Cellini went back to the Holy City and resumed his work as a goldsmith. He was graciously received in audience by the pope, who was overjoyed at the sight of him. Cellini was, on the contrary, greatly downcast, and confessed that having received no payment for his trouble in breaking up the papal jewels he had appropriated a portion of the molten gold to indemnify himself; and he now sought absolution which the priests had hitherto refused him. The pope readily forgave him, expressing his concern that he had had no reward and now freely making him a present of what he had already abstracted; he also gave him a valuable commission, entrusting him with a magnificent diamond and other jewels to set in a gold button for the pontifical cope. In this he succeeded admirably and produced a piece of the most exquisite art, according to Vasari, the contemporary critic. But he stirred up the jealousy of the pope’s favourite gentleman of the bedchamber, who protested that too much favour was shown to this presumptuous young man. Yet Cellini continued to retain the pope’s good graces, and was more and more employed in the stamping of medals and coins for the papal mint, and of one fine piece it was said that His Holiness might boast that he possessed a coin superior to that struck for any Roman emperor.

About this time Cellini got into serious trouble by attacking and engaging in a duel with one of the city guard who had murdered his brother in a brawl. He was not immediately arrested, and a gentleman informed him that the pope knew all that had happened, but that His Holiness was very much his friend and desired him to go on with his business without giving himself any uneasiness. Then his shop was broken into by a thief just as he was in possession of a great part of the pope’s jewels, but fortunately they were not taken, yet the pope was told that the story of the robbery was fabricated to explain the disappearance of the property. Cellini, however, promptly repaired to the Vatican and produced the jewels, saying, “Holy Father, they are all here, not one missing,” and His Holiness replied with a serene brow, “Then you are indeed welcome.”

For the rest of Clement’s pontificate the relations between him and Cellini varied; now the jeweller was in high favour, now in disgrace. Jealous rivals maligned him; Cellini retorted by personal attack. His rash hands readily obeyed his quick temper; he struck down an enemy wherever he met him and then fled to escape just consequences. Throughout he laboured assiduously at his art. One of his finest works was a gold chalice for the pope and he was employed to make the stamp for the Roman mint, and it is agreed that his coins were the finest produced. Then a great change came over his fortunes; Pope Clement VII died and was succeeded by Paul III, a Farnese and no friend to Cellini, who had also incurred the bitter enmity of one Pier Luigi, the new pope’s nephew. Benvenuto went wrong at once by following up an old quarrel with another jeweller, Pompeo, who had been in the service of Clement and constantly at variance with Cellini. One day Pompeo came to his shop, Cellini relates, and stopping in front of the door, “whilst you might say a couple of Ave Marias, began to laugh in my face; and when he went off his comrades fell a laughing likewise, shook their heads and made many gestures in derision and defiance of me.” Cellini, hot-headed as usual, was easily spurred on by his friends to retaliate; he followed Pompeo down the street and met him as he came out of a shop where he had been boasting of having bullied Cellini, who continues: “I thereupon clapped my hand to a sharp dagger and laid hold of him by the throat so quickly and with such presence of mind that there was no one who could defend him. I pulled him towards me to give him a blow in front but he turned his face about through excess of terror so that I wounded him exactly under the ear; and upon my repeating my blow he fell down dead. It had never been my intention to kill him but blows are not always under command.”

Cellini found protectors. Cardinal Cornaro, a Venetian, sent out a party of soldiers to bring him safely to his house. At the same time Cardinal de Medicis proposed to befriend him but Cornaro angrily refused to part with Cellini, vowing that he was as proper a person to take care of him as De Medicis. At that time the new pope, Paul III, came into power and called for Cellini, meaning to employ him again at the mint. They told Paul that Cellini had absconded for having killed one Pompeo in a fray, but the pope would not interfere, declaring that “men who are masters in their profession like Benvenuto should not be subject to the laws, but he less than any other, for I am sensible that he was right in the whole affair. I have often heard of Benvenuto’s provocation, so let a safe conduct be made out and that will secure him from all manner of danger.” After that Cellini resumed his business and was again employed by the pope’s order at the mint.

