“Your Eminence,” Bandinelli protested.
“If you cut the hair off of its head,” Cellini declared, “what would you be left with? A potato. And has it got the face of a man or an ox?” It felt good to let go, and he saw no reason to stop. “The shoulders look like the pommels on a pack saddle, and the chest looks like a sack of watermelons. The arms? They hang down without any grace at all, and at one point, unless I’m mistaken, both Hercules and Cacus appear to be sharing the same calf muscle. You have to wonder—I know I do—how they manage to stand up at all.”
Through all of this, Bandinelli fumed and writhed, while the duke listened intently, absorbed and amused. But when Bandinelli challenged him to find fault with the design of the statue, of which he was inordinately proud, and Cellini proceeded to demolish that, too, Bandinelli could take no more and he shouted, “That’s enough out of you, you dirty sodomite!”
A hush fell over the room, and the duke scowled, perhaps expecting Cellini to launch a physical attack. And the artisan was sorely tempted.
But he knew that if he did, he risked offending Cosimo, too. Instead, mustering all his resolve, Cellini replied, in a cold and ironic tone, “Now I know you’ve gone off your head. Although that noble custom you just mentioned is reputedly practiced by many great kings and emperors—even Jove himself was said to have indulged in it with young Ganymede—I am a humble man of natural tastes myself, and so I don’t know anything about it.”
The duke looked relieved, and even Bandinelli, perhaps aware that he had gone too far, shrank back. Out of the corner of his eye, Cellini spotted the duchess coming, wearing the rope of pearls, and lest he get into yet another fracas, he quickly tried to extricate himself.
“I thank Your Lordship for this opportunity to see the antique torso, but I would like to return to my studio now. There is still a good deal of work to do on the medallion.”
As the duchess and one of her ladies entered the chamber, and Bandinelli bowed so low his beard nearly grazed the floor, Cellini made his escape. Eleonora threw him a look, as if to say I was counting on your support, but he pretended not to notice and didn’t even break his stride to study the Giotto fresco mounted above the staircase. Only when he was out in the Piazza again, standing before the Loggia dei Lanzi, with its pantheon of statuary on display, did he stop and bend over, his own hands on his knees, to breathe deeply and try to calm himself. If Bandinelli had had the nerve to fling such an accusation at him anywhere but the Duke de’Medici’s office, he’d have knocked his head off. His heart was pounding so hard that he could feel the cold metal of La Medusa, on its thick silver chain, bobbing under his shirt.
“Benvenuto. Are you feeling all right?”
He glanced up and saw the jeweler, Landi, no doubt heading to the Medici palace to sew up the sale of the pearl necklace.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Cellini replied.
“Do you happen to know if her ladyship is receiving?”
“She is.”
Landi narrowed his eyes and smiled. “And is she in a buying mood?”
“When isn’t she?”
Landi laughed, said “God bless her for that,” and swaggered on. Cellini hoped that the duchess would keep his appraisal of the pearls to herself. He hardly needed to make another enemy in Florence.
It was dusk already, and the monumental sculptures in the square threw long shadows on the stones. Donatello’s Judith stood, sword raised above the head of the Assyrian general, Holofernes. Michelangelo Buonarotti’s David, armed with slingshot, gazed confidently across the courtyard. And Cellini, already an acknowledged master in so many arts, longed to make his own contribution to their august company. What the piazza needed, and what he knew he could provide, was a bronze more perfectly modeled and chased and refined than any such statue ever done.
Its subject?
The hero Perseus … in the winged sandals given to him by Hermes, and holding the sword—forged by Hephaestus himself, to defeat the Gorgon—bestowed on him by Athena.
What could be more fitting, more dramatic, and more likely to make Bandinelli hang himself in envy?
With that happy thought in mind, he headed off to the Ponte Vecchio, so that he could stop at the artisans’ shops that lined both sides of the bridge and pickup some much-needed supplies. He thought it also might be nice to buy some little gift for Caterina, perhaps a bit of lace, or maybe an amber comb. She was undoubtedly attending to her hair, and he was confident that as it grew out, it would return to its lustrous black.
But as for Caterina herself … that was another question completely. When would she realize the full import of what had happened? When would she discover the full effect of the moonlight striking the glass? A year? Five years? When would she know?