Cellini, Benvenuto

Cellini, Benvenuto (1500–71). Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, medallist, and writer—the author of one of the most celebrated of all autobiographies. This racy book has been famous since the 18th century (it was first published in 1728) for its vivid picture of a Renaissance craftsman proud of his skill and independence, boastful of his feats in art, love, and war, quarrelsome, superstitious, and devoted to the great tradition embodied in Michelangelo. It has given him a wider reputation than could have come from his artistic work alone; but to modern eyes he also appears as one of the most important Mannerist sculptors, and his statue Perseus is one of the glories of Florentine art. He spent most of his life in Florence, but he worked in several other places, his movements sometimes being influenced by his violent and vain temperament; he made enemies wherever he went, was several times imprisoned, and in 1534 killed a rival goldsmith in Rome (he was pardoned by Pope Paul III ( Alessandro Farnese) ).

Cellini trained as a goldsmith and in his early career (which was spent mainly in Rome) he worked predominantly in precious metals; little survives from this phase of his life apart from some medals. Between 1540 and 1545 he worked in France in the service of Francis I (see Fontainebleau, School of), for whom he created a famous salt cellar of gold enriched with enamel (1540–3, KH Mus., Vienna), the most important piece of goldsmiths' work that has survived from the Italian Renaissance and the only one that is securely documented as Cellini's. He also made for the king a bronze relief, the Nymph of Fontainebleau (c.1543, Louvre, Paris), which was his first large-scale sculpture. The remainder of Cellini's life was spent in Florence, and it was only in this period that he took up large-scale sculpture in the round with his celebrated bronze Perseus (1545–54, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence), made for Cosimo I de' Medici. He also made two bronze portrait busts, Cosimo I (1545–8, Bargello, Florence) and Bindo Altoviti (c.1550, Gardner Mus., Boston), and several marble sculptures, including a Crucifix (c.1555–62, Escorial, near Madrid). The somewhat dry, niggly quality of these sculptures shows that the exquisite precision of handling of his goldsmith's work did not always transfer easily to a larger scale. The triumphant completion of the Perseus in 1554 marked the summit of Cellini's career. In 1557 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for sodomy, and it was whilst under house arrest that he wrote his autobiography. Apart from the Crucifix (which he intended for his own tomb), his only substantial works after this were treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture, which he published in 1568.