308 IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 



There is auotlier celebrated jeweler of that time, whom he mentions 

 frequently, of the name of Antonio Foppo, a Milanese, who is better 

 known in the history of art by a name which he received in derision 

 in Spain, the name g£ Capodursa, which means a bear's face, and which 

 he is known by, commonly, in w^orks of art. Cellini describes to us 

 the processes by which he produces his works ; and they are so careful, 

 and require such accurate knowledge of art, that his knowledge must 

 have been very superior indeed in the arts of design. As an instance of 

 what was the latitude and the extent of art, and how really a jeweler 

 or goldsmith in those days was not above work which in our days no 

 one would dare offer to a person of such a profession, we have a case 

 recorded in the history of one of the j^ainters, Pierino del Vaga, by 

 Vasari, speaking of a very particular friend of Pierino's, a goldsmith. 

 When the Grand Duke of Tuscany was building his palace, he gave to 

 this man a commission to make the metal blinds for the ground floor 

 of that palace; (and it is considered a great pity that a work of so 

 homely a nature should have perished, because there can be no doubt 

 whatever that it was a work of exquisite beauty.) So that, even upon 

 what would be considered the lowest stage of common production, 

 the artist did not feel it was beneath him to design; .not to give a de- 

 sign to others, but to execute it himself. We have in the collections, 

 particularly of Italy, in the palaces, evident proofs of the great extent to 

 which this combination of various arts must have been carried, in works 

 exceedingly complicated, extremely beautiful, and at the same time 

 necessarily requiring a great deal of ability to execute. Those are the 

 rich cabinets in which may be found, mixed together, work in marble, 

 and in ivory, in wood, in metals, in enamel, and in painting, all com- 

 bined together by one idea, and all executed by one hand, but of the 

 authors of which it seems imjDossible to find any good trace. They 

 probably were produced by those men called goldsmiths, and who, as I 

 said before, could work as well upon any of those substances, and thus 

 bring them harmoniously to form one beautiful whole. 



j^osv, proceeding from what is most precious in art to what is more 

 homely, let us return for a moment to a subject on which I have al- 

 ready touched. I have spoken of the beauty of the productions of an- 

 tiquity in metal, which were found in the excavation j)articularly of those 

 two buried museums, as we may call them, of antiquity, Pompeii and 

 Herculaneum. The collection of these is chiefly in Naples. Except 

 where presents have been made to other countries, they have been 

 jealously kept together. iSTow, these different objects have not been 

 dug out of temples or out of palaces, but they have been taken out of 

 every sort of house— houses evidently belonging to the citizens — 

 and I think you may see that there is not one in that collection which 

 does not immediately arrest the eye both by the beauty of form and by 

 its exquisite fancy. Many of them have been engraved in the publica- 

 tion called the "Museo Borbonico," the Bourbon Museum, the Museum 



