Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages | Page 7

if, in the working, the gold became thicker in
one place than in another, it was impossible to attain a perfect finish.
Caradosso made first a wax model of the object which he was to make;
this he cast in copper, and on that he laid his thin gold, beating and
modelling it to the form, until the small hollow bas-relief was complete.
The work was done with wooden and steel tools of small proportions,
sometimes pressed from the back and sometimes from the front; "ever
so much care is necessary," writes Cellini, "...to prevent the gold from
splitting." After the model was brought to such a point of relief as was
suitable for the design, great care had to be exercised in extending the
gold further, to fit behind heads and arms in special relief. In those days
the whole film of gold was then put in the furnace, and fired until the
gold began to liquefy, at which exact moment it was necessary to
remove it. Cellini himself made a medal for Girolamo Maretta,
representing Hercules and the Lion; the figures were in such high relief

that they only touched the ground at a few points. Cellini reports with
pride that Michelangelo said to him: "If this work were made in great,
whether in marble or in bronze, and fashioned with as exquisite a
design as this, it would astonish the world; and even in its present size
it seems to me so beautiful that I do not think even a goldsmith of the
ancient world fashioned aught to come up to it!" Cellini says that these
words "stiffened him up," and gave him much increased ambition. He
describes also an Atlas which he constructed of wrought gold, to be
placed upon a lapis lazuli background: this he made in extreme relief,
using tiny tools, "working right into the arms and legs, and making all
alike of equal thickness." A cope-button for Pope Clement was also
quite a tour de force; as he said, "these pieces of work are often harder
the smaller they are." The design showed the Almighty seated on a
great diamond; around him there were "a number of jolly little angels,"
some in complete relief. He describes how he began with a flat sheet of
gold, and worked constantly and conscientiously, gradually bossing it
up, until, with one tool and then another, he finally mastered the
material, "till one fine day God the Father stood forth in the round,
most comely to behold." So skilful was Cellini in this art that he
"bossed up in high relief with his punches some fifteen little angels,
without even having to solder the tiniest rent!" The fastening of the
clasp was decorated with "little snails and masks and other pleasing
trifles," which suggest to us that Benvenuto was a true son of the
Renaissance, and that his design did not equal his ability as a
craftsman.
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. Then, keeping the
central point always in view by means of compasses, from that point he
struck "a series of concentric circles about half a finger apart from each
other," and with a hammer, beginning at the centre, struck so that the
"movement of the hammer shall be in the form of a spiral, and follow
the concentric circles." It was important to keep the form very even all
round. Then the vase had to be hammered from within, "till it was

equally bellied all round," and after that, the neck was formed by the
same method. Then, to ornament the vase, it was filled with pitch, and
the design traced on the outside. When it was necessary to beat up the
ornament from within, the vase was cleared out, and inverted upon the
point of a long "snarling-iron," fastened in an anvil stock, and beaten so
that the point should indent from within. The vase would often have to
be filled with pitch and emptied in this manner several times in the
course of its construction.
Benvenuto Cellini was one of the greatest art personalities of all time.
The quaintness of the æsthetic temperament is nowhere found better
epitomized than in his life and writings. But as a producer of artistic
things, he is a great disappointment. Too versatile to be a supreme
specialist, he is far more interesting as a man and craftsman than as a
designer. Technical skill he had in unique abundance. And another
faculty, for