CHAPTER VIII. THE MYSTERY OF MAKING GREAT

COLOSSI 141

A GLOSSARY OF ITALIAN TECHNICAL TERMS FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND DIAGRAMS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

To face page

A page of reputed Cellini Jewellery 22

Another page of the same 24

King Francis’ Salt, first view 58

King Francis’ Salt, second view 60

Specimens of Cardinals’ Seals 66

Coins and Medals from various collections 68

The South Kensington Breviary and another Cellini attribution 32

A Wax Model for the Perseus 54

The Crucifix in the Escurial 134

The Perseus 114

The Nymph of Fontainebleau 110

DIAGRAMS.

page

Diagram illustrating the _specchietto_ for the diamond 40

Diagram illustrating the application of the _cire perdue_ process to seals 64

Diagram illustrating the _coniare_ process of striking medals 76

Diagram illustrating the process of striking medals with the screw 78

Diagram illustrating the process of casting silver 79

Diagram illustrating the _rasoio_ for paring metal 83

Biringoccio’s Furnace from the ‘Pirotechnica’ 133

AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF THE TREATISES & OF CELLINI’S POSITION AS CRAFTSMAN AND AUTHOR.

This translation is intended for the workshop; & to bring home to English craftsmen, & more particularly to my colleagues and pupils at Essex House, the methods and practice of the Goldsmith of the Renaissance. It is with this end in view that the work has been undertaken, and I am in hopes that the knowledge of this may induce my critics to give it a kindlier reading, aware as I am of its many shortcomings.

To the translator of the treatises two things are necessary, Italian scholarship and a thorough knowledge of workshop technicalities; these two qualities are difficult—perhaps impossible—to combine, and I am conscious of grave deficiencies in both, but more especially in the former. My endeavour has been to follow the lead set me by John Addington Symonds and to make this first English translation of the treatises serve, if but in some far-off measure, as a continuation volume to his masterly translation of the Autobiography. I have in many cases, therefore, adopted his manner of handling the subject, but inasmuch as the more technical and less directly personal matter with which the treatises deal, demands a somewhat different treatment, I have sought to retain what I would call the workshop vernacular, without at the same time sacrificing the archaism of the old Italian dialect.

Cellini’s graphic touch, which gives their manifold brilliancy to the varying passages of that wonderful autobiography, is equally evident in the treatises. But this very vividness increases the translator’s difficulty. The book is full of amusing workshop pictures and anecdotes; but it is always a workshop book. Cellini sees each process before him as he describes it, we, however, only hear the description, we do not see the process, hence it is often to the expert metal worker alone that some of the more complex technical narrations appeal, while the translator is as frequently in doubt as to whether he has realised the picture the author sought to draw. If, in my English rendering of some of these pictures, I have gone astray, I trust that my errors may be pointed out by those who are better able to follow the author’s meaning.

Apology is perhaps scarcely necessary for what will often appear to be loose or ungrammatical English; this may be an offence to the stylist or the pedant, & it certainly at first sight jars in what purports to be a scientific text book. It would have been perfectly easy for me to cut out the improper stories, trim up the phrases and give precision, accuracy, and even grammar to certain of the sentences, but this would not have been Cellini. We have him not writing, but rapidly & with a delightful forgetfulness and confusion, talking his treatises to a scribe, and then omitting to revise them; it is the spirit, therefore, of the spoken word, not the careful writing, that I have sought to render.

Another difficulty hampers the translator: the absence of any living workshop tradition upon which to fall back when his subject becomes too technical. In our day of the subdivision of labour the study of the ‘_Eight branches of the glorious Art of Goldsmithing_’ as it was in Benvenuto’s time is a thing of the past. Except in a few instances where workshops are conducted with the enthusiasm of the artist rather than with the itching fingers of the tradesman, there is no such thing as an all round grasp of the Art such as Cellini postulates. To the tradesman, the sculptor’s ghost, the working jeweller, whether of Birmingham, Bond Street, or Clerkenwell, in the thousand and one gimcrack shops where they sell ‘merry-thought brooches,’ & ‘our latest stock of Christmas presents,’ the glorious Art of Goldsmithing has no meaning, or rather is a thing not of eight branches but of a hundred subdivisions, fanned into existence by a hundred callous machines, and workshop tradition has been destroyed by ‘the Trade.’ For the same reason the circle of readers will be small. To those of us who in recent years have been seeking to lift the art of the goldsmith out of the slough of industrial despond, to show once more what the human hand and fancy can create, and to relegate, without repudiating it, the machine to its right place in relation to human endeavour, all this manifold production of rubbishy trinkets, useless ornaments, and things made for ‘the Market,’ is stupid and wasteful, and makes for the destruction not the ennobling or beautifying of life.