He was not, however, suffered to escape the vengeance of Pompeo’s relations. A daughter of the murdered man had married a natural son of Pier Luigi, the pope’s nephew, an unscrupulous but powerful person who readily promised to have Cellini arrested. Although “he was lavish of demonstrations of kindness to me,” says Benvenuto, “he had at the same time given orders to the captain of the city guard to seize me or get somebody to assassinate me.” Of the two courses the latter was chosen, and a cut-throat Corsican soldier was engaged to do the work, who gave it out that “he would make no more of it than swallowing a new laid egg.” Cellini was informed of his danger and kept a constant look-out, going about always well accompanied and armed with a coat of mail which he had received permission from the government to wear. When they met face to face, Cellini told the soldier that he had to deal with one who would sell his life very dear. “All this while,” says Cellini, “I stood upon my guard with a stern and watchful eye and we both changed colour. By this time a crowd was gathered round us ... so that he had not the spirit to attack me.” Indeed the bravo afterwards assured Cellini that he had nothing more to fear from him, but that he would for the future consider him as a brother.

Pier Luigi, foiled in the assassination planned, gave orders on his own authority that Cellini should be taken into custody, whereupon the goldsmith took post the same night for Florence, where he was well received by Duke Alessandro de Medicis, who employed him in the mint until the pope sent him an ample safe conduct and ordered him to return to Rome to clear himself of the charge of murder. The duke advised him to remain in Florence, but Cellini, having a shop open in the Holy City, and a staff of workmen, resolved to venture back. He had no sooner arrived than the city guard fell upon him but after a scuffle left him in peace, upon his production of the safe conduct. Later he was called upon to give himself up as a prisoner, as a matter of form, so as to qualify for pardon, but the pope, upon his petition, fully forgave him. A terrible illness now attacked him, from which he did not recover until he returned to his native air of Florence, where he remained for some time, following his business, going farther afield into France and encountering many curious adventures. Once more he found himself in Rome and was to be subjected to a series of grievous trials quite unforeseen by him, and due to the persistent malignity of his enemies. He was again to make the acquaintance of the interior of the castle of St. Angelo, and this time painfully and ingloriously, as a helpless and much persecuted prisoner.

Among the workmen in his employment was a native of Perugia whom he had greatly trusted and liberally paid. The ungrateful wretch suddenly left his service at a most inconvenient time and trumped up a false charge against his master, giving information to Luigi that Cellini had detained a large portion of the jewels entrusted to him by Clement VII during the siege. The crime imputed to Cellini was that when he had removed the precious stones from their settings, he had sewn them up in his own clothes and subsequently disposed of them for 80,000 crowns. This nefarious transaction was vouched for by the treacherous journeyman, who declared that Cellini had confided to him that he held the jewels securely concealed in his shop. Luigi, a man of vicious, dissipated habits, was consumed with greed, and going to the pope obtained a promise from him of the reversion of the 80,000 crowns when recovered from Cellini, who was to be forthwith arrested and examined. When the captain of the city guard arrived and took him in charge as the pope’s prisoner, Cellini protested, “You mistake your man.” “By no means,” replied the captain, “you are the ingenious artist Benvenuto, I know you very well and have orders to conduct you to St. Angelo, where noblemen and men of genius like yourself are confined.” He was accordingly carried there and brought before three judges appointed to bring the affair to an issue. They detailed the charge as given above, commanding him either to find the jewels themselves or the value of them, after which he would be set at large. Cellini indignantly repudiated the charge, protesting that although he had resided for twenty years in Rome he had never before been imprisoned, either in the castle or elsewhere. Here the governor interposed pertinently; “Yet you have killed men enough in your time.” Cellini retorted that he had always acted in self-defence or in anticipation of murderous attack and proceeded with his defence. It was simple and very much to the point; he invited the judges to examine the books wherein would be found a full list of the papal jewels and called upon them to compare it with the valuables in possession. He reminded them that these registers had always been kept with extreme accuracy and that the comparison he suggested would result in his complete acquittal. At the same time, he adverted to his services during the siege, pointing out that but for him the Imperialists would have gained possession of the castle when they first arrived, and recalling his wounding of the Prince of Orange.

