The Roots of the Shift from Christian to Pagan Art Subjects in Europe: The Controversy of Valladolid

 

Cellini's statuary group "Perseus and Medusa" -- beautiful, in a sense, but the kind of beauty that kills. As always, there are reasons for everything and untangling this story may lead us to surprising discoveries. So, a piece by Paul Jorion on the debate that took place in Valladolid about the destiny of the Native Americans in the Spanish empire made me aware of why Western Art made an abrupt transition from Christian-inspired Medieval subjects, to Pagan inspired Renaissance ones. Everything has an explanation, indeed.

 

A couple of weeks days ago, I was taking a friend to visit Piazza Signoria, in Florence, showing him the many statuary pieces lining the square. All wonderful pieces, in many ways, but also disquieting for their depiction of murder and death. Today, nobody could get away with a piece of art where a sword-armed man beheads a naked woman. And yet this is exactly what one of the main pieces in the square shows to us: Perseus and Medusa in an unbelievably cruel, and at the same time eerily beautiful, depiction. 

As I was showing the statue to my friend, I said, "you see, there is a sort of invisible wall that cuts the square in two. On one side there are older, Medieval pieces, inspired by Christian myths; David and Judith. On the other side, newer, Renaissance pieces inspired by classical myths from the Pagan age: Hercules and Perseus."

Then, I was asking myself, but why exactly that happened? What led people to switch their focus of interest from Christian myths to Pagan ones? I felt in need for an explanation, but I just I didn't have one at that moment. 

I think it was two days later that a name flashed in my mind: Sepulveda! Juan Gines de Sepulveda, one of the two discussants who debated in 1550-51 in Valladolid on the status of the Native Americans in the newly conquered Spanish Empire in Southern America and Mexico. I had just read,  maybe a few days before, the article by Paul Jorion about that ancient dispute. Note that Cellini's "Perseus" had been made unveiled in Florence in 1554, just a few years later.

Here is what Jorion writes about Sepulveda's position that favored the forced conversion of the Native Americans: "an Aristotelian philosopher who found in the texts of his mentor, not a justification for slavery, absent in fact from the texts of the Stagirite, but the description and the explanation of the slave society of ancient Greece, represented as a functional set of institutions: a legitimate model of human society". And here is the key of the whole story.

It all had started in 1492, with Columbus' voyage. Almost immediately afterward, it was clear that the Americas where an incredible business opportunity for Europeans. And also that the Native Americans couldn't oppose the European armies. There was only one thing that stood as a barrier against their complete enslavement or extermination: the stubborn opposition by the Catholic Church that insisted in considering the Natives as human beings with their own rights. 

So, the Catholic Church was an obstacle to economic expansion and, then as now, there is little that can stop economic expansion. Sepulveda's position was simply recognizing this fact. The ancient world, that of the Romans and the Greeks, was not less civilized than the Europe of the 16th century, and they didn't shun slavery, especially for those whom they regarded as "barbarians." So, why should Europe not enforce it on people who were manifestly inferior in terms of civilization? Sepulveda was officially defeated at Valladolid by the arguments of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who favored a more humane approach toward Native Americans. But, in later years it was clear that Sepulveda had been the true winner. His views appeared not just in the way the Native Americans were treated, but also in the European art of that period. 

Below, you'll find the post by Paul Jorion that tells the true story. From our viewpoint, neither of the two discussants in Valladolid had a position that we would accept, but at least the debate had the interests of the Native Americans, considered as human beings, as the focus. And the end result was an attempt to help the natives to maintain their rights of human beings. But, as you may have expected, the law was often ignored. The result was a series of disasters that Bartolomé the Las Casas described in his "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" (1522). The book was not intended to be an accusation on religion, but it was turned into it by anti-Spanish propaganda created by those who were actually exterminating the Natives, the British and North European colonists. The Catholic Church received such a blow from this campaign that it never completely recovered from it.  And we still believe this ancient propaganda, nearly half a millennium later!

And now you understand why Cellini sculpted Perseus the way he did.

The "quarrel" or "controversy" of Valladolid (1550-1551)

June 23, 2021 Paul Jorion

 

This text will find its place in the panorama of anthropology that I am writing at the moment. As this is a subject that I am new to and where I cannot avail myself of any expertise, please be so kind as to point out to me any factual errors I make. Thank you in advance !

 

In 1550 and 1551 a debate took place in the city of Valladolid in Spain, which would go down in history as the “quarrel” or “controversy,” bearing the name of this city in the province of Castile and Leon.  

