The Life of Benvenuto Cellini – a new (and not very inspiring) view of the Renaissance artist

Benvenuto Cellini’s Life must be one of the most boastful autobiographies ever written. Whether writing about his art, or about his fighting, he is determined to let you know he is the best.

Perhaps in later life he became more contrite, but thus far in his life (we have reached 1532) he is incorrigibly full of himself, and convinced that he is right in every situation. Many art critics have labelled Cellini a great artist, and of course, you may say, the end (great art) justifies the means (a boastful life). If Cellini’s account of himself in his autobiography was merely boastful, this would not prevent the reader warming to him. But there is more to it than that.  My interpretation of Cellini’s own account of his life is that if he had lived today he would have been imprisoned for a lengthy period. What is more, this is a life of a man who is fundamentally not of the Renaissance.

·         Deeply unchristian. Cellini fails to display any kind of altruism. The greatest motivation he has is to be show he is better than others, and to hit people who insult members of his family. References to God are like those mentions of the divine in professional  footballers: God is there to aid your victory and to ensure the other side is comprehensively defeated.  All means are fair, it would appear, once you have God on your side.  

·         Throughout the autobiography, Cellini is not simply irreligious but motivated by folk-learning (in his dealings with doctors) and belief in witchcraft (there is a long episode in which he visits the cellars of the Colosseum with a necromancer). I recently read an account of medieval travellers, which pointed out how these travellers mixed uncritically the things they had seen (people, places, and customs) as well as reporting with seemingly equal belief stories of monsters and fairies. Cellini is the same: he believes in omens, in superstition, and shows no sign of a disinterested humanism of the kind we expect from Renaissance figures.  Of course the Renaissance artist had to have an income, but Cellini from his own account seems to have no higher motives than selling art at the highest price and then gaining a sinecure for himself to guarantee a regular income. This is not, in other words, the cynical leaving the idealism, but cynicism alone. Cellini does not have an attractive character.

·         But worse than that, he murders without regret. The murder he describes appears to be premeditated, in the hope that during the period of electing a new Pope a pardon is granted to criminals [See the World’s Classics edition of Cellini’s Life, editor’s note to page 122: “it is difficult to believe Cellini’s killing of Pompeo was not premeditated”. ]. Cellini’s motive for murder, as with so many of his actions, is based around family loyalty. You hit my brother, and I will kill you.

·         So what becomes now of the Renaissance humanist, the sublime Renaissance artist? After committing murder, Cellini appears before the Pope, who, without any legal process having taken place, protects him.  As the Pope himself says to those who criticise him for exonerating a man accused of murder:

You don’t understand the matter as well as I do. You should know that men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, need not be subject to the law; especially Benvenuto, since I know what good reasons he had.

·         Not only is Cellini above other humans, but he also has magical powers the rest of us don’t have – such as the way he reports conversations he cannot possibly have heard, since he was not present.  Yet he knows precisely how other have praised him when he isn’t there.  Would you, reader, defend such outrageous behaviour?

·         This is where it becomes interesting. It was in the Renaissance that the artist was labelled as divine, as superhuman. In the 21st century, we love such an exaggerated respect given to artists. But would we really defend a murderer?  English law distinguishes premeditated murder from manslaughter, but I believe Cellini would have been found guilty of the former.

·         Stranger still is the way that modern commentators, for example the Bondanellas, responsible for the OUP World’s classics, overstate Cellini’s education [“a very substantial education acquired from a variety of literary, artistic and historical sources”]. On the contrary, Cellini appears to have known little Latin, and I can see little evidence (as they claim) that he has read and appreciated Dante, or that he had any great knowledge about or interest in iconography except from what any Renaissance artist would have picked up from their regular studio practice.