FLORENCE:
A PORTRAIT
By Michael Levey

On Cellini's
Perseus

"...If the corridor represents Cosimo at his most severely functional as commissioner, Cellini's Perseus represents him at his most fanciful, or indulgent, sanctioning a work of art which might not have been expected to find immediate favor with him. But the Perseus--so famous that it is one of those works of art more easily nodded to on the spot than paused over--has much to convey about Cosimo, as well as about its creator, as also about the period in Florence during which it was created...

"Perseus was a hero far less frequently represented in Renaissance art than Hercules, for example, and perhaps partly appealed to Cosimo as a subject for that very reason...As Donatello's Judith, in particular, had earlier been turned into a symbol of republican release from Medici tyranny, so Cosimo doubtless meant the Perseus to reverse the symbolism. Medici triumph was embodied in the youthful naked figure who, aided by the gods (as Judith and David, by Jehovah), has killed the Gorgon and holds aloft her severed, bleeding head. As even in death her gaze can petrify, some admonition to the citizens of Florence may well have been in Cosimo's mind when thinking of the subject...

"The duke approved Cellini's model for the statue, although any grim or gory elements implied by the choice of story seem early to have disappeared from the concept, and the final statue is delicate, graceful and elegant. If not as pensive as Donatello's David, Cellini's boyish hero is unexultant and modest in victory. Killing the Medusa was a feat less of strength than of ingenuity...

"A subject and interpretation permitting grace rather than force suited Cellini's art. He took care to study both Donatello's bronzes nearby, especially Judith, to which his statue--once its location in the Loggia dei Lanzi was settled--would form a pendant of sorts...

"Where Cellini is most himself, one feels, was in creating for his statue a pedestal. That word poorly describes the tall, highly wrought, encrusted and also hollowed-out marble base, with four scalloped niches for statuettes in bronze. It can be appreciated as a separate work of art: no mere pedestal but an altar to sixteenth-century Florentine fondness for fantasy, as well as to the gods who aided Perseus...

"Cosimo's approval of the Perseus, pedestal and all, is evidence that he was able to enjoy novelty and fantasy and sustained, refined richness in a work of art that--whatever its instigation--approximated finally to art for art's sake."