What was it about? It dealt with the Christian European civilization behaving like an unscrupulous invader on a continent of which it knew nothing, within populations of which it was until then unaware of the very existence, which it then discovered in real time as it grew. advance in the territory of the New World, and the devastation that accompanied this advance.  

What all this meant as to how the victors would now treat the vanquished would be the question posed in a great debate that would cover a period of two years and where two champions of Spanish thought at the time would face off. Great intellectual and ethical problems had to be resolved in the scholastic tradition of a disputatio, before the enlightened public of what we would today call a commission, which would decide at the end of the debate which of the two speakers was right. There were basically only church people there.  

Two thinkers were be on stage, both solemnly defending opposing points of view. They clashed at the level of ideas by mobilizing all the art of dialectics: that intended to convince, an art developed specifically for the speeches held in ancient Greece on an agora. To defend one of the points of view, Juan Gines de Sepulveda (1490-1573) considered, in a word, that the inhabitants of the New World were cruel savages and that the question was essentially of saving them from themselves. And, to defend the opposing point of view, there was the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566) who affirmed that the Amerindians were, like the Europeans, human beings, whose differences should not be exaggerated, and that the question was about integrating them peacefully into a Christian society by conviction rather than by force.

The brutal conquest of Mexico took place from 1519 to 1521, it was no less bloody of Peru from 1528 to 1532. We are now in 1550, almost twenty years after this last date. The situation, from the point of view of the Spaniards, is that they have won: the huge empire of New Spain has been conquered by secular Spain. It is a victory, even if internal quarrels continue, on the one hand between the colonized, as at the time of the conquest, which their incessant dissensions had fostered, and on the other hand between the colonizers themselves, manifested by a litany of palace revolutions and assassinations of conquistadors between them, in Peru as in Mexico.  

But the time has come for Charles V (1500-1558), “Emperor of the Romans”, to take a break. We must think about how to treat these conquered populations, decimated in equal parts by battles and massacres, and by the ravages of smallpox and measles, against which the local populations were helpless, having no immunity to these diseases hitherto absent from the continent. It is considered today that Mexico had some 25 million inhabitants on the eve of the first landing of the Spaniards in 1498. In 1568, the population was estimated at 3 million and it is believed that in 1620 there were only a million and a half Mexicans left.  

The phase still to come would no longer be that of Mexico or Peru, whose conquest was completed and where colonization was then carried out well, but that of Paraguay, which would begin in 1585, thirty-five years later.

Charles V, was an enlightened sovereign, like his rival François 1 ^st. They were contemporaries: two thinking kings, not only just, but men who had questions about the history, knowing that they were major players. They shared a conception of the world enlightened by the same religion: Catholicism. The reign of Charles V will end a few years later: in 1555. It will then be his son Philip who will become sovereign of Spain and the Netherlands. Later, in 1580, he will also be King of Portugal. Charles V demands that any new conquest be interrupted as long as Las Casas and Sepulveda exchange their arguments on the question of the status to be recognized for the indigenous populations of the New World.  

Charles V had not, however, remained indifferent to these questions even before: already in 1526, 24 years before the Valladolid controversy, he had issued a decree prohibiting the slavery of Amerindians throughout the territory, and in 1542, he had promulgated new laws which proclaimed the natural freedom of the Amerindians and obliged to release those who had been reduced to slavery: freedom of work, freedom of residence and free ownership of property, punishing, in principle, those who were violent and aggressive towards Native Americans.  

Paul III was pope from 1534 to 1549. In 1537, thirteen years before the beginning of the Valladolid controversy, in the papal bull Sublimis Deus and in the letter Veritas Ipsa, he had officially condemned, on behalf of the Catholic Church, the slavery of the Native Americans. The statement was "universal," that is, it was applicable wherever the Christian world could still discover populations unknown to it on the surface of the globe: it was said in Sublimis Deus: " and of all peoples that may be later discovered by Christians ”. And in both documents, so in Veritas Ipsa too: "Indians and other peoples are true human beings."

When the quarrel began, Julius III had just succeeded Paul III: he was enthroned on February 22, 1550.

The general principle, for Charles V, was that of aligning with the Church policy. In the "quarrel" or "controversy" of Valladolid, one of the moments of solemn reflection of humanity on itself, it is not the Church, but the Kingdom of Spain, which summons religious authorities , experts, to try to answer the question "What can be done so that the conquests still to come in the New World are done with justice and in security of conscience?"

