The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini:
A modern English edition
Cellini's autobiography has been in print, in one form or another, for more than four centuries. It has been translated into English multiple times. So why does a new edition exist?
Because every previous English translation has the same problem: it reads like a translation.
The problem with older editions
Most English readers know Cellini through Victorian-era translations. These editions rendered his Italian into the formal, polished prose of nineteenth-century scholarship. The sentences became measured and correct. The personality mostly disappeared.
Cellini was not measured and correct. He was loud, opinionated, funny, boastful, sometimes infuriating, and always vivid. He dictated this autobiography aloud while he worked, with his hands busy making things, speaking exactly as he thought. What came out was raw.
The Victorian translators smoothed it. Later translators polished it further. Each translation, in trying to be elegant, moved further from the man.
What this edition does differently
This 2025 edition was translated with a single aim: to make Cellini sound like Cellini. Not a Renaissance figure filtered through Victorian sensibility. Not a historical document rendered in academic English. Just a man, speaking directly, telling you what happened.
The language is modern. The sentences move the way Cellini's sentences moved. The personality is intact. When he boasts, he boasts. When he rages, he rages. When he is tender about his work, that tenderness is there on the page.
"When the bronze flowed into the mould and I saw that the figure was taking form, I wept — for it was the most beautiful thing I had ever done."
That is a man speaking. That is how this translation reads throughout.
What you will find in the book
The autobiography covers roughly forty years of Cellini's life, from his early training in Florence through his years in Rome, France, and back to Florence. You will find detailed accounts of how he made things — the goldwork, the medals, the great bronze casts — alongside accounts of murders, escapes, papal audiences, royal commissions, and the everyday texture of life in Renaissance Italy.
It is the most personal account we have of what it was like to be an artist in the sixteenth century. It is also simply one of the most entertaining books ever written.
Amazon Bestseller
This edition reached the Amazon Bestseller list in the Renaissance category (Top 20, USA and UK) and the Sculpture category (Top 5, USA and UK). It is the edition readers are finding most readable.
Get the book →