Benvenuto Cellini: Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer.

Margaret A. Gallucci and Paolo L. Rossi, eds. Benvenuto Cellini: Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xvi + 240 pp. + 8 color pls. index. append. illus. bibl. $80. ISBN: 0-521-81661-0.

Just like Benvenuto Cellini, this collection of essays on the great goldsmith, engraver, sculptor, and writer of the sixteenth century was also born under an auspicious star and in an idyllic setting--at the annual meeting of The Renaissance Society of America, held in Florence in March 2000. Unlike Cellini, however, its opinion of itself is a lot more moderate. Although it is, as the editors point out in the opening sentence of their introduction, the first anthology in English on Cellini, it wisely chooses to remain within the bounds of modesty, offering the reader only nine articles that cover a number of emblematic works by this rather heterogeneous artist, but not everything. Because of this Tuscan simplicity, the collection is both enlightening and manageable. The stunning color plates of the saltcellar, the restored Perseus, the Crucifix from the Escorial, the bust of Duke Cosimo I from the Bargello, and two of the medals for Pope Clement VII are supplemented by a good number of illustrations, all but two well placed within their respective articles (illustrations 31 and 32 should have been set on facing pages, not back-to-back, so as to let readers compare them more easily, as the author invites them to do).

Jane Tylus opens the collection with a thorough analysis of Cellini's reuse of the myth of "inimitability," already common coinage in references to Michelangelo and his works. As she points out, Cellini not only appropriated the myth, but actually sought to snatch it away from Michelangelo. By carefully analyzing Cellini's rhetoric about his own works, Tylus traces his attempts to demote the expatriate master to the realm of the "imitable" and then place himself as the sole "inimitable" artist in the Tuscan tradition. Coming on the wake of Vasari's Vite, Cellini's Vita is, as we all know, a tour-de-force in self-aggrandizement, but also, as Tylus points out, an invaluable document in a discussion of inimitabilita in Counter-Reformation Italy. Patricia L. Reilly's article continues the focus on Cellini's writings, but redirects it to his treatise on the art of drawing, arguing that the work "reveals the tensions and strife that existed among the members of the newly founded artists' academy" (26), in particular among Cellini and Alessandro Allori and Giorgio Vasari.

At this point, Michael Cole interjects with an article on Cellini's workshop. Comparing what Cellini says in the Vita about how he did things to what his workshop account books actually record, Cole is able to puncture holes in the inflated balloon of Cellini's singlehanded universality, advanced not only by the master himself, but by a number of subsequent writers (starting with Goethe and continuing through Burckhardt to the present day). Cellini did not work alone, but paid a gamut of experts to advise him, assist him, and even cast for him. When patronage and then funds ran out, Cellini was left to fend for himself. As Cole points out, penury reduced both Cellini's workshop and his aspirations, obliging him to abandon bronze and to focus instead on less-expensive and less-arduous materials, such as marble, which he could carve on his own.

With Marina Belozerskaya's article on the famous saltcellar for King Francis I we enter into the more traditional field of fine artistical analysis and interpretation. Moving from the object to its contents, Belozerskaya illuminates our understanding of, and appreciation for, the piece by connecting it with Francis's efforts to control the salt trade within his realm while, at the same time, wrestling away the spice trade from the Portuguese. Similarly, Philip Attwood's article "Cellini's Coins and Medals" focuses on Cellini's use of classical sources, both in the imagery he used and in the models he followed.

Gwendolyn Trottein's article on "Cellini as Iconographer" presents the artist as a man "jealous of his intellectual autonomy" (125), constantly seeking to distance himself from traditional iconography and "invent" his own subject matter. Starting with the saltcellar and then moving through a variety of other works to finish with the Perseus, Trottein's cavalcade offers a number of valuable insights, but ends rather abruptly. Victoria C. Gardner Coates, on the other hand, brings her article on Cellini's bust of Duke Cosimo I safely home by pointing out that, although the bust and the autobiography "have been largely misinterpreted by a modern audience," if we draw them together and contextualize them as a pair of separate but not isolated entities, "we can better understand Cellini's creative method and his desire to shape posterity's reception of his complete oeuvre" (163). One of the most fascinating points she makes is that the bust is a great success because it may well have been commissioned exactly with Portoferraio in mind. Unfortunately, this point does not seem to have made an impact on the next contributor (and coeditor of the collection), Paolo L. Rossi, who comments that the bronze bust "was unfortunately not to [Cellini's] patron's taste and was banished to Elba" (172).

Rossi's article on the genesis and publication history of Cellini's trattati is a careful analysis of the manuscript and print traditions of these works, complete with four appendices to support it. While the argument is solid and extremely convincing, this reader was amused by the amazing number of errors (not only typographical, but also grammatical and technical) that suddenly appeared on the page. One would have expected the article by one of the two coeditors to have been edited and proofread a little more carefully.

The volume ends with Margaret A. Gallucci's pleasant survey of "Benvenuto Cellini as Pop Icon," a topic that is not as trivial as might at first appear. Given the constant reworking of themes and figures that is the hallmark not only of Renaissance culture but of our own contemporary world, it serves us well to recognize and consider how a figure such as Cellini is viewed and presented to the general public. Although the first observation is, indeed, that "[i]nterest in Cellini in modern and contemporary America has spanned three quarters of a century and has encompassed a long line of media" (218), or that "cultural fascination with this great artist of the Italian Renaissance endures" (219), one might also venture to think more deeply about the manner in which Cellini and his story (or his works) have been used to advance ideas or agendas, or why Cellini's bombastic view of himself should have captured the imagination of the likes of Goethe, Burckhardt, and Hollywood movie moguls.

KONRAD EISENBICHLER

Victoria College, University of Toronto