Benvenuto CelliniBenvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, musician, soldier, and writer, remembered both for his artistic achievements and for the extraordinary autobiography that made his personality nearly as famous as his work. orn in Florence, he trained as a goldsmith and became known for his technical brilliance, ambition, temper, and ability to move among some of the most powerful patrons of Renaissance Europe. His career took him through Florence, Rome, Mantua, Naples, and France, placing him in the service of popes, nobles, and the French king Francis I.Cellini's surviving works include the celebrated bronze statue Perseus with the Head of Medusa in Florence and the magnificent gold and enamel Cellini Salt Cellar made for Francis I. Much of his work as a goldsmith has been lost, melted down, or known only through descriptions, but his reputation endured through both surviving masterpieces and his own forceful account of his life. He also wrote technical treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture, preserving valuable information about Renaissance artistic practice, workshop methods, materials, and professional rivalries.His Autobiography made him one of the most memorable figures of Renaissance literature. In it, Cellini presents himself as heroic, wronged, gifted, dangerous, divinely favored, and constantly at war with rivals and circumstance. The result is not a quiet record of an artist's career but a bold literary performance: part memoir, part adventure story, part self-defense, and part portrait of the Renaissance artist as an independent and combustible force. Today Cellini remains important to readers of art history, Italian Renaissance studies, memoir, and the history of artistic identity. Read More Read Less