But though small, the circle of my readers will be an earnest one. To such as are setting the standard of modern Art and Craft, to those who are fighting the trade, and seeking to relate the creations of their hands to their reasons for existence in life, this book of the aspirations & traditions of the old Italian will have some value. Fortunately their number is increasing, not only in England, but in Europe & in the United States. In the workshops of men like Frampton, Alfred Gilbert, Simmons, Fisher, Nelson Dawson; among the artists of Glasgow & Birmingham, or among the keener creative spirits in New York, whom I have found ready to welcome every genuine inspiration of the hand, will the real readers be found.

It is perhaps not my province as a translator to criticise the artistic merit of Cellini’s work, but as my hope in placing his treatises before English craftsmen is to familiarise them with his methods, I may perhaps be allowed to give a few words of warning. We must not take Cellini at his own valuation, and we must remember that he did not draw that subtle distinction between designer and executant that we nowadays are wont to do. The fact that every aesthetic criticism is inevitably biased by the style of its period must be taken into account by the student, if such criticisms as I myself, speaking as an artist, should venture to make, are to be of value to him. To Cellini’s best-known critics this applies in equal measure. Vasari, Delaborde, Milanesi, Brinckman, Symonds, have each had their point of view so to speak. To some, like Vasari, it has been coloured by what the Germans call ‘die Voll-Renaissance,’ of which Cellini in the art of goldsmithing was undoubtedly the central figure. To others, like Delaborde, it was influenced by the Romantic Reaction of the early Nineteenth Century, and to them his work was ‘an exploded myth.’ Criticised from the modern point of view—the point of view that distinguishes between goldsmith and sculptor, between craftsman & designer—we cannot rank him among the highest. There is a want of feeling for proportion in such work as we have of his, & the whole is marred by the overcrowded detail, often very exquisite in itself, of the parts; the craftsman indeed invariably overpowers the artist. Above all there is a want of spirituality in all his more important work, a want of refinement of soul, if one might so term it—a vulgarity. There is none of the εὐηθεια of Donatello, the graciousness of Ghiberti or Duccio, the mingled strength and sweetness of Verocchio, the simple grandeur of Pisanello. Michael Angelo’s manner perhaps we can trace, but of his inspiration and his self-control there is none.

If we take Cellini from the point of view he would himself have wished us to criticise him, he challenges us first as a sculptor & a designer of the figure. In this sphere, however, he falls far short of the standard he calls upon us to judge him by. Affected & uneven and imperfect in handling is his work when set beside that of earlier masters. Attenuated as we see in the nymph of Fontainebleau, thick & exaggerated as in the Perseus at Florence, leaden and stiff as in the Neptune and Cybele of the salt, there is about his figures always something _manqué_, they seem indeed to have in them the effort of a decaying school.

Much the same criticism applies to his work as a medalist. There is an absence of reserve & the fine feeling for his limitations which puts him to my mind far beneath Sperandio, Marende, Francia, or other of the great Cinquecento medalists, and it needs no artist to point to the superiority of the Greek coins with which with redoubtable modesty he compares his own.

To estimate his position as a jeweller is all but impossible, as there is not one jewel remaining that can be authenticated as his. If, however, we may be allowed to gauge his position as an artist from such pieces as are attributed to him in the Rothschild, Vienna, Paris, & Chantilly Collections, and of which I give some specimens on pages 22 and 24, I should be inclined to place him on an equal footing with any of the great masters of the early Renaissance or the Middle Ages in any country. The reasons of this are not far to seek. Jewellery is, before all others, an art of limitations. An artist cannot but put less of himself into a gem than into a statue, he is necessarily more cabined. Further, Cellini made most of his jewellery as a young man in Florence & Rome, when the traditions of the Florentine workshop which reared Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti, were still fresh upon him, & before he had as yet attempted the impossible task of translating the _gusto grando_ of Michael Angelo into minor craftsmanship. Subject to the disproving of the attributions, I give therefore to Cellini as a jeweller an equal place with the artists of Greece and Japan, with those of Spain, England and Germany in the Middle Ages & the Renaissance, whose works are known to us; but as medalist, goldsmith and sculptor, I would place him on a much lower footing. My whole criticism might be summed up briefly thus: he was a very first-rate craftsman, but a very second-rate artist.