In the end Cellini was entirely exonerated and it was clearly shown that he could not have appropriated any of the pope’s jewels, for not a single one was missing. The judges accordingly absolved him, and he was entitled to immediate release. Unhappily, the king of France, Francis I, had heard that Cellini had been committed unjustly to durance, and pleaded for his prompt enlargement. The pope refused, and bade the king to give himself no further concern about such a turbulent and troublesome fellow; that Cellini was kept in prison for committing murder and atrocious crimes. The king still pressed his claim, insisting that Cellini was now in his service and required that he should be sent to him. But the pope held on to him, fearing that Cellini would make an exposure upon reaching France, after his arbitrary illegal detention.

He was not, however, treated with much severity. The constable of the castle was a fellow countryman, Ugolino, and this worthy Florentine put him on his parole, suffering him to go freely throughout the castle. Neither was Cellini debarred from working at his business; his shop remained open in the city and his servants came and went, seeking and carrying out his instructions. But a fellow prisoner pestered him with insidious and dishonourable counsels, and urged that while imprisoned he was not bound to keep his word. Cellini declined to be led astray, but was next invited to explain how he would proceed if kept a close prisoner and not upon his parole. Full of vain glory, he boasted that he could open any lock whatsoever, and especially those of St. Angelo, which he could force as easily as he could eat a bit of cheese. His companion laughed at his pretensions and Cellini, to make them good, showed him how to fabricate false keys. The lesson was so quickly learned that the monk copied them in some wax which he stole from the goldsmith who had been using it to make models of little figures and specimens. The attempt to counterfeit keys fell into the hands of the governor of the castle, who blamed Cellini and withdrew from him the privilege of free passage which he had hitherto enjoyed. Cellini, resenting this more rigorous treatment, so unjustly imposed, began to think seriously whether he could not compass escape. He set to work in the conventional manner with the manufacture of a rope to help him in his descent from the high tower of his prison house. He ordered his servant to bring him fresh sheets and did not return the soiled ones, when asked for them, replying that he had given them to the poorer soldiers of the garrison, who must not be betrayed or they would be committed to the galleys. This process being frequently repeated, in due course he provided a great length of rope sufficient to reach from the top to the bottom of the great tower.

At this stage his difficulties were multiplied by the constable, with whom he had a discussion, which ended in his being more closely confined. This Ugolino was subject to a strange affection at a certain period of the year. He went completely out of his mind and was the prey of extraordinary delusions. At one time he thought he had been metamorphosed into a pitcher of oil; at another he fancied he was a frog and jumped about; again, he firmly believed he was dead, and it became necessary to humour him by mock burial. The next mad notion was that he had been changed into a bat, and he made gestures with his hands and moved his body as if he were going to fly. He greatly delighted in a visit from Cellini, who talked with him for hours indulging all his crazy whims. Once he asked his prisoner whether he ever wanted to fly and was answered in the affirmative. Cellini said that he had studied the methods of the several creatures that took wing, and believed that he could imitate a bat. This fitted in with the constable’s mad fancy, and he at once agreed that Cellini could fly if he tried. “But I hope you won’t try,” added the governor disconsolately, “I should like to see it but the pope has enjoined me to watch over you with the utmost care, and I know that you have the cunning of the devil, and would avail yourself of the opportunity to make your escape. I am resolved to keep you locked up with a hundred keys that you may not slip out of my hands.” This did not suit Cellini and he besought the governor to make his condition no worse than it had been, but all to no purpose, and he was carried off into the closest confinement.

