Cellini, Perseus발음듣기
Cellini, Perseus
Voiceover : OK, when we're talking about Mannerist sculpture, one thing to keep in mind is that it shares the same basic characteristics as Mannerist painting that we've already discussed.발음듣기
Complicated, extreme sense of sophistication and gracefulness, and a demonstration of the artist's skill.발음듣기
A great example of that is Benvenuto Cellini's bronze sculpture of Perseus, from about 1545 to 1554.발음듣기
It is located in its original location, where it was made for the Piazza della Signoria, the Loggia just to the right of the town hall if you're facing its entrance.발음듣기
Voiceover : It's a very important location, and its location is a very important part of its meaning, which we'll talk about.발음듣기
Cosimo de' Medici, who was the first really great powerful of the Medici dukes, who rules 16th century Florence.발음듣기
We'll come back to it again, but generally this is a sculpture of Perseus, and Perseus is a figure from Greek and Roman mythology.발음듣기
Medusa is the terrible sorceress who is so ugly and has snakes for hair that when you look at her you turn to stone, because she's so terrible looking.발음듣기
This was not the way she was born, she was originally very beautiful and seductive, but she tried to seduce Zeus,발음듣기
and so Zeus's wife Hera puts this curse on her that makes her so ugly that if anyone looks at her they turn to stone.발음듣기
The god Mercury, or Hermes, gave him his winged hat and winged sandals that allow him to fly.발음듣기
So when he goes to fight Medusa he holds the shield up, she looks at her own reflection, she turns to stone, and still while he's not looking at her he reaches out with the sword and slices her head off.발음듣기
He beheads her, but he quickly puts her head in a bag, because even when she's dead she can turn people to stone.발음듣기
Then he flies off to fight another monster and he pulls Medusa's head out of the bag and defeats that other beast as well.발음듣기
He's got the winged sandals here, he's got the winged helmet here, this of course is Medusa's decapitated head, here is her body spurting blood.발음듣기
The story of this particular sculpture is that Cellini had been working in France for King Francis I, but then he comes back to his hometown of Florence, where Cosimo de' Medici is the duke.발음듣기
Basically, the story is that Cellini approaches the duke and says, "I have a great project "that you're going to want to fund and have me make."발음듣기
The duke likes the subject matter a lot, but the duke thinks of himself as an artistic connoisseur, so he says to Cellini, "I like this idea, but it's never going to work.발음듣기
More importantly, the duke says, is that the bronze casting is never going to be successful, because essentially the way that bronze is made is that you have an inner mold of clay, an outer mold of clay, "발음듣기
and what's in between there is wax in the design of what you want your finished sculpture to be.발음듣기
Then what you do is pour in hot molten bronze, and everywhere the wax was, which floods out, the bronze then goes.발음듣기
After the bronze cools off, you then break the outer mold and there, essentially, is your bronze sculpture.발음듣기
When the duke looks at Cellini's designs, he says "This is never going to work, because you have so many things sticking out in different directions, the arms, the sword, the hands the feet, that the bronze is not going to flow fast enough to all of these places that it needs to fill.발음듣기
So Cellini listens to these arguments and he says, essentially, to the duke, "I am such an expert, I'm such "a good sculptor, I can pull it off. You just need to trust me."발음듣기
So the duke says, "OK, you can go ahead, but I'm warning you, you're going to humiliate yourself."발음듣기
So Cellini gets to work, he prepares the mold, he prepares everything the way it needs to be done,발음듣기
The bronze is not flowing fast enough to fill up the whole mold, and so it needs to be hotter.발음듣기
What he does is he instructs all of his assistants and servants to break all of the wood furniture in his house and throw it on the fire so that the fire will burn hotter and the bronze will run smoother and faster.발음듣기
So they throw in some silverware and some other kinds of pewter things that he has lying around the house,발음듣기
Then they wait with baited breath for the whole thing to cool off and they break it open, and there's the whole sculpture complete.발음듣기
And then it needs to be finished off, and also once it's installed on the pedestal it does in fact stand very firmly without toppling over.발음듣기
Without thinking about what the subject matter is, without thinking about how it relates to its surroundings, part of the meaning of this work of art is Cellini was a great sculptor.발음듣기
In other words, that's practically the subject matter, is that he was able to accomplish what was said to be impossible.발음듣기
Voiceover : And that virtuosity is not just in the casting, but it's also in the finishing of this surface, which is incredibly well polished and has a tremendous amount of detail.발음듣기
Of course, it's also Mannerist because of the rather lithe, elegant, athletic, slim form that corresponds to the dominant aesthetic of the time.발음듣기
But again, it's this issue of the artist's skill that's foregrounded that makes this in part so important.발음듣기
Like I said, this is in front of the town hall in front of the Piazza della Signoria, where at the time there were already several other sculptures,발음듣기
as we can see in this photo, which is sort of taken from the point of view of where the Perseus is located.발음듣기
One of the things that stood there is Michelangelo's David, where a replica stands in the original location.발음듣기
Michelangelo's David here, and then also this figure of Hercules that was installed some years later.발음듣기
Both of these figures, Michelangelo's David and this figure of Hercules's by Bandinelli, were symbols of the Republic of Florence.발음듣기
David, who defeats the stronger beast, Goliath, was seen as a symbol of the Republic from even the beginning of the 1400s,발음듣기
because he was a symbol of how the good and the weak can defeat the strong if God is on their side.발음듣기
Hercules, too, in some ways functioned in that role because Hercules was also a symbol of the Republic, the hero who with the help of the gods is able to defeat stronger enemies.발음듣기
Voiceover : So these are both symbols of Florence as a democracy whose power is in the hands of the citizens of Florence.발음듣기
Voiceover : We need to understand the Perseus figure and its commission in this location in that kind of historical context,발음듣기
because when we think of the Perseus standing here holding up that head of Medusa, what, of course, does it look like has happened here?발음듣기
Voiceover : Exactly, it looks as if especially Michelangelo's David is looking right at Cellini's Perseus and the head of Medusa.발음듣기
And there's a suggestion that Hercules is as well, and that because they're looking at this head of Medusa that's being held up by the triumphant hero, that they have turned to stone.발음듣기
So the kind of tricky, almost humorous but very sophisticated, and hence typically Mannerist,발음듣기
illusion is that the Medici with their sculpture of Perseus have turned these figures representing the Republic into stone and have defeated their enemies once again.발음듣기
Voiceover : You know, it's funny, because I think we tend to look at these sculptures as images of beautiful figures during the Renaissance,발음듣기
Voiceover : Absolutely, and we need to understand their historical context, their locations, all of this helps us understand what they are.발음듣기
But in the end they are still also very beautiful objects, and that's another way to understand why these viewers, Hercules and David, have turned to stone.발음듣기
Because it was a rather common rhetoric to say that an object could be so beautiful that it takes your breath away.발음듣기
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