The Autobiography and the Treatises of Cellini must be read together, they tail into one another, the former gives the life of the man, the second the methods of the craftsman; both alike bring out the writer’s strong personality. A few words are needed as to their bearing upon one another, and the original of the present translation.

Both the ‘Vita’ & the ‘Trattati’ were dictated by Cellini to amanuenses; &, feeling their stylistic imperfections, he offered both, after their completion, to literary friends to polish and refine before publication. The ‘Vita’ he sent to the great historian Benedetto Varchi, who had the good taste and the wisdom to leave the MS. as it was, saying that he preferred it in its rough & unpolished condition; the latter was placed in less tactful hands,[1] & Gherardo Spini, a literateur[2] of the Florentine Academy, to whom this task has with good reason been attributed, undertook its recasting, to the no small detriment of the original. In this polished and emasculated form the ‘Trattati’ first appeared & for 300 years remained; the Editio Princeps[3] being published in Florence in the shape of a very beautiful volume in 1568, three years before Cellini’s death. It was not till 1857 that Carlo Milanesi, working on the lines of Francesco Tassi, who had in the Marciana re-discovered the original MS., gave to the world the work as Cellini had originally dictated it. It is on the ‘Trattati’ of the Marcian Codex, therefore, & not of the first edition, that this translation is based.

Cellini is fortunate in having been handled in our own day by four eminent and scholarly men, and to the work of each of these am I indebted. Milanesi,[4] 1857, may be placed first, and his admirable and exhaustive edition of the ‘Trattati’ cannot be too highly praised. Herr Justus Brinckman[5] followed him, in 1867, with his excellent translation of the ‘Trattati’ into German, and his very able comparative treatment of the work of the monk Theophilus[6] with that of the Cinquecento artist. In 1883 Eugène Plon[7] brought out his splendid volume on the life and works of Cellini, especially valuable for its illustrations and the critical investigation of the authentic and attributed works of the master. The work of our own John Addington Symonds is familiar to most English readers, and it is to the study of his masterly translation of the ‘Vita’ that I owe my first introduction to Cellini. To his memory I would wish here to express my gratefulness, and perhaps the best expression of this is in the assurance that through his introduction to Cellini has grown up the wish to familiarise the methods of the Renaissance workshop among English metal workers, & particularly among the metal workers of the Guild of Handicraft for whom this book is written.

My thanks are due to Messrs. Plon & Cie. for their kind permission to reproduce the blocks originally used in M. Eugène Plon’s volume, and which illustrate in this book the various examples as Cellini describes them; and I am indebted to many friends, artists & scholars for the most part, who have helped me with difficulties both in the text and in the workshop. To Mr. and Mrs. de Morgan and Captain Victor Ward for many hours of helpful, and, I fear, sometimes tedious revision; to Miss Constance Blount for her great assistance with the enamelling chapter, to Mr. Virtue Tebbs for his advice among the coins, to Mr. Wenlock Rollins & Mr. T. Stirling Lee in the complicated passages dealing with casting and the making of furnaces, and above all to Professor Roberts-Austen and Professor Church, not only for their invaluable help on all points dealing with metallurgy & stones, but also for their kind assistance in correcting the proofs of the whole book. I have likewise to thank for their courtesy in allowing me to refer to them in one way or another over technical & literary difficulties Mr. Heywood Sumner, Mr. M. Hewlett, Professor Giglioli of Naples, and Professor Fergusson of Glasgow.

C. R. ASHBEE.

Essex House, Bow, E.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Plon, 117._

[2] _See Milanesi. ‘I. Trattati,’ &c., novamente messi alle stampe, &c._

[3] _Pub. Firenze, 1568. Valentini Panizzi e Marco Peri, 8vo._

[4] _Milanesi. ‘Due Trattati,’ &c._

[5] _‘Abhandlungen über die Goldschmiedekunst und die Sculptur v. Benvenuto Cellini.’ Justus Brinckman. Leipzig, 1867._

[6] _Theophilus lived in the early half of the 11th century. See his ‘Diversarum Artium Schedula.’ Hendrie’s translation. Murray, 1847._

[7] _‘Benvenuto Cellini, orfèvre, medailleur, sculpteur, &c.’ Eugène Plon. Paris, 1883._

THE TREATISE ON GOLDSMITHING.

