Scenery paintings by cellini7/25/2023 ![]() He deliberately underestimates the supporting commercial and social framework in which he operates: the goldsmith guild which taught him his trade the aristocratic patronage that funded his works the city-state which expected public art. Cellini so aggressively projects himself as “superman” precisely because his Vita is–in reality–a mirage. ![]() That, though, is just one side of the coin. In terms of artistic temperament he looks more like a gangster rapper than a Vermeer and that may well be Cellini’s objective. I too am amazed at the character, his vanity, egoism and disregard for others (which seems as much a prototype for the Nietzsche’s Superman as Burckhardt’s Renaissance individual). Cellini–for example–refuses to bow to aristocrats, claiming that while there are dozens of nobles in the city only one or two men in the world could match his genius. Reading Cellini one certainly understands how you could get that impression. If Cellini is a Saint, Perseus is his miracle.įor many years historians, and in particular a Swiss named Carl Burckhardt, saw the Renaissance as the triumph of creative individuality over superstition and feudalism. A furnace explodes a great rainstorm bears down on the beleaguered workshop…Amidst all this wildness the super-artist stays cool and, of course, the Perseus is rescued and made perfect– Vita ensuring that no one who saw it would ever forget the superhuman manner of its creation. The famous climax of the story occurs at the moment when Cellini’s bronze statue is ready for casting…Cellini leaps from to rescue the work of nine years from disaster. Indeed it’s impossible to consider Vita as anything other than a (demonically!) hagiographic companion piece to Cellini’s masterwork, Perseus with the Head of the Gorgon Medusa which, to be clear, deserves its many superlatives.
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