The prisoner was goaded now into greater determination to get away. He completed his rope and then turned his attention to the door of his cell chamber. This was protected by iron plates fastened in with nails, to extract which Cellini used a pair of pincers he had purloined from the carpenter and cooper of the castle. The holes thus made he filled in with a paste made of rusty iron filings mixed with wax, but two nails, one at the top and one at the bottom, he drove in a short way to keep each plate in its place. All his tools and the nails he extracted he secreted in the tick of his bed which he allowed no one to touch, declaring that they were unworthy to handle any of his belongings. He also swept out his room himself, for the same reason, that no one should discover what he was about. When he threatened those who would have interfered with his bed and they reported him to the constable, the latter took Cellini’s part. There was no fear of his prisoner’s escape, he said, if he got out of the castle, for he (Ugolino) as the bat flew so well, that he would be sure to catch up with the fugitive. But Cellini made short work of the descent, only to find that two newly built walls shut in the inner gate and he must surmount them before he went free. A sentinel approached at the last moment, but sheered off at the sight of Cellini’s dagger and his murderous looks. He was now on the top of the last wall and hitching his rope to the niched battlement he began to let himself down. He relates: “Whether it was preparing to give a leap or whether my hands had lost their power, I do not know, but being unable to hold on any longer I fell and in falling struck my head and became quite insensible.

“When I recovered after an hour and a half as nearly as I could guess, the day was beginning to break and the cool breeze that precedes the rising of the sun brought me to myself, but I had not yet regained my senses and I conceived the strange notion that I had been beheaded and was then in purgatory.... I clapped my hands to my head and found them all bloody, and I found that my leg was broken, three inches above the heel. The hurt had been caused by the scabbard of my dagger, which I now threw away and cutting the part of my rope of sheeting that still remained, I bandaged my leg as well as I could. I then crept on my hands and knees towards the gate, and after travelling some five hundred paces at last effected my egress,” from the castle enclosure and entered the city.

Two or three great mastiffs ran up and worried him but he beat them off with his dagger and crawled on. It was now broad daylight and he happened upon a water carrier who, at his entreaty, lifted him on his ass’s back and took him as far as the steps of St. Peter’s. Here he was fortunately found by a servant of his friend Cardinal Cornaro, who conveyed the news to his master and was desired to bring the wounded man into the cardinal’s apartments, where he was put to bed and a surgeon summoned. His leg was set and he was bled, then the cardinal hastened to the Vatican to intercede for Cellini with the pope. Another friend accompanied him. They were well received; “I know what you want,” cried the pope. “I am concerned to hear of Benvenuto’s sufferings, but bid him take care of his health and when he is thoroughly recovered it shall be my study to make him some amends for his past sufferings.” Only the constable of the castle made a great outcry and declared that he would be disgraced if his prisoner were not sent back to him, adding that Cellini had promised on his honour not to fly away and he had flown notwithstanding.

The pope was still well disposed, however. “This Benvenuto is a brave fellow,” he said, “and his exploit is very extraordinary. Yet when I was a young man I descended from the very same place.” This was true enough. He had himself been a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo, confined by Pope Alexander VI, for forging a papal brief, and fully expected sentence of death. But execution was delayed and Farnese (Paul III) bribed some of his guard to put him into a basket and let him down from the tower.

Still Cellini was the hero of the hour. Numbers of the nobility and gentlefolk called upon him and honoured him as a man that had performed miracles. He writes: “Some of them made me promises, whilst others made me presents.” One enemy was still bitter and implacable. This was Pier Luigi, now duke of Parma, who strongly opposed his pardon, protesting that if this man were liberated, he would do something still more daring for he was “one of the boldest and most audacious of mortals.” At this time Cardinal Cornaro was intriguing to get a bishopric for one of his gentlemen, and the pope was willing to make a bargain with him,—the bishopric in exchange for Cellini, “and so,” says Cellini, “I was sold by a Venetian cardinal to a Roman of the Farnese family, both of whom in so doing violated the most sacred laws.” Cellini was on the point of getting himself smuggled out of Rome concealed inside a mattress, but he was suddenly seized by the pope’s order, and Cardinal Cornaro’s consent, and carried first to the Tor di Nona and lodged in the place assigned to condemned criminals; thence he was conveyed back to the castle in a litter, on account of his broken leg, and was very civilly treated.

