At last he arrived at Paris. His first visit was to Primaticcio, who was commissioned to continue the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Rosso at Fontainebleau. Primaticcio, who had lived long at Paris, should be able at once to put him upon the path he was seeking, and to tell him where to look for models.
A word, in passing, as to Primaticcio.
Il Signor Francesco Primaticcio, who was commonly called at this time Le Bologna, from his birthplace, had studied under Jules Romain for six years, and had lived eight years in France, whither François I. had summoned him upon the advice of the Marquis of Mantua, his great purveyor of artists. He was, as any one may see at Fontainebleau, a man of prodigious fecundity, with a broad, florid manner, and irreproachable regularity of outline. For a long time Primaticcio, with his encyclopedic brain, his vast store of knowledge, and his boundless talent, which embraced all varieties of painting,—for a long time, we say, he was despised, but in our day he has been avenged for three centuries of injustice. Under the inspiration of religious ardor, he painted the pictures in the chapel of Beauregard; in moral subjects he personified the principal Christian virtues at the Hôtel Montmorency; and the immensity of Fontainebleau was filled to overflowing with his works. At the Golden Gate and in the Salle du Bal he treated the most graceful subjects of mythology and allegory; in the Gallery of Ulysses and the Chamber of Saint Louis he was an epic poet with Homer, and translated with his brush the Odyssey and a portion of the Iliad. Then he passed from the Age of Fable to heroic times, and historical subjects became his study. The principal incidents in the life of Alexander and Romulus, and the surrender of Havre, were reproduced in the painting with which he decorated the Grand Gallery and the apartment adjoining the Salle du Bal. He turned his attention to the beauties of nature in the great landscapes of the Cabinet of Curiosities. In short, if we care to take the measurement of his eminent talent, to consider the various forms in which it found expression, and to reckon up its work, we shall find that in ninety-eight large pictures and a hundred and thirty smaller ones he has treated, one after another, landscapes, marine views, historical, allegorical, and religious subjects, portraits, and the themes of epic poetry.
He was, as may be seen, a man likely to appreciate Benvenuto; and so, as soon as Benvenuto arrived at Paris, he ran to Primaticcio with open arms, and was welcomed by him in the same temper.
After the first serious conversation between the two friends meeting thus in a foreign land, Benvenuto opened his portfolio, imparted all his ideas to Primaticcio, showed him all his sketches, and asked him if there was any one of the models he was accustomed to use who fulfilled the necessary conditions.
Primaticcio shook his head, smiling sadly. In truth, they were no longer in Italy, the daughter of Greece and rival of her mother. France was in those days, as it is to-day, the land of grace, and prettiness, and coquetry; but in vain would one have sought in the domain of the Valois that imperious loveliness which inspired the genius of Michel-Angelo and Raphael, of John of Bologna and Andrea del Sarto, on the banks of the Tiber and the Arno. To be sure, if the painter or sculptor had been at liberty to choose a model at will among the aristocracy, he would soon have found the types he sought; but like those shades which are detained on this side of the Styx, he was perforce content to see those noble, lovely forms, the constant objects of his artistic aspirations, pass over into the Elysian Fields which he was forbidden to enter.
It turned out as Primaticcio anticipated: Benvenuto passed in review his whole army of models, and saw not one who seemed to combine all the qualities essential for the work of which he was dreaming.
Thereupon he caused all the Venuses at a crown the sitting whose names were furnished him to be summoned to the Cardinal of Ferrara's palace, where he was installed, but none of them fulfilled his expectations.
Benvenuto was almost at his wit's end when, one evening, as he was returning home alone along Rue des Petits-Champs, after supping with three compatriots whom he had met at Paris,—namely, Pietro Strozzi, the Count of Anguillara, his brother-in-law, and Galeotto Pico, nephew of the famous Pico della Mirandole,—he noticed a graceful, lovely girl walking in front of him. Benvenuto fairly leaped for joy: the girl was, of all whom he had thus far seen, by far the best qualified to give shape to his dream. He followed her, therefore. She walked along by the church of Saint-Honoré, and turned into Rue du Pelican; there she looked around to see if she was still followed, and, seeing Benvenuto within a few steps, hastily opened a door and disappeared. Benvenuto went to the same door and opened it in time to see the skirt of the young woman's dress disappear at a bend in the stairway, which was lighted by a smoking lamp.
He went up to the first floor: a chamber door stood ajar, and in the chamber he discovered the girl he had followed.