Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini / translated by John Addington Symonds.

  • Cellini, Benvenuto, 1500-1571.
Date:
[1927], ©1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini / translated by John Addington Symonds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wish you to remember these four simple words, obey them, and nevei let them escape your memory: In whatever house you be, Steal not, and live honestly.” XI This letter fell into the hands of my master Ulivieri, and he read it unknown to me. Afterwards he avowed that he had read it, and added: “So then, my Benvenuto, your good looks did not deceive me, as a letter from your father which has come into my hands gives me assurance, which proves him to be a man of notable honesty and worth. Consider yourself then to be at home here, and as though in your own father’s house.” While I stayed at Pisa, I went to see the Campo Santo, and there I found many beautiful fragments of antiquity, that is to say, marble sarcophagi. In other parts of Pisa also I saw many antique objects, which I diligently studied whenever I had days or hours free from the labour of the workshop. My master, who took pleasure in coming to visit me in the little room which he had allotted me, observing that I spent all my time in studious occupations, began to love me like a father. I made great progress in the one year that I stayed there, and completed several fine and valuable things in gold and silver, which inspired me with a resolute ambition to advance in my art. My father, in the meanwhile, kept writing piteous entreaties that I should return to him; and in every letter bade me not to lose the music he had taught me with such trouble. On this, I suddenly gave up all wish to go back to him; so much did I hate that accursed music; and I felt as though of a truth I were in paradise the whole year I stayed at Pisa, where I never played the flute. At the end of the year my master Ulivieri had occasion to go to Florence, in order to sell certain gold and silver sweepings which he had;1 and inasmuch as the bad air of Pisa had given me a touch of fever, I went with the fever hanging still about me, in my master’s company, back to Florence. There my father received him most affectionately, and lovingly prayed him, unknown by me, not to in¬ sist on taking me again to Pisa. I was ill about two months, during l I have translated spazzature by sweepings. It means all refuse of the precious metals Wt in the goldsmith’s trays.