The constable, however, owed him a great grudge for having escaped and threw him into a dark room under the garden, which had much water lying in it and was infested with tarantulas and other poisonous insects. He was given a mattress and a blanket and strongly locked in. He goes on: “Thus wretchedly did I drag on my time ... in three days everything in the room was under water, yet with my broken leg I could hardly stir an inch and was obliged to crawl about with great difficulty. Only for about an hour and a half I enjoyed a little of the reflected light of the sun, and I passed the remainder of the day and night in the dark patiently, having but little doubt that in a few days I should end my miserable life. Only I was comforted with the thought that I had been spared the excruciating pangs of being flayed alive,” a fate that he was told impended when he was a captive in the Tor di Nona. His sufferings must have been acute nevertheless. Nothing gave him more pain than his nails, which had grown to an inordinate length. “I could not touch myself without being cut by them, neither was I able to put on my clothes because they pricked and gave the most exquisite pain. My teeth likewise rotted in my mouth, and this I perceived because the foul teeth were pushed forward by the sound ones and the stumps came beyond their sockets when I pulled them as it were out of a scabbard without any pain or effusion of blood. Then being reconciled to my other sufferings, one time I sang, another time I played and sometimes wrote (verses) with the compound of brick dust.”

This last refers to the ink he manufactured from the powder of rotten bricks, his pen being a splinter of wood he had gnawed with his teeth from the back of his door, and his paper one of the blank leaves of the Bible which was now his inseparable companion. His piety became exemplary; he was constantly on his knees at prayer. His keepers resented this and roughly handled him, carrying him away by the light of a torch, as Cellini thought, to the sink of Sammalo, “a frightful place where many have been swallowed up alive by falling from thence into a well under the foundations of the castle.” But his fate was only to be immured in a dismal cell where a previous occupant, a victim of Clement VII, had been starved to death. Here he saw visions, divine visitors appeared to him and he was in a state of mental exaltation not far removed from madness. A sonnet he then indited gained him much sympathy and was deemed the work of “a worthy and virtuous person” and the pope was moved to release him, but still listened to the malevolent counsels of Pier Luigi to keep him a prisoner.

There was a dastardly plot against Cellini’s life from the moment of his reincarceration. Cardinal Cornaro had warned him to touch no food that had been dressed in the pope’s kitchen, plainly hinting that it would be poisoned, but to eat only the victuals provided by the Cardinal. These also were tampered with by the admixture of the powder of a pounded diamond. “This is not a poison in itself,” Cellini tells us, “but it is so excessively hard that it retains its acute angles, differing from other stones ... and when the powder enters the stomach with the meat and the operation of digestion is being performed, the particles of the diamond stick to the cartilages and perforate them.... On the day that it was administered to me, being Good Friday, they put it into all my victuals, into the salad, the sauce and the soup. When I had done dinner, as there remained a little of the salad on the dish, I happened to fix my eyes on some of the smallest particles remaining and examining them in a strong light I thought I realized what had been done and I concluded myself to be a dead man.

“But some glimmering hope was left to me, for taking up some of the grains on my knife I pressed them hard on an iron surface and heard them crack. ‘This is not a diamond then,’ I said joyfully, ‘it is the dust of some more common and brittle stone which will do me no injury.’ And I found afterwards that although a real diamond had been provided originally to be ground into powder, the jeweller to whom it had been handed appropriated it himself and instituted an imitation stone, not worth twenty pence.” After this Cellini, giving his reasons, besought a fellow prisoner, the bishop of Pavia and his next door neighbour, to supply him with food from his own table, and suspecting ever that some fresh attempt might be tried, he ate nothing that was not first tasted by the servant who brought it.

