Benvenuto Cellini:
The most dangerous artist of the Renaissance

Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence in 1500 and died there in 1571. In the seventy-one years between, he managed to become the finest goldsmith in Europe, a celebrated sculptor, a convicted murderer who escaped punishment, a prisoner who broke out of the Castel Sant'Angelo by rope, a man who served popes and kings and quarreled with almost all of them, and the author of the most vivid autobiography ever written.

He was, to put it simply, unlike anyone else who has ever lived.

Goldsmith and sculptor

Cellini trained as a goldsmith in Florence under some of the finest craftsmen of his day. His early work caught the attention of Pope Clement VII, who took him into papal service in Rome. For the next decades he worked across Italy and France, producing masterworks in gold, silver, bronze, and marble for the most powerful patrons in the Western world.

His most famous surviving sculpture is the bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa, completed in 1554 for Cosimo I de' Medici. It stands today in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, where millions of visitors see it every year. Cellini considered it his greatest achievement. He was almost certainly right.

A life beyond fiction

The facts of Cellini's life read like invention. He killed at least two men and was pardoned by the Pope. He was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo on charges that may or may not have been fabricated, escaped by making a rope from his bedsheets, broke his leg jumping from a wall, was recaptured, and eventually released. He spent years at the court of Francis I in France, where he created the famous Saltcellar, now in Vienna and considered one of the greatest small sculptures ever made.

Through all of this he worked, argued, loved, fought, and never for a moment doubted that he was the finest craftsman alive. He was not a modest man. He was, however, a brilliant one.

His autobiography

Cellini began dictating his autobiography around 1558, speaking aloud while he worked, with a young apprentice writing down his words. He was in his late fifties, and he wanted the world to know what he had done. The result is unlike any other autobiography in existence. He writes about his art, his crimes, his escapes, his patrons, his enemies, and himself with a directness and energy that feels completely modern.

"I have had to struggle with poverty, imprisonment, enemies, and exile — and always I have prevailed."

That line is not boast. It is simple record. He did prevail. Against all of it.