But apart from this and from his amazing revelations of quarrelling and loose living, the autobiography is worth reading for its remarkable description of the casting of his great statue of Perseus, which now stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence hard by the Uffizi. By the time the book had reached so far the little boy had long wearied of the job of secretary, and the old man had buckled down to the labour of writing with his own hand. I dare swear that he wrote this particular section at one breath, so to speak; the torrent of words, poured forth in wild excitement, carry the reader away with the frenzy of the writer as Benvenuto recalls the greatest hours of his life. Nowhere is such an instance of the terrible labour pains of a true artist as his offspring comes to birth. The great statue does more than represent Perseus; it represents the wild and headlong mind of Benvenuto himself. Perseus stands in triumph with the Gorgon’s head in one hand and a sword in the other. You can buy paper-knives modelled on this sword for five lire in Florence to-day. The gladness and youthful joy of Perseus are even more striking than those of Verrochio’s David in the Bargello just near at hand. Verrochio has modelled a young rascal of a Jew who is clearly saying: “Alone I did it; and very nice too!” Never was boyish triumph better portrayed. But Benvenuto’s Perseus is a great young man who has done something very worthy, and knows that it is worthy. He has begun to amputate the head very carefully with a neat circular incision round the neck; then, his rage or his fear of the basilisk glance getting the better of him, he has set his foot against the Gorgon’s shoulder and tugged at the head violently until the grisly thing has come away in his hand, tearing through the soft parts of the neck and wrenching the great vessels from the heart.