INTRODUCTION.

What first prompted me to write, was the knowledge of how fond people are of hearing anything new. Then in the second place, & this perhaps had greater weight still, I felt much troubled in mind because of all sorts of annoying things the which I purpose in the following treatise, with due modesty, to recount. That they will move my readers to great pity & no little anger in my behalf I am quite positive. Forsooth you can often attribute to difficulties of this kind the most opposite turns, to the greatest of evil the greatest of good, and had the troubles in question never come upon me, I for sure should never have set about writing down these most useful things. Thus it was that I did what no one had done before,[8] viz., undertook to write about those loveliest secrets and wondrous methods of the great art of goldsmithing. Things such as neither your philosopher, no, nor any other kind of man neither, if he be not of the craft, durst write about. But since they of the craft are for the most part better at work than at talk, they fall into the error of silence. This at least I determined to avoid and so set myself strenuously to the task. Perhaps never before, or at least so rarely that it has never been recorded, has a man been found who was a specialist in more than one or at most two of the eight different branches of this goodly art, but where he is, he knows, as you may imagine, how to make a good thing of them. Mind you, I don’t intend to talk about those kinds of muddlers who set themselves busily dabbling in all the eight branches at once, and who many and many a time are employed by such as either couldn’t or wouldn’t decide whether a bit of work was good or whether it was bad. Men of that ilk methinks may be likened to the sort of small shopkeeper who hangs out in the slums or suburbs of the town and does a little now in the bakery line, now in the grocery line, now in the apothecary line and now in general retail business—in fact, a little bit of everything and nothing good in anything. These sorts of fellows I don’t intend to talk about, but only of such as have come to the front in what they have done; and only of the right workmanlike way of doing things. Well, then, I mind me to begin with, of our city of Florence and of how we there were the first to revive all those arts that are the sisters of this art of mine; of how the earliest light dawned in the time of that first magnificent Cosimo de Medici; of how under him flourished Donatello the great sculptor, and Pippo di Ser Brunelleschi the great architect, and of that wondrous Lorenzo Ghiberti, in whose time were made the beautiful gates for what was once the ancient temple of Mars and is now the baptistry of our patron St. John.

_Lorenzo Ghiberti._ He was a goldsmith indeed! Not only in the wonderfulness of his own peculiar style, but because of his unwearied power of marvellous finish, and his exceeding diligence in execution. This man, who must be counted among the most admirable of goldsmiths, applied himself to everything, but especially to the casting of smaller work. And though now and then he set about doing large pieces, yet one can see that his particular line was the production of small work, and in this branch we may well call him a master in the art of casting. Indeed he pursued this with such excellence that as is still obvious to all, no man can touch him.

_Antonio Pollajuolo, or the poulterer’s son_, as he is always called, was likewise a goldsmith, and a draughtsman too of such skill, that not only did all the goldsmiths make use of his excellent designs, but the sculptors and painters of the first rank also, and gained honour by them, what was more! This man did little else beside his admirable drawing, but at this he was always busy.

_Maso Finiguerra_ pursued only the art of engraving niello, in which craft he had no rival, and he too always made use of the designs of the aforesaid Antonio.

_Amerigo_ wrought in the art of enamel, & was by far away the first craftsman in it either before or after his time. He too, great as he was, made use of the designs of Antonio del Pollajuolo.

_Michaelangelo_, the goldsmith of Pinzidimonte, was a capital fellow, and worked in a variety of divers things, and especially in the setting of gems. He wrought and designed well in niello, in enamel, in hammered work, and though he come not up to the other distinguished men just named, he deserves much praise. He was the father of Baccino[9] whom Pope Clement made a Knight of St. John. He added the surname Bandinelli on his own account, and since he had neither family nor arms really, he took the sign of his knighthood for a coat. About this man I shall have more than enough to tell as we go along.

_Bastiano del Bernardetto Cennini_ was a goldsmith and worked also in a number of different things. His forefathers and he for many years made the dies for the coins of Florence, until the time that Alexander de Medici, the nephew of Pope Clement, became Duke. This Bastiano in his youth did admirable large metal ware—grosserie[10] and hammered work,[11] and verily he was a first-rate craftsman. And though I said above I wasn’t going to talk about bunglers who take up a number of different things indifferently, one must none the less distinguish between those who _are_ bunglers & those who are good craftsmen and worthy of praise.

