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I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini's Perseus in the moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it is!... Think of me as ever your most affectionate BA. To Miss Mitford Florence: July 4, .
As for murder, your friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment. You are, of course, willing to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy.
"Per essere il mondo intenebrato di peste e di guerra," is a phrase of Cellini's, i. 40. Lib. i. cap. 51. Lib. i. cap. 74. Clement was dead, and Paul III. had just been elected, 1534. Paul sent Cellini a safe-conduct and pardon for Pompeo's murder to Florence in 1535. Lib. i. cap. 81. Lib. ii. cap. 104. Lib. i. cap. 64.
Torrigiani, as far as we can gather from Cellini's description of him, must have been a man of his own kidney and complexion: "he was handsome, of consummate assurance, having rather the airs of a bravo than a sculptor; above all, his fierce gestures and his sonorous voice, with a peculiar manner of knitting his brows, were enough to frighten everyone that saw him; and he was continually talking of his valiant feats among those bears of Englishmen."
Peter's, where he left him on the steps, from whence Benvenuto began to crawl towards the palace of Duke Ottavio, whose wife, a daughter of the emperor's, had brought many of Cellini's friends from Florence to Rome in her train. She was well disposed towards the great artist, and he felt that beneath her roof he would be in safety.
Cellini's method of forming a silver vase was on this wise. The original plate of silver had to be red hot, "not too red, for then it would crack, but sufficient to burn certain little grains thrown on to it." It was then adjusted to the stake, and struck with the hammer, towards the centre, until by degrees it began to take convex form.
The sense of having arrived of having reached a perfect centre of the human world: this he had. And so, satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze Perseus which rose just above him. Benvenuto Cellini's dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. The clownish Bandinellis were somehow more to the point.
Cellini's face grew serious and absorbed, and his eyes were full of grave contemplation as he answered: "His master, mademoiselle, is MY master one who among men, is supremely intelligent; among teachers, absolutely unselfish; among thinkers, purely impersonal; among friends, inflexibly faithful. To him I owe everything even life itself.
His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.
I drew down the window-blinds to shut out the brilliancy of the beautiful Southern sunlight, and throwing myself on my bed I determined to rest quietly till Amy came back. I had brought the "Letters of a Dead Musician" away with me from Cellini's studio, and I began to read, intending to keep myself awake by this means.
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