Cellini, Perseus

So let's talk about Mannerist sculpture. Okay, when we're talking about Mannerist sculpture, one thing to keep in mind is that it shares the same basic characteristics as Mannerist painting that we've already discussed. So elegance, complexity. The more enigmatic and puzzling it is, the better complicated, extreme sense of sophistication and gracefulness and a demonstration of the artist's skill. And a great example of that is Benvenuto Cellini's bronze sculpture of Perseus from about 1545 to 1554, and it is located in its original location where it was made for, the Piazza della Signoria, the loggia just to the right of the town hall if you're facing its entrance. So it's an important location. It's a very important location and its location is a very important part of its meaning, which we'll talk about. So who commissioned this? This is for Duke Cosimo I, Cosimo de' Medici, who was the first really great powerful of the Medici dukes who rules 16th century Florence. He comes to power in the 1530s and rules up and towards the end of the century. So the first thing we should talk about is what the subject matter is. We'll come back to it again, but generally this is a sculpture of Perseus and Perseus is a figure from Greek and Roman mythology. He is the hero, in a way a regular guy, who defeats the Gorgon monster Medusa. Medusa is the terrible sorceress who's so ugly and has snakes for hair that when you look at her you turn to stone because she's so terrible looking. And this was not the way she was born. She was originally very beautiful and seductive, but she tried to seduce Zeus. And so Zeus's wife Hera puts this curse on her that makes her so ugly that if anyone looks at her they turn to stone. Athena gives him a shield that's very, very highly polished like a mirror. The god Mercury or Hermes gave him his winged hat and winged sandals that allows him to fly. And so when he goes to fight Medusa he holds the shield up. She looks at her own reflection. She turns to stone and still while he's not looking at her he reaches out with a sword and slices her head off. He beheads her, but he quickly puts her head in a bag because even when she's dead she can turn people to stone. And then he flies off to fight another monster and he pulls Medusa's head out of the bag and defeats that other beast as well. And we see all of these things in the sculpture. We'll come back to them again. So Perseus is really blessed. He's helped by the gods. He's got the winged sandals here. He's got the winged helmet here. This of course is Medusa's decapitated head. Here is her body spurting blood. The story of this particular sculpture is that Cellini had been working in France for King Francis I. It then comes back to his hometown of Florence where Cosimo de' Medici is the duke. And there are several different versions of the story. And basically the story is that Cellini approaches the duke and says, I have a great project that you're going to want to fund and have me make. And he shows the duke sketches and models made out of clay and wax of this figure. And the duke likes the subject matter a lot, but the duke thinks of himself as an artistic connoisseur. And so he says to Cellini, I like this idea, but it's never going to work. It's going to topple over. More importantly, the duke says, is that the bronze casting is never going to be successful because essentially the way that bronze is made, if that you have an inner mold of clay, an outer mold of clay, and then what's in between there is wax in the design of what you want your finished sculpture to be. And then what you do is you pour hot molten bronze and everywhere the wax was, which floods out, the bronze then goes. And after the bronze cools off, you then break the outer mold and there essentially is your bronze sculpture. When the duke looks at Cellini's designs, he said this is never going to work because you have so many things sticking out in different directions, the arm, the sword, the hands, the feet, that the bronze is not going to flow fast enough to all of these places that it needs to fill. And so when you break open the mold, you're going to find that the cast is incomplete. So Cellini listens to these arguments and he says essentially to the duke, I am such an expert. I'm such a good sculptor. I can pull it off. You just need to trust me. And so the duke says, okay, you can go ahead, but I'm warning you, you're going to humiliate yourself. And Cellini gets to work. He prepares the mold. He prepares everything the way it needs to be done. And he starts pouring the molten bronze into the mold, but he quickly realizes that in fact the duke was right. The bronze is not flowing fast enough to fill up the whole mold. And so it needs to be hotter. What he does is he instructs all of his assistants and servants to break all of the wood furniture in his house and throw it on the fire so that the fire will burn hotter and the bronze will run smoother and faster. And they do that and that works, but it's still not fast enough. And so they throw in some silverware and other kinds of pewter things that he has lying around the house because if you add that to the bronze mixture, that also makes it more liquidy. And then they wait with bated breath for the whole thing to cool off and they break it open and there's the whole sculpture complete. He did it. It's a miracle that he was able to cast it without any flaws. He claims no missing parts like the duke had said would happen. And then it needs to be finished off. And then also once it's installed in the pedestal, it does in fact stand very firmly without toppling over. Bronze casting had been a lost art for the whole Middle Ages. Things of this complexity, certainly. Without thinking about what the subject matter is, without thinking about how it relates to its surroundings, part of the meaning of this work of art is Cellini is a great sculptor. In other words, that's practically the subject matter is that he was able to accomplish what was said to be impossible. And this makes it mannerist. It is a statement of the artist's skill at taking on an artistic challenge. An amazing virtuosity. And that virtuosity is not just in the casting, but it's also in the finishing of this surface, which is incredibly well polished and has a tremendous amount of detail. Of course, it's also mannerist because of the rather lithe, elegant, athletic, slim form that corresponds to the dominant aesthetic of the time. But again, it's this issue of the artist's skill that's foregrounded that makes this in part so important. Another part of this sculpture that's so important is how it relates to its setting. And like I said, this is in front of the town hall, in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, where at the time there were already several other sculptures, as we can see in this photo, which is sort of taken from the point of view of where the Perseus is located. In other words, this seems to be what Perseus is looking at. One of the things that stood there is Michelangelo's David, where a replica stands in the original location. Michelangelo's David here, and then also this figure of Hercules that was installed some years later. Both of these figures, Michelangelo's David and this figure of Hercules by Bandinelli, were symbols of the Republic of Florence. David, who defeats the stronger beast Goliath, was seen as a symbol of the Republic from even the beginning of the 1400s because it was a symbol of how the good and the weak can defeat the strong if God is on their side. And Hercules too, in some ways, functioned in that role because Hercules was also a symbol of the Republic, the hero who, with the help of gods, is able to defeat stronger enemies. So these are both symbols of Florence as a democracy whose power is in the hands of the citizens of Florence. We need to understand the Perseus figure and its commission in this location in that kind of historical context because when we think of the Perseus standing here, holding up that head of Medusa, what, of course, does it look like has happened here? It looks like it's turned David to stone. It's turned the symbol of the Republic to stone. It looks as if, especially Michelangelo's David, is looking right at Cellini's Perseus and the head of Medusa. And there's a suggestion that Hercules is as well and that because they're looking at this head of Medusa that's being held up by the triumphant hero that they have turned to stone. And so the kind of tricky, almost humorous, but very sophisticated, and hence typically mannerist, illusion is that the Medici, with their sculpture of Perseus, have turned these figures representing the Republic into stone and have defeated their enemies once again. You know, it's funny because I think we tend to look at these sculptures as images of beautiful figures during the Renaissance and we forget this political meaning behind them. Absolutely. And we need to understand their historical context, their locations. All of this helps us understand what they are. But in the end, they still are also very beautiful objects. And that's another way to understand why these viewers, Hercules and David, have turned to stone. Because it was a rather common rhetoric to say that an object could be so beautiful that it takes your breath away. It stops you in your tracks. It petrifies the viewer. The viewer can be slain by beauty. And so maybe that's another meaning of these figures turning to stone. They're so astonished by his skill and his mastery as an artist that they are turned to stone in astonishment.