Although the Perseus may not be a great work of plastic design, worthy of sculpture in its best periods, it can never cease to be the most characteristic product of the vehement, ambitious artist's soul which throbbed in the writer of Cellini's Memoirs. It remains the final effort of Florentine genius upon the wane, striking a last blow for the ideals, mistaken, perchance, but manfully pursued, which Florence followed through the several stages of the Renaissance.
XXVIII
Cellini's autobiography circulated in MS. and was frequently copied before its first committal to the press in 1730. The result is that the extant MSS. differ considerably in their readings, and that the editions, of which I am acquainted with six, namely, those of Cocchi, Carpani, Tassi, Molini, Bianchi, and Camerini, have by no means equal value.[1] The
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- ↑ 1. Antonio Cocchi's edition was printed at Naples in 1730, ninth the date Cc Ionia. 2. Gio. Palamede Carpani's was printed in three volumes at Milan, Soc. Tip. de' Classici Italiani, in 1806. 3. Francesco Tassi's appeared at Florence, Guglielmo Pialti, in three 'volumes, 1829. 4. Giuseppe Molini s appeared at Florence, Tipogr. all insegna di Dante, in two volumes, 1832. This edition had been preceded by a duodecimo text published by Molini on the 30th of December 1830, simultaneously with Tassi s above mentioned. When Molini compared Tassi's text with the Laurentian MS., he saw that there was room for a third edition (that of 1832), more exact than either. 5. B. Bianchi's appeared at Florence, Le Monnier, 1 vol., 1852. 6. That of Eugenio Camerini, Milan, Sonzogno, 1886, is a popular reprint, with an introduction and some additional notes. The text which I have principally used is Bianchi's. I may here take occasion to explain that the notes appended to my translation have to a large extent been condensed from the annotations of Carpani's, Tassi's, and Molini's editions, with some additional information derived from Bianchi, Camerini, and the valuable French work of Plon (B. C, Orfevre, Medailleur, Sculpteur, Paris, 1883). A considerable number of notes have been supplied by myself, partly upon details respecting the Italian text, and partly upon points connected with history and technical artistic processes. It does not seem necessary
