CELLINI, Benvenuto. — Born in Florence in 1500, he was first introduced by his father to music and then to goldsmithing; at sixteen he was exiled to Siena following a brawl, then went to Bologna, Pisa, and Rome (1519), where he stayed for two years with the engraver Tasso. He returned to live in Rome from 1523 to 1540, after further brawls and injuries forced him to leave Florence once more. Protected by Clement VII and Paul III, he received many delicate commissions, including that of master of the papal mint’s dies. In 1540 (after imprisonment in Castel Sant’Angelo) he went to Paris, where he was honored by Francis I, who placed the beautiful Petit-Nesle castle at his disposal. Five years later he was back in Florence (1545), well received by Duke Cosimo; however, the bitterness caused by the malice of Bandinelli after the famous casting of the *Perseus* drove him to withdraw. But in 1563 he married Piera de’ Parigi, by whom he had several children. He died on 13 February 1571 and was buried in the church of the Santissima Annunziata.
At the age of thirty-eight he wrote his *Life* (first published in 1728 by the physician and philosopher Antonio Cocchi), dictating it in his workshop to a fourteen-year-old apprentice. Following the example of Raffaello da Montelupo and Baccio Bandinelli, who had resolved to recount nothing but the “pure truth,” Cellini recounted the origins of his family, his early studies and works, episodes from his stay in Rome including the defense of Castel Sant’Angelo in 1527, his time in France, the long period spent in Florence, the toils and anxieties endured for the casting of the *Perseus*, and the invitation from the King of France to exhume the tomb of Henry II. All this is narrated in a prose that is easy, fluent, effective, and popular, though sometimes daring in its morality. When Varchi was asked to correct this extemporaneous text, he wisely declined to interfere, and it was a fortunate decision: for in the spontaneity and almost tempestuous agility of that often ungrammatical prose lies the faithful self-portrait of the artist, frequently unscrupulous and superstitious, tender and sincere, boastful and “disheveled.” Cellini also left a *Treatise on Goldsmithing* and a *Treatise on Sculpture* (Florence, 1568), as well as some poems (see the edition by A. Mabellini, Turin, 1891) and *Discourses and Reminiscences on Art* (Florence, 1837).
He was among the greatest sculptors of his time, certainly the greatest goldsmith. Among his surviving bronze sculptures are the *Perseus* in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, whose wax model and first bronze cast are in the Bargello; a bust of Cosimo I in the same museum; a *Nymph* at Fontainebleau; and a marble *Christ* at the Escorial.
His only securely attributed surviving work in goldsmithing is the salt cellar he made for Francis I, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. — See Plate LXXVII.