_Piero_, _Giovanni_, and _Romolo_, were brothers, the sons of one _Goro Tavolaccino_; they were goldsmiths too, they did good work and made good designs. Amongst other things they were very good at setting jewels in pendants, rings and so forth, and this they managed so tastefully that at that time, 1518, they had no equal. They also worked in intaglio, in bas-relief, and were not bad at hammered work.

_Stefano Salteregli_ was a goldsmith too, a good man in his day, working like the others in a number of different things, but he died young.

_Zanobi_, son of _Meo del Lavacchio_, whose craft he followed, was a goldsmith also, had a charming way of working and designed admirably; but he died just when his beard began to bloom, at about the age of 20.

Indeed at that time there were many young fellows, whose equal and colleague I was, who promised great things to begin with; but the most of them has death snatched away, and the rest have either not stuck to the drudgery, or with undeveloped talents have got no further. As for me, I have heard myself blamed because I have talked so much about such excellent men in one profession only; but I have still to tell of work in filigree, an art though the least beautiful of many beautiful arts, still very beautiful for all that.

_Piero di Nino_ was a goldsmith, who worked only in filigree, an art which, while it affords great charm, is not without its difficulties. He, however, knew how to work in it better than anyone else. Inasmuch as there was great riches in those days within the town, so was it likewise in the country, especially among the peasant folk of the plain, who used to get made for their wives a sort of velvet girdle with buckle and pin, about half a cubit long and covered all over with little spangles. These buckles and pins were all wrought in filigree with great delicacy and fashioned in silver of excellent setting. When later on I shall show how these things are made, I am sure the reader will find delight in them. I knew this Piero de Nino when an old man of near 90 years. He died partly from fear of dying of hunger, and partly from a shock he got one night. As for the dying of hunger it was this way: An edict had been issued in the city that no more belts should be worn either by peasants or others; and the poor old fellow, who knew no other branch of goldsmithing but this, was always grieving, and cursing from the bottom of his heart all those who had a hand in making this law. He lived near a draper’s shop, where was a young rogue of an urchin, the son of one of them that had made the law. The boy, hearing him thus continually cursing his father, ‘Oh, Piero,’ said he, ‘if you go on swearing like that, some fine day the devil will come and carry you off, bones and all!’ Now one Saturday night, when the old chap had worked right up to midnight to finish some job he was engaged on that was to go to Bologna, the urchin took it into his head to play him a practical joke and give him a fright. So he stood on the watch for the old man on his way home. The latter, as was his wont, locked up his shop, took his lantern in his hand, and, with the lappet of his cloak thrown over his head, trudged along ever so slowly, and as lonely as a ghost, home to his house, which stood in the via Mozza. Just as he was turning the corner of the old market the urchin, who was awaiting in ambush for him, and had tricked himself out with rag-tag, sulphur lights, blue fire, and such-like horrible devilries, suddenly jumped out upon him. The poor old thing was so terrified at the fearful monster thus suddenly coming at him, that he lost his senses; so much so that the boy, seeing he had played the fool, had to lead the old man home as well as he could, and consign him to the care of his grandsons, among whom was one called Meino, a courier, who afterwards became warden of Arezzo. Suffice it, the fright had been so great, that soon after the poor old fellow died. This is usually stated as the actual cause of Piero’s death, and I have myself ofttimes heard it narrated.

_Antonio di Salvi_ was another of our Florentine goldsmiths, a capital grosserie worker. He died at a very great age.

_Salvatore Pilli_ likewise was a first-rate man, who also died very old; but he never worked in a shop of his own, but always in someone else’s.

_Solvatore Guasconti_ was an all round man, more especially good in small things. His work in niello and enamel is well worthy of praise.

You must know too that there were ever so many others, all of them fellow Florentines, who commenced in the goldsmith’s art and took their inspiration from it for various other arts, such as sculpture, architecture, and other notable lines of work.

_Donatello_, for instance, the greatest sculptor that ever lived, about whom I shall have plenty to say later on, stuck to the goldsmith’s art right along into manhood.

_Pippo di ser Brunellesco_, the first who gave new vigour to the glory of architecture, he too was a goldsmith for a long time.