It is heartbreaking that the television film “La controverse de Valladolid” (1992), by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe, with Jean-Pierre Marielle in the role of Las Casas and Jean-Louis Trintignant in that of Sepulveda, as well as the novel by Jean- Claude Carrière, from whom it was inspired, took such liberties with historical truth that it was affirmed that the central question in the quarrel was to determine whether the Amerindians had a soul. No: this question had been settled by the Church without public debate thirteen years earlier. Sublimis Deus affirms that their property and their freedom must be respected, and further specifies "even if they remain outside the faith of Jesus Christ", that is to say that the same attitude must be maintained even if they are rebellious to conversion. It is written in the Papal Bull Veritas Ipsa that Native Americans are to be “invited to the said faith of Christ by the preaching of the word of God and by the example of a virtuous life. »In 1537: thirteen years before the commission met.

The question of the soul of the Amerindians was of course raised in Valladolid, but in no way to try to resolve it: on this level, the issue was closed. In reality, it had been resolved in the real world by the Spanish invaders: it would have been possible to summon young men and women of mixed race in their twenties to Valladolid, including Martin, son of Ernan Cortés and Doña Marina, “La Malinche”: living proof that the human species had recognized itself as “one and indivisible” in the field and that the question of whether these people, whom their mother could accompany if necessary, dressed in Spanish fashion, and most often militants of Christianity in their actions and in their words. Whether or not they had a soul, would have been an entirely abstract and ridiculous question, the problem having been solved in the facts: in the interbreeding which took place, in this reality that men and women have recognized themselves sufficiently similar not only to mate and immediately procreate, but to sanctify their marriage, in a sumptuous way for the richest, according to the rites of the Church. Circumstances, it must be emphasized, the opposite of the rules that were followed in North America, while in the case of Protestant settlers in their almost all - except Quebec - from the end of the 16th century.

The meetings in Valladolid were eld twice over a month, in 1550 and then in 1551, but most of the texts available to us are not transcripts of the debates: they are correspondence between the parties involved: Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Bartolomé de Las Casas, and the members of the commission.

Las Casas had first been himself an encomendero, a slave settler: he led plantations where Native American slaves were originally found, plantations in which, reacting to the Church's commands to give back their freedom to the natives enslaved, he had replaced on his own authority the labor of Amerindian slaves that he ceased to exploit with other laborers: blacks imported from Africa. This will be a great regret in his life, he will talk about it later. Most of the encomenderos were not as attentive as Las Casas to instructions from the mother country or the Vatican. Already in 1511, in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos, who exercised a decisive influence on Las Casas, refused the sacraments and threatened with excommunication those among them whom he considered unworthy. Here is his famous sermon:

"I am the voice of the One who cries in the desert of this island and that is why you must listen to me with attention. This voice is the freshest you have ever heard, the harshest and the most tough. This voice tells you that you are all in a state of mortal sin; in sin you live and die because of the cruelty and tyranny with which you overwhelm this innocent race.

Tell me, what right and what justice authorize you to keep the Indians in such dreadful servitude? In the name of what authority have you waged such hateful wars against those peoples who lived in their lands in a gentle and peaceful way, where a considerable number of them were destroyed by you and died in yet another way? never seen as it is so atrocious? How do you keep them oppressed and overwhelmed, without giving them food, without treating them in their illnesses which come from excessive work with which you overwhelm them and from which they die? To put it more accurately, you kill them to get a little more gold every day.

And what care do you take to instruct them in our religion so that they know God our creator, so that they are baptized, that they hear Mass, that they observe Sundays and other obligations?

Are they not men? Are they not human beings? Must you not love them as yourselves?

Be certain that by doing so, you cannot save yourself any more than the Moors and Turks who refuse faith in Jesus Christ. "

Las Casas' reflection led him to give up this role of planter and he took a step back for several years. Charles V then offered him access to vast lands in Venezuela on which he could implement the policy he now advocated towards the Amerindians: no longer the use of force, but the power of conviction and conversion by example. Las Casas was a Thomist. Following the line drawn by Thomas Aquinas, he read in human society a given of nature. It is not a question of a cultural heritage, that is to say of the fruit of the deliberations of men, but of a gift from God, so that all societies are of equal dignity, and a society of Pagans is no less legitimate than a society of Christians and it is wrong to attempt to convert its members by force. The propagation of the faith must be done there in an evangelical way, namely by virtue of example.

