Five hundred years ago today, on November 3rd, 1500, Madonna Elizebetta, wife of Giovanni Cellini, after 18 years of childless marriage, gave birth to a baby boy in Florence. Half a century later the world was told how the child came by its name: "All the persons who were there asked him joyfully what name the child should bear, but my father would make no other answer than `Let him be welcome - benvenuto'; and so they resolved, and this name was given me at Holy Baptism and by it I am still living with the grace of God."
Benvenuto Cellini is remembered, not only as a goldsmith and sculptor of extraordinary talent, but also for his lengthy autobiography in which he recorded with much hyperbole the story of his eventful life. Among the many, often bizarre, feats recorded in his book is the clearing away of rain by means of gunfire.
When he was 38 Benvenuto was confined for a time in the papal prison of Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome, for allegedly misappropriating papal gold. During his incarceration the Duchess Margaret of Austria was scheduled to make a festive entrance into the city for her wedding to Duke Ottavio Farnese, grandson of the reigning pontiff, Paul III. A lavish reception had been arranged for the young duchess, to be attended by cardinals, bishops, ambassadors and noblemen, and naturally on such a great occasion the weather was of prime importance.
Rain poured down incessantly on the morning of the duchess's expected arrival. Despite imprisonment, the resourceful Benvenuto betook himself to the battlements of the prison: "I have there pointed several large pieces of artillery in the direction where the clouds were the thickest, and whence a deluge of water was already pouring, and I began to fire."
Cellini's impulse may have been related to a persistent myth throughout the ages that rainfall is in some way associated with gunfire, explosives, and the noise of artillery in battle. Napoleon, we are told, believed that cannon-fire caused rain, being persuaded that the noise jostled minute cloud particles together, allowing them to coalesce and fall to earth.
Benvenuto was obviously of the opposite opinion - and lo and behold, as soon as he began to fire his guns "the rain stopped, and at the fourth discharge the sun shone out".
There is no scientific reason why Cellini's whiff of grapeshot should have worked: it was pure coincidence that the rain should stop. But the governor of the prison told the pope, and Benvenuto - by his own account at any rate - became a celebrity in the Holy City overnight.