Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini (born Nov. 1, 1500, Florence—died Feb. 13, 1571, Florence) was a Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and writer. He was one of the most important Mannerist artists and, because of the lively account of himself and his period in his autobiography, one of the most picturesque figures of the Renaissance.

Early career

Cellini, resisting the efforts of his father to train him as a musician, was apprenticed as a metalworker in the studio of the Florentine goldsmith Andrea di Sandro Marcone. Banished to Siena as a result of a brawl in 1516, he returned to Florence during 1517–19 and then moved to Rome. Prosecuted for fighting in Florence in 1523 and condemned to death, he fled again to Rome, where he worked for the bishop of Salamanca, Sigismondo Chigi, and Pope Clement VII. Cellini participated in the defense of Rome in 1527, during which, by his own account, he shot the constable of Bourbon as well as the Prince of Orange.

After the sack of Rome he returned to Florence and in 1528 worked in Mantua, making a seal for Cardinal Gonzaga (Episcopal Archives of the City of Mantua). Moving back to Rome in 1529, he was appointed maestro delle stampe (“stamp master”) at the papal mint and in 1530–31 executed a celebrated morse (clasp) for Clement VII. Like so many of Cellini’s works in precious metals, this was melted down, but its design is recorded in three 18th-century drawings in the British Museum, London. The only survivors of the many works he prepared for the Pope are two medals made in 1534 (Uffizi, Florence).

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Guilty of killing a rival goldsmith, Cellini was absolved by Pope Paul III; but in the following year, having wounded a notary, he fled from Rome and settled in Florence, where he executed a number of coins for Alessandro de’ Medici (now in the Cabinet des Médailles in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris). After a further year in Rome, he paid a brief visit to France, where he was received by Francis I, a portrait medal of whom (1538; Bargello, Florence) is the sole relic of the journey. On his return to Rome in 1537, he was accused of embezzlement and imprisoned. He escaped, was once more imprisoned, and was finally released in 1539 at the insistence of Cardinal d’Este of Ferrara, for whom he executed a seal (c. 1540; original lost; lead impression in Lyon). Again invited to France by Francis I, he arrived at Fontainebleau in 1540, carrying with him an unfinished saltcellar, which he completed in gold for the King in 1540. This, Cellini’s only fully authenticated work in precious metal (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), is the supreme example of the Renaissance goldsmith’s work. In 1542 Cellini was granted letters of naturalization by the King and in 1544 received a royal commission for 12 silver candlesticks decorated with figures from mythology. The design of one of these, representing Juno, is recorded in a drawing in the Louvre, Paris. Also in 1543–44 he modeled and cast his first large-scale work, a large bronze lunette of the Nymph of Fontainebleau for the entrance to the palace (Louvre). For a projected fountain at Fontainebleau he prepared a model in 1543 for a colossal figure of Mars (lost).

Later years

In 1545 Cellini left Paris precipitately and returned to Florence, where he was welcomed by Cosimo de’ Medici and entrusted with the commissions for his best known sculpture, the bronze Perseus in Florence’s Loggia dei Lanzi, where it still stands, and for a colossal bust of the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Bargello, Florence). Fleeing to Venice in 1546 to escape charges of immorality, Cellini completed the bust by 1548. In the same period he restored an antique torso from Palestrina as Ganymede (1546–47; Uffizi, Florence) and carved his marble figures of Apollo and Hyacinth (1546) and of Narcissus (1546–47); all three works are now in the Bargello in Florence, as is a small relief of a greyhound made as a trial cast for the Perseus (1545). A bronze bust of a banker and patron of the arts, Bindo Altoviti (c. 1550; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), was also executed by Cellini in Florence. After the unveiling of the Perseus (1554), he began work on a marble crucifix originally destined for his own tomb in the Florentine church of SS. Annunziata; this is now in the church of the royal monastery of the Escorial (Spain). The Escorial Crucifix (1556) exemplifies the superiority of Cellini’s art to the works of his rivals Bartolommeo Ammannati and Baccio Bandinelli. Two designs for the seal of the Academy of Florence (British Museum and Graphische Sammlung, Munich) date from 1563. His autobiography was begun in 1558 and completed in 1562; and in 1565 he began work on his important treatises dealing with goldsmiths’ work and sculpture, the Trattato dell’oreficeria and the Trattato della scultura.

Cellini’s lasting fame is due more to his record of his own life than it is to his work as an artist. First printed in Italy in 1728, Cellini’s autobiography was translated into English (1771), German (1796), and French (1822) and, launched on the tide of the Romantic movement, gained immediate popularity. Dictated to a workshop assistant, it is composed in colloquial language with no literary artifice and gives a firsthand account of the writer’s experience in the Rome of Clement VII, the France of Francis I, and the Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici. Despite its manifest exaggerations and its often boastful tone, it is a human document of surprising frankness and incomparable authenticity, and thanks to it Cellini’s character is more intimately known than that of any other figure of his time.