Facing Las Casas, Sepulveda stood: an Aristotelian philosopher who found in the texts of his mentor, not a justification for slavery, absent in fact from the texts of the Stagirite, but the description and the explanation of the slave society of ancient Greece, represented as a functional set of institutions: a legitimate model of human society. Sepulveda considered slavery, obedience to orders given, to be the status that suits a people who, left to themselves, commit, as we can observe, nameless abominations. Sepulveda finds argument in the atrocities committed, in particular the uninterrupted practice of human sacrifice, for which the populations brutally enslaved by the dominant society of the moment, constitute an inexhaustible source of victims, but also their anthropophagy, as well as their practice of incest. in the European sense of the term: fraternal and sororal incest within the framework of princely families in Mexico, "incestuous promiscuity" if you will, in the pooling of women among brothers, a difficulty that the Jesuits later encountered in the case of the Guaranis of Paraguay, which they will resolve by banning the “longhouse”, the collective dwelling of siblings.

Las Casas responded to Sepulveda by stressing that Spanish civilization is no less brutal: "We do not find in the customs of the Indians of greater cruelty than that which we ourselves had in the civilizations of the old world." Very diplomatically, he draws his examples from the past and says "formerly:" "In the past, we manifested a similar cruelty", highlighting for example the gladiatorial fights of ancient Rome. He also drew an argument from the monumental architecture of the Aztecs as proof of their civilization.

If the two points of view differed, and even if their positions were considered diametrically opposed, the two parties agreed on the fact that the invaders not only have rights to exercise over the Amerindians but also duties towards them, and in particular, in the context of the time and the question to be answered. There is no dispute between them as to the duty to convert: this is the dimension strictly speaking "Catholic" from the very framework of the debate. Their difference lies in their respective recommendations of the methods to be used: peaceful colonization and exemplary life for Las Casas and, for Sepulveda, institutional colonization based on coercion, given the brutal features of the very culture of the pre-Colombian populations.  

Let us remember that the context was extremely brutal texts on both sides. Las Casas, at the end of his life, will write a small book devoted only to the atrocities committed by the conquistadors, a small book that propaganda consistently used against Spain to advantage its rivals: the Netherlands, France and England, although this does not mean that these nations will not also be guilty of the same crimes in the territories that they will annex in their business colonial. Mutual surveillance therefore of European nations vis-à-vis possible abuses committed by others, from a diplomatic perspective of foreign policy.

The controversy officially ended in 1551 when Charles V, on the recommendations of the commission, formalized the position defended by Las Casas. It will therefore be by invoking the Gospels and by example that conversion will have to continue and not at the point of the sword.  

A victory which, however, will not immediately have enormous consequences on the ground, any more than the papal bulls had had before it. The encomenderos will only weakly respect the injunctions coming from the mother country. Wars between Amerindian tribes will continue despite the presence of missionaries and a small military contingent. The Bandeirantes of Sao Paulo will organize raids, supplying the encomenderos with prisoners, who will be on the plantations, as many de facto slaves. Etc.

A year after the controversy was over, in 1552, Las Casas undertook to write his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias , the very brief account of the destruction of the Indies, which will therefore be his testimony on the destructions and the atrocitie, of the colonization of New Spain by the Spaniards.  

When, from the end of the same century, missions are founded in Paraguay, called "Reductions", it will be in the exact line of the proposals of Las Casas.

It will be essentially Las Casas who will obtain, thanks to his vibrant plea in favor of the local populations, that the question of slavery would be closed once and for all in Central and South America: there will be no indigenous slaves, Amerindians will be considered as full citizens and, as an unexpected consequence, since the Church has not pronounced on the question of knowing whether Africans could be enslaved or not, the Spanish and Portuguese authorities will consider that the decision in favor of the position of Las Casas opens suddenly the possibility of a systematic exploitation of the African populations to draw from them the stock of slaves required by the plantations of the New World. It is Las Casas who will be in a way responsible for an acceleration of the slavery of Africans insofar as the authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, by discouraging the enslavement of the Amerindians, will indirectly encourage the planters to turn, as a replacement, towards the slave trade in African blacks, a situation in which Las Casas found himself at the time when he was encomendero. In his correspondence, at the end of his life, he bitterly regretted having been indirectly the cause of an aggravated enslavement of Africans.  

The sincere concern of Bartolomé de Las Casas to spare the Amerindians, will have preserved them from the even more tragic fate of their brothers and sisters of North America within the framework of an essentially English colonization at the start, made of spoliation and genocide, without any interbreeding. 

 

 

Beheading Women: From Cellini to ISIS

This is an image from Jim Jarmusch's recent movie "The Dead don't Die." A standard zombie movie, but well done and with some interesting quirks, one is the image above. When I saw it, my mind immediately went to Cellini's "Medusa," the piece of statuary still standing today in Florence after it was made in the mid-1500s. Maybe it is the source of inspiration for Jarmusch's scene.

