The century of ColumbusWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The century of Columbus
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Renaissance
A great sculptor of the Renaissance, whose career presents many other
features of interest, however, which have made him famous, is
Benvenuto Cellini. He was born in 1500 and, like many of the artists
and most of the sculptors of the time, began his life work as an
apprentice to a goldsmith. After a troubled early manhood in Rome and
other Italian cities, during which he executed some medals that are
among the best of their kind ever made, and various ornamental pieces
in the precious metals, he was for a time at the court of Francis I.
Afterwards he worked in Florence, lending his genius to the
fortification of the city during the war with Siena. While his career
is entirely exceptional among the great artists of the time it is
often taken for a type of the restless, rather unmoral than immoral,
character that was supposed to be produced by the paganizing influence
of the New Learning. The true types of Columbus' Century among the
artists, however, are such men as Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo,
deeply intent on their work, anxious only for the opportunity to
accomplish high artistic purpose and without any of that restless
unmorality that is at least supposed to have characterized Cellini. It
would be much nearer the truth to point to the lives of such men as
Fra Angelico or Fra Bartolommeo, happy in their monastery homes, or
Correggio, who spent his time so peacefully with the religious of the
little town in which he lived, than to appeal to Benvenuto's chequered
stormy career as typical of the Renaissance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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