But the artisan, huddling beside a marble column, restrained himself. How could he think of undoing what he had so painstakingly planned?
The young friar, his own face as unlined as fresh calfskin, was reciting his eulogy, and doing an admirable job. Cellini wondered who had coached him. Giorgio Vasari? No, not Vasari—the encomiums were too grand. His old companion, Benedetto Varchi, would have done it right, but Varchi had been gone for years. Occasionally, as if he were speaking to the corpse itself, the Servite’s eyes fell to the gleaming lid of the casket and Cellini had to smile at the notion of such high praise and sorrowful remembrance being directed at its occupant, the most insignificant of men, a destitute wretch whom Ascanio had found in the gutter a month ago and brought home in a wheelbarrow.
“What do you think?” he’d said proudly, displaying the beggar as if he were a prize heifer. “He’s about your height, he even looks a lot like you.”
At this, Cellini had objected, and his apprentice laughed.
“And if you listen to his cough,” Ascanio said, “you’ll know he’s not long for this world.”
The beggar, slurping a bowl of hot stew by the hearth, paid no attention.
“We can lodge him in the stable,” Ascanio went on, “until nature takes its course.”
Cellini had moved closer to inspect the man, who looked up at him with rheumy eyes while clutching the rim of the bowl, like a dog protecting its few scraps of food.
“What’s your name?”
“Virgilio.”
An apt one, Cellini thought. Like Virgil leading Dante, this poor impostor could precede him into the next world. But would he be received there with the special considerations due the artisan himself?
The arrangements were made, and in return for staying out of sight, Virgilio was promised a berth in the hayloft, bread and stew and wine every day—he was especially insistent about the wine—and for the next several weeks, as the beggar’s cough grew worse, and his strength flagged, Ascanio kept a close eye on him. When his apprentice came to Cellini’s workroom one night, shaking his head, and saying, “He won’t live to see the dawn,” Cellini knew the time had come. The book of his own life—the life of Italy’s most famous living artisan—had to be closed … and another, newer book begun.
And this one would be lived in another land, under another name.
By then, the friar had given way at the pulpit to various members of the Accademia, who had begun their own eulogies and remembrances. Several sonnets were read aloud, and Cellini could not help judging them against what might have been his own contribution. Despite the name he had made for himself as an artist, he fancied himself a fine writer, too, and regretted that he had stopped writing the story of his own life so abruptly, several years ago. There was so much more to tell, so much to confess; but incomplete copies had already begun to circulate, hand to hand, among other artists and gentry. How could new chapters be expected to appear from the pen of a dead man? Only saints could perform miracles, and Benvenuto knew that he was a saint in no man’s estimation.
When the obsequies were done, a select group of Academicians and Servite friars accompanied the casket through the adjoining Chiostrino dei Morti, or Cloister of the Dead, and into the Chapel of St. Luke, where the tomb in the floor lay open. Cellini, careful to touch no one or to have his presence suspected in any way, slipped between the columns, close enough to gaze into the black maw that was even now receiving the casket. The box was lowered on braided ropes, and once it had settled, the ropes were dropped in. A pile of dirt and rubble, concealed beneath a tarpaulin, had only to be shoveled back in.
How many men, Cellini wondered, had ever lived to see their own funerals? It was an unnerving sight, even for someone of his own bold temperament … and a grim reminder of the immense transgression he committed with every passing day.
A painter who had studied under Bronzino, another of Benvenuto’s great and long-standing friends, stepped to the edge of the grave and, after wishing “eternal peace to this immortal master, who has brought glory to Florence and beauty to the world,” let fall a spray of purple irises.