Here we don't have a zombie hunter beheading an undead creature but the hero Perseus is doing something similar by beheading Medusa, supposed to be a female monster. I described Cellini's work in a previous post, but it was not Cellini who invented this theme. It is way more ancient than the Renaissance. It was common in antiquity.

Here is a fresco coming from a Roman villa showing a rather fat Perseus happy to have just beheaded the evil Medusa.

Just to show how common the theme was, here is a cameo, probably coming from early imperial Roman times, with another Perseus holding the head of Medusa in his hand. It is presently at the Getty museum.

And the theme is even more ancient than classic antiquity but, initially, it was more common to show just the head of Medusa or the act of beheading her, as in this relief said to have been made around 650 BCE

So, the idea of the hero triumphantly showing the severed head of a woman is relatively modern and it has something to do with what we call "civilization." It never was among the most popular themes of ancient art, but it surely had its space and a certain dignity that made it acceptable.

In relatively modern times, for instance, the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757- 1822) was probably inspired by Cellini when he reproposed the old theme, as you can see here:

About this piece, it must be said that Cellini remains an unequaled master and that Canova's interpretation of the scene is at best acceptable but has nothing of the inner power of Cellini's work. But so it goes: art is more often imitation than creation.

In our times, the idea that it is a heroic thing to behead a woman seems to have become unfashionable, fortunately. Surely, no one would propose a piece of statuary showing the severed head of a woman to stand in the central square of a city -- as we have in Florence with Cellini's Perseus. But the theme remains alive, it is just that the hero has been turned into the villain of horror movies and dark comics. Here is an example from the work of Johnny Craig.

And here is the same scene in "Scary Movie" (2000)

Many more images of this kind can be found on the Web, but the idea is not limited to fantasy. It is sometimes projected on people or groups whom we perceive as evil. Here is a photo that became viral on the Web.

It is said to depict an ISIS fighter who killed and beheaded a Kurdish female fighter. It is, most likely, a fake and the whole story is mostly fantasy. But it is curious how the theme recurs over and over. It is something deep in our collective mind, probably leading to nothing bad as long as it is fantasy, but in our times of fake news, the line between reality and fantasy is often blurred. And this is how we keep moving toward the future.

My paper on Cellini's "Perseus and medusa" accepted for publication

My paper titled "The myth of Medusa: Benvenuto Cellini and the “Loggia dei Lanzi” in Florence" has been accepted today for publication.  It will appear in a book titled “The Cnidaria, past, present and future. The world of Medusa and her sisters”, published by Springer and edited by Stefano Goffredo and Zvy Dubinsky.

My contribution to this book is about the mythological Medusa, even though the book is mainly dedicated to the biology of the creatures named 'Cnidaria', best known in everyday life as "Medusas" (even though not all Cnidaria are Medusas). In any case, they are the kind of creatures you don't want to meet when you swim in the sea, but which have become very common, unfortunately for us.

Although Medusas, intended as Cnidaria, are rather nasty creatures; that is not the same for the mythological Medusa. She was not a monster, it was just bad press and propaganda that transformed her into a monster. It could happen in ancient times just as it happens today. And the fascinating thing about Cellini's representation of Medusa is that he understood exactly this: that she was not a monster and he refused to represent her as a monster.

About this paper, I must confess that I hated myself several times for having accepted to write it. With the zillion things I have to do, I couldn't figure out how I could find the time to write a complete academic paper on Cellini and his work, with references, figures, and all the rest; while at the same time maintaining some remnants of mental sanity. In the end, however, I made it and it is a remarkable satisfaction to see it "in press."



About the myth of Perseus and Medusa, I wrote some posts in this blog. Here is a list:

Cellini's Medusa (an early version of the paper I am describing here)

The head of Medusa (just a spectacular photo of the head of Cellini's Medusa)

David and Medusa (about a weird image of Medusa by Guy and Rodd)

The Art of Femicide (some reflections on the bad habit of beheading women that some males seemed to cultivate in ancient as well as in modern times)

And if you would like to have a preprint of the paper I am describing here, just drop me a note at ugo.bard(littlemedusa)unifi.it

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

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)

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.

Benvenuto 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. 

Perhaps 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 1^st 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 1^st, 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 her 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 1^st. If we consider that it was the Spanish army that had reinstated the Medici family in Florence and hence, indirectly, Cosimo 1^st, 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.

Given 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 16^th 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.