_Lorenzo della Golpaia_ also was a goldsmith, and always continued true to the art. As for him, he was a very prodigy of nature, for he specialised in clock making, and finding his own peculiar bent in this line, so wonderfully reproduced the secret of the heavens and the stars that you really might have thought he lived up in the sky! Amongst other things he showed his cunning in a clock he made for the magnificent Lorenzo de Medici. In this clock he put the Medici arms, making them represent the seven planets; these used to move round slowly, and revolve just like the planets in the sky do. This clock is still in its place, but it is not what it used to be because it has been so badly taken care of.

_Andrea del Verocchio_, the sculptor, remained a goldsmith up to the time of manhood. He was the master of Lionardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, architect, philosopher, musician;—a veritable angel incarnate of whom I shall have heaps to tell whenever he comes to mind.

_Desiderio_, too, was a goldsmith in his youth, who took to sculpture later, and was a great master in the art.

I can’t possibly recount all our Florentines who were adepts in the great goldsmiths’ art, suffice it that I have mentioned most of those who became famous therein. But I will say a word or two about some of the foreigners who seem to me pre-eminent, and I will begin with such as wrought in niello.

_Martino_[12] was a goldsmith from beyond the Alps, who came from some German town or other. He was a first-rate fellow in designing, & in intaglio work in the way they do it there. It was just about the time when the fame of our Maso Finiguerra spread abroad, who did those wonderful niello intaglios,—by the way, you may still see preserved in our lovely Church of St. John of Florence a silver pyx of his, with a crucifix above it, & the two malefactors, with a lot of detail of horses and other things. Antonio del Pollajuolo, whom I mentioned before, did the design, and Maso the niello work.

Well, then, this good German Martino set to with great diligence and zeal to practise the art of niello, and turned out a number of excellent things. But because he saw that he could not produce work that should come up to our Finiguerra’s for beauty and go, yet being a right-minded man, and wishing to do something that should be generally useful, he set to cutting his intaglios on copper plates with the graver (_bulino_) for so is the little steel tool called with which you engrave. In this wise he engraved a number of pretty little picture-tales, very well composed, and with great understanding of light & shade, in fact as far as one can say such a thing of a piece of German work, they were charming.

_Alberto Duro_ also tried his hand at engraving, and with much greater success than Martino. He too was not satisfied with the results of his work in niello, and so determined to do engravings, and this he did so well that no one can hold a candle to him. He too was a goldsmith, nor was he satisfied with niello only, he resorted in addition to his engraving, and did extraordinarily well in that line.

_Andrea Mantegni_, our great Italian painter, tried it too, but couldn’t do it, so the less said about it the better.

_Antonio Pollajuolo_, the same happened with him, and because both these men could make nothing of it, I’ll say naught but that Mantegni was an excellent painter, and Pollajuolo an excellent draughtsman.

_Antonio da Bologna_[13] & _Marco da Ravenna_ must also be counted among the goldsmiths. Antonio was the first who began to engrave in the manner of Alberto Duro. He studied closely the work of the great painter Raphael of Urbino. He engraved beautifully, could design in the right good Italian manner, and studied closely the style and methods of those old Greeks, who always know how to do things better than other folk. Many others pursued this branch of engraving, but because none of them came up to the great Alberto Duro, & even also a long way behind our Italian Antonio of Bologna, I’ll not mention them; more especially as to do so would be to go beyond the limits of our inquiry, which is to consider the lovely art of niello and all its many difficulties.

Now you must know that when I first was a goldsmith’s apprentice in the 15th year of the century, which was my 15th year too, the art of engraving in niello had quite fallen into disuse. It was only because a few old men still living did nothing else but talk of the beauty of the art and of the great masters who had wrought in it, & above all of Finiguerra, that I was seized with a mighty desire to learn it; so I set to diligently to master it, & with the examples of Finiguerra before me, made many good pieces.

My difficulty, however, was how to find out after I had engraved the intaglio how the niello that was to fill it ought to be made. So I went on trying ever so hard until I not only mastered the difficulties of making the material, but the whole art became a mere child’s play to me. Here, then, is the way in which niello work is done.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Cellini had of course never heard of Theophilus, the monk of the 11th century, and his great treatise ‘Diversarum Artium Schedula.’_

[9] _Baccio Bandinelli, the sculptor, one of Cellini’s bitterest enemies._

[10] _Grosseria. Cellini uses this term for all large ware as distinguished from ‘minuteria’ or small ware._

[11] _Di cesello: what we should call repoussé._

[12] _Martin Schongauer._

[13] _Marcantonio Raimondi._