Firenze, Italy

it will come. next bout of procrastination...probably still today, eh.

Wow! Those are great. Thanks for sharing them.

Fantastic!

Looking forward to them to, for sure.

I'm about to go back and look at all the pics a second time. Possibly do some identifying - especially the ugly sculpture on pza Signoria that Cellini railed against in his autobiography (which is a good read - I'll see if I can find the quote in one of my copies). Anyway, the pics are addictive.

which statue is that?

I remembered a lively description, but had to look up the quote and the sculpture to confirm -

Hercules and Cacus by Bartolommeo (Baccio) Bandinelli:


The scene and description by Cellini is, to me, hilarious, but somewhat long, so I'm trying to find it online rather than to do a typeathon.

Back in a bit -

Ah, well, what the hell, I'll type it. (The makes me want to read the autobio again. Too bad I don't have Set's kind of memory. 'Tis a haze of words by a strong personality five hundred or so years ago.)

wait! the whole book is available at Project gutenberg - you can download the whole book or read online@ www.gutenberg.org

Quoting from the Penguin Classics Benvenuto Cellini Autobiography, translated by George Bull, reprinted 1988.

Typos probably forthcoming -

The Duke stood there, listening with grat enjoyment, and while I was talking Bandinello kept twisting and turning and making the most unimaginably ugly faces - and his face was ugly enough already. Suddenly the Duke moved off, making his way trough some ground-floor rooms, and Bandinello followed him. The chamberlains took me by the cloak and led me after them. So we followed the Duke til hi Most Illustrious Excellency reached an apartment where he sat down with Bandinello and me on either side of him. I stood there without saying anything, and the men standing around - several of his Excellency's servants - all stared hard at Bandinello, sniggering a little among themselves over what I had said in the room above. Then Bandinello began to gabble.

"My lord," he said, 'when I uncovered my Hercules and Cacus I am sure that more than a hundred wretched sonnets were writtn about me, containing the worst abuse one could possibly imagine this rabble capable of.'

Replying to this, I said: 'My lord, when our Michelangelo Buonarroti revealed his Sacristy, where there are so many fine statues to be seen, our splendid, talented Florentine artists, the friends of truth and excellence, wrote more than a hundred sonnets, every man competing to give the highest praise. As Bandinello's work deserved all the abuse that he says was thrown at it, so Buonarroti's deserved all the good that was said of it.'

Bandinello grew so angry that he nearly burst: he turned to me and said: 'And what faults can you point out?'

'I shall tell you if you have patience to listen.'

'Go on then.'

'The Duke and all the others who were there waited attentively, and I began.

(continued, next post)

'First I said: 'I must say that it hurts me to point out the defects in your work' but I shall not do that, I shall tell you what the artists of Florence say about it.'

One moment the wretched fellow was muttering something unpleasant, the next shifting his fee and gesticulating; he made me so furious that I began in a much more insulting way than I would have done had he behaved otherwise.

'The expert school of Florence says that if Hercules' hair were shaven off there wouldn't be enough of his pate to hold in his brain; and that one can't be sure whether his face is that of a man or a cross between a lion and an ox; that it's not looking the right way; and that it's badly joined to the neck, so clumsily and unskilfully that nothing worse has ever been seen; and that his ugly shoulders are like the two pommels of an ass's pack-saddle; that his breasts and the rest of his muscles aren't based on a man's but are copied from a great sack full of melons, set upright against a wall. The loins look as if they are copied from a sack of long marrows. As for the legs, it's impossible to understand how they're attached to the sorry-looking trunk; it's impossible to see on which leg he's standing or on which he's balancing, and he certainly doesn't seem to be resting his weight on both, as is the case with some of the work done by those artists who know somehing. What can be seen is that he's leaning forward more than a third of a cubit; and this by itself is the worst and the most intolerable error that useless, vulgar craftsmen can make. As for the arms, it's said that they both stick out awkwardly, that they're so inelegant that it seems you've never set eyes on a live nude; that the right leg of Hercules is joined to that of Cacus in the middle in such a way that if one of the two were removed both of them - not merely one - would be without a calf. An they say that one of the feet of the Hercules is buried, and the other looks as if someone has lit a fire under it.'

(ok, enough)

Meantime, I haven't been in the Palazzo Vecchio and appreciate all the photos. Lots to read about, for me.

Too late! But I enjoyed typing out Mr. Pithy's words, at least his words in a very Brit translation.

haha, guess he REALLY didn't like baldini.

i myself loved the statue. there is something animalistic about this hercules, for sure. not a bad in my book.
meanwhile i started reading the book: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=4622&pageno=8

that's my favorite. he's right, when you look close! the skull would be too small if the hair was gone, and it's also true about the legs - can't tell which one he's standing on. funny. i still like it though.

I kept skipping back and forth, reading each critic in turn and checking out the statues physic. Very funny.

Yep, lots of typos. When I copy stuff I type at high speed, and never find all the stupid typos even though I look.

I don't remember hating it all that much myself, but then I'm glossyeyed in some circumstances. Here's a photo of his critics work, Cellini's Perseus with Head of Medusa, which I couldn't tell from the photo if it was in the Loggia di Lanzi when you were there..

I seem to remember there was a Judith and Holofernes (I'm not even trying to spell correctly) on the arringhiera (that platform in the piazza where Hercules is) when I was there. Not the Donatello one. (more to look up).

Also, Cellini had a hell of a time casting the Perseus - and that's all in the Autobio. I'm way biased. That book is the one that made me really connect to history going back some centuries and more. I think I've read it twice, but could do with one more time. Also enjoyed Vasari's Lives of the Artists, but not as much as the Cellini.