Suddenly a change came over the situation. The cardinal of Ferrara came to Rome from France, and after an audience with the pope and a long and pleasant conversation, seeing him in a good humour and likely to grant favours, begged him in the most earnest manner imaginable to take pity upon Cellini. Many of his friends had already spoken on his behalf but vainly. “Although we make earnest and constant solicitation,” writes one, “yet there is no knowing how far the harshness and rage of this old fellow (Pope Paul III) will proceed. His (Cellini’s) offence is no more than what he has amply expiated by his sufferings. If his own perverse nature, which is certainly very obstinate, does not stand in the way, I entertain good hopes.” Luckily, the cardinal of Ferrara interposed opportunely, the Holy Father was mellow with wine and laughingly cried, “Take Benvenuto home with you without a moment’s delay,” giving the necessary orders on the spot and before a whisper could reach Pier Luigi, who would certainly have opposed the release. The pope’s permission reached the prison in the dead of night, Cellini was at once set free and conducted to the cardinal’s house, where he was well lodged and enjoyed the happiness which recovered liberty can bestow. His friends rejoiced greatly, but were still in doubt that Benvenuto would be permanently benefited. “In a little time his affairs should do well if he would let them,” says one, “but for that unmanageable head of his which makes one doubt whether there be anything fixed and certain in the world. We are continually holding up his own interest before his eyes, but he will not see it; the more we say the less he is inclined to hear.” His position was indeed by no means secure, for the very next day the pope had already repented of setting Cellini free.

From this time forth Benvenuto was no more connected with the castle of St. Angelo, and his personal adventures do not concern us further. He presently transferred himself to Paris and entered the service of the French king, Francis I, with whom he remained for some years, obtaining a grant of naturalisation. He carried out a number of fine designs in his work, but was constantly engulfed in the intrigues of the court. He returned eventually to Florence, where he was commissioned to produce the great bronze of Perseus, which was long delayed in execution by the cabals and conspiracies of which he was perpetually the victim. When completed, it proved a very perfect piece of statuary, the more remarkable because Cellini had been chiefly successful heretofore with small figures. Vasari says that the work cannot be sufficiently commended. Vasari’s appreciation of Benvenuto is worth quoting. He describes him “as a man of great spirit and vivacity, bold, active, enterprising and formidable to his enemies, a man in short who knew as well how to speak to princes as to exert himself in his art.”

This pope, Paul III, who so maltreated Cellini, did much for St. Angelo to improve it as a residence. He added the upper floor to the papal apartments and caused it to be decorated magnificently by the best living artists, painters and sculptors, who endowed it with many inestimable art treasures, some of which are still preserved. The great hall of Paul III is still in existence. It was used as a council chamber and adorned with fresco paintings by Perino del Vaga, representing the history of Alexander the Great, which are still intact. At one end is a colossal portrait of Hadrian, the founder of the mausoleum, and opposite it a fresco of the archangel Michael with his wings spread, the original model for the great statue on the top of the castle. The square hall which Paul built is richly decorated with figures in relief by Julio Romano and above them is a graceful frieze of Tritons and Nereids disporting in the sea.

Yet this beautiful residence of the papal court was still the scene of cruel imprisonment. A number of noblemen, including two cardinals, Caraffa and the duke of Palliano, were imprisoned there, charged with heinous crimes. A slow, wearisome trial followed, and after nearly a year Cardinal Carlo Caraffa was found guilty of murder and was strangled the following night in the square hall. At the same time, in the Tor di Nona across the river, the duke and two others were beheaded, while Cardinal Alfonso Caraffa was heavily fined. Yet under the next pope, Pius V, the sentences were declared unjust and the judge who had pronounced them was in his turn decapitated.

Rome continued in a turbulent state. At the meeting of another conclave, the people rose, broke open the prisons and set free four hundred prisoners. The palace of the Inquisition was also attacked and many persons who had long languished there without trial were liberated, while the chief Inquisitor, Ghislieri, who subsequently became pope, all but forfeited his life. The mob went raging through the streets, casting down precious statues and destroying ancient monuments; but peace was presently restored through the efforts of two powerful noblemen, and the new pope, Pius IV (a Medicis), granted an amnesty and pardon to all offenders. He took the precaution to guard against future riots by strongly fortifying the Borgo and constructing a new enclosure which took in the castle of St. Angelo, the Vatican and St. Peter’s, having space within for the marshalling and manoeuvre of a large body of cavalry. The castle at this date, 1580-5, is described as having a double cincture of fortifications, a large round tower overlooking the inner end of the bridge, two other towers with lofty pinnacles surmounted by the cross, and all surrounded by the river.