
many respects a genius, but he could not create a major piece of work
from nothing, he had to get at least some inspiration from previous
art. So, the general layout of the composition does not come from
ancient Perseus/Medusa images, but from a line of art pieces that was
well known, the victor/vanquished couple. Here, it seems that
Cellini’s inspiration came from Etruscan statuary. He may have also
inspired, or at least challenged, by Michelangelo’s David, which
was a piece the Perseus had to compete with. And he had to be careful
to avoid the mistakes that others had done, for instance a few years
before Baccio Bandinelli had sculpted his “Hercules and Cacus”
group. It was another piece meant to compete with Michelangelo’s
David, but one where Bandinelli had succeeded only in making a fool
of himself, as you can realize looking at it still today. To avoid
the disaster that the “Hercules and Cacus” had been Cellini
modeled the bodies of Perseus and Medusa from real life models. For
Perseus he tells us in his “life” that his model was “the son
of Gambetta, the prostitute”, a boy whom he later calls “Cencio”.
For Medusa we find in a letter to Benedetto Varchi that the model was a 16 years old Florentine girl named Dorotea.
Obviously, these two young Florentines did not pose for the faces of
Perseus and Medusa, which are both idealized. Perseus’s face is
actually almost identical to that of Donatello’s marble David, an
evident indication that Cellini here was following a canonical
Renaissance way to see the concept of a beautiful face. The head of
Medusa, as we already said, is almost the same as that of Perseus.
Given
this mix of sources of inspiration, what came out by their getting
together was perhaps not exactly what Cellini had intended. The
creative process of an artist is something that can hardly be
controlled, and we may imagine that Cellini was somewhat carried away
by his intention to make a great masterpiece. In any case, he seems
to have forgotten the political aims of his work, or anyway not to
have placed on them sufficient care. Eventually, Cellini’s Perseus
turned out as something very different from what the Duke had in
mind. The statue that we can still see today is hardly the
representation of the triumph of dictatorship over democracy or,
at least, if it is a triumph it is a cruel and brutal triumph. This
Perseus has nothing of the moral righteousness that pervades
Donatello’s Judith. It is, instead, the image of a murder. There is
no heroism in Perseus having surprised and beheaded a sleeping woman.
There is no glory in pinning her body to the ground as she withers in
death’s pains. If we look at the faces, we may think we are seeing
demi-gods engaged in a mythical battle. But if we look at the bodies
we see real human bodies, and we are seeing Cencio killing
Dorotea with a butcher’s knife. And, even as a demigod, Perseus
does not seem to be so proud of what he has done: he is looking
pensive, somewhat subdued, or maybe he is even ashamed. And the face
of Medusa is so similar to his face that we can only conclude that
they must be relatives. In killing Medusa, Perseus has not only
killed a helpless woman, but he also betrayed and killed one of his
own kin. Just as the Florentine Republic had been betrayed by those
who had promised to defend it. And if Perseus is Duke Cosimo, then
Duke Cosimo, too, is a murderer and, worse, a traitor.
When
the Duke saw the statue for the first time, Cellini tells us that he
was enthusiastic. But as he kept looking at it something changed.
The description of the effect of the unveiling of the Perseus is
better left to Cellini’s own words in the “life” (translation
by Anne MacDonnel, Everyman Library Ed. 1968):
Now,
as it pleased my glorious Lord, the immortal God, I brought the thing
at last to its end, and one Thursday morning I showed it openly to
the whole city. No sooner I had removed the screen, though the sun
was barely risen, than a great multitude of people gathered round
-–it would be impossible to say how many – and all with one voice
strove who should laud it highest. The Duke stood at one of the lower
windows of the Palace, just above the door; and there, half hidden in
the embrasure, he heard every word that was said about the statue.
Even
though Cellini reports us that afterwards the Duke was still very
pleased, we can’t avoid to think that these several hours of
listening to comments on the statue changed something. And indeed,
the about-face of the Duke with Cellini was abrupt and definitive.
There had been ups and downs in their relation, despots are known to
be capricious indeed, but always the Duke had appreciated Cellini’s
work. But from then on Cellini was cut off with all contacts with the
court and never made anything again for the Duke. Not much remained
of the Duke initial promise, “that Cellini could have asked him
anything he wanted”. Cellini had to content himself with a modest
sum, paid in installments (and not always in time). The Duke never
said explicitly what he had found wrong with the Perseus and, to his
credit, he must have recognized that it was still a masterpiece, even
though perhaps not so good as a piece of propaganda, so he left it where it was, and where we can still admire it.
Messer Benvenuto lived to a relatively
old age and died in 1571 at 71 in Florence. He never had a chance
again to make anything comparable to the Perseus. Duke Cosimo died at
55, three years after Cellini. With the Perseus, the Duke may not
have been able to erase completely the Democratic dreams of his
subjects, but for sure he didn’t give them any chance to put
them into practice. The Duchy of Tuscany, later to become
Grand-Duchy, was to last until 1861, when it peacefully merged with
the newly created Italian state.
Benvenuto
Cellini’s Perseus crowns an age and in some ways ends it. In the
turmoil of 16th Century, Florence, Tuscany, and all Europe
were in the midst of a profound transformation. The discovery of new
worlds beyond the Atlantic ocean had changed everything for the
Italian states, which were rapidly catapulted from the center stage
to the periphery of Europe, not anymore players in continental
politics but a battleground for France and Spain to fight out their
dreams of domination. Eventually Spain emerged as the winner in
Italy, but it took a century of struggle, and in this struggle
something perished: it was the intellectual freedom of the
Renaissance. Things such as democracy and free speech were lost, and
not only these: the great human achievements of Renaissance in all
fields of art and science had to wither and disappear. Today we see
these events as an unavoidable progression, but the people of the
time were fighting their personal battles, some uphill, some
downhill, most of them could not see as clearly as we do that an age
was closing with them. Some tried to resist, some fought back, some
let themselves be carried by the events. In the end it didn’t
matter, it was a battle that could not be won.
But against this dark
background some figures stand out in their struggle. Many left us
poignant stories of their times, one of them is, no doubt, Benvenuto
Cellini, master goldsmith and, around the end of his career, sculptor
of talent, perhaps the last one who had a chance, a rare chance in
his times, to prove himself a sculptor on a par with Michelangelo.
And he did prove that. But he didn’t just leave to us a beautiful
statue. He also sent us a message of freedom, a message in which he
said that human genius and creativity could still fight and win
against dictatorship and tyranny, a message which we may still heed
after almost half a millennium.
A very curious image, found by chance while navigating the web. It needs to be explained: it was clearly inspired by the "Piazza della Signoria" square in Florence, Italy, where you have two major pieces of statuary, Michelangelo's David and Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa" standing more or less in the position shown in the image. 
