Benvenuto Cellini was a renowned Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor who shaped the art of his time. He is best known for casting the bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa and creating the gold Saliera for King Francis I. His life, which included multiple killings and an escape from Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo, was recorded in his famous autobiography.
Benvenuto Cellini: The Goldsmith Who Killed, Escaped and Cast the Perseus
He made a golden salt cellar for a king of France and a bronze Perseus for a Medici duke. Between commissions, he killed men. Benvenuto Cellini was condemned to death in Florence at 23, protected by a pope after one killing and jailed by the same pope four years later, and he broke out of Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo. Italy's standard biographical dictionary records at least three killings. Much of the detail comes from the killer himself: Cellini's *Vita*, the most vivid autobiography of the Renaissance and one of the least trustworthy.
The Piper's Son
Cellini was born in Florence on 3 November 1500. His father, Giovanni, was a piper who also worked for the Florentine state, and the son became an accomplished flute player. His hands, though, belonged to metal. From 1513 he trained with the goldsmith Michelangelo Bandinelli, and from 1515 with Antonio di Sandro, called Marcone. At 16 a brawl got him exiled to Siena, where he kept working at the bench of the goldsmith Francesco Castoro.
Condemned at Twenty-Three
Late in 1523 a feud in Florence turned violent, and he was condemned to death. He was already on the road to Rome. There, among the goldsmiths and cardinals of the papal city, his talent made him indispensable. When imperial troops sacked Rome in 1527, he joined the defense of Castel Sant'Angelo. He later claimed to have shot the Constable of Bourbon and wounded the Prince of Orange. Historians treat both claims as unproven boasts. In 1529 Pope Clement VII made him master of the dies at the papal mint, a post that put his designs on the coinage of Rome.
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His brother, a soldier, died of wounds from a Roman street fight. Around 1530 Cellini tracked down the arquebusier responsible and killed him. Clement VII answered with a solemn rebuke and nothing more. In 1534 Cellini attacked a notary and fled to Naples. Later that year, back in Rome, he killed Pompeo de' Capitaneis, a rival goldsmith who had worked against him at the papal court. Pompeo died in the street. The newly elected Pope Paul III did not prosecute; he granted Cellini a safe-conduct and kept him at work. In the *Vita*, Cellini has the Pope explain that men unique in their art are not bound by the law. The remark comes from Cellini's own pen.
The Fortress and the Bedsheets
Papal protection did not last. On 16 October 1538 Cellini was arrested on a charge of stealing papal jewels during the 1527 sack and locked in Castel Sant'Angelo. The charge appears to have been false. He escaped almost at once. In his own telling, he lowered himself from a tower on bedsheets and broke his leg. He was recaptured and held far more harshly until December 1539, when Cardinal Ippolito d'Este secured his release. In 1540 the Pope granted him a full pardon.
Gold for a King
In March 1540 he set out for France. At Siena, on the way, he killed a postmaster, the third killing recorded by the *Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani*. King Francis I gave him the Petit Nesle in Paris as house and workshop. There, in 1543, he finished the Saliera, a salt cellar of gold, enamel and ebony that turns a table ornament into sculpture; it is now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. He delivered a silver Jupiter in 1544, since lost. At court he was also accused of keeping silver meant for the king's candlesticks. In 1545 he left France for good.
The Perseus
Back in Florence, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici gave him the commission of his life. First came a bronze bust of the duke (1546-47), now in the Bargello. Then came *Perseus with the Head of Medusa*, unveiled in the Loggia dei Lanzi in April 1554, where it still stands. The same year Florence admitted him to its nobility. The temper did not cool: in 1556 he was jailed for beating the goldsmith Giovanni di Lorenzo. In 1557 a Florentine court sentenced him to prison under the city's sodomy laws, and the term was converted to house arrest.
A Life Written Under House Arrest
In 1558, confined and nearly 58, he began the *Vita*. He took the first minor orders of the Church that year and renounced them in 1560. In May 1559 he sent the manuscript to the scholar Benedetto Varchi, who declined to correct it. The book stayed in manuscript until 1728, when Antonio Cocchi printed it in Naples under a false Cologne imprint. Readers have loved it ever since, and scholars have distrusted it as long. The *Dizionario Biografico* judges that Cellini mixes truth and lies and leaves out dishonorable episodes; the art historian John Pope-Hennessy set out the gaps between his account and other records.
His last years were steadier. He married Piera de' Parigi, secretly in 1562 and publicly in 1567. He published treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture in 1568 and carved a white marble Crucifix now in the Escorial. In 1564 he represented sculpture at Michelangelo's funeral. He died in Florence on 13 February 1571 and was buried in the church of the Santissima Annunziata.
On Screen and in Print
- Vita (written from 1558; first printed 1728), autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini; printed in Naples under a false Cologne imprint, edited by Antonio Cocchi.
- Benvenuto Cellini (1838), opera by Hector Berlioz, libretto by Léon de Wailly and Auguste Barbier; premiered at the Paris Opéra (Salle Le Peletier) on 10 September 1838, with Cellini as the title role.
- The Affairs of Cellini (1934), feature film by Twentieth Century Pictures, released by United Artists, directed by Gregory La Cava; Fredric March plays Cellini.
Why Benvenuto Cellini Is Called a Genius
Because he could do in metal what almost no one else could. The Saliera is architecture in gold. The Perseus, cast for a duke and still standing in Florence, is one of the defining bronzes of the Renaissance. The *Vita* invented a voice, restless, boastful and alive, that writers still study. That is why he is here. The rest of the truth is the body count: an arquebusier in Rome, a goldsmith named Pompeo de' Capitaneis, a postmaster at Siena. Each was killed by a man who expected his talent to protect him, and too often it did. The line Cellini put in a pope's mouth, that a unique artist is above the law, is the most dangerous sentence in his book. Geniuses.club does not accept it.
Achievements
- Cast the bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici; it was unveiled in Florence's Loggia dei Lanzi in April 1554.
- Killed the rival goldsmith Pompeo de' Capitaneis in Rome in 1534 and received a safe-conduct from the newly elected Pope Paul III.
- Made the Saliera, a salt cellar of gold, enamel and ebony, for King Francis I of France, finished in 1543 and now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.
- Was named master of the dies at the papal mint in Rome in 1529.
- Was arrested on 16 October 1538 on a charge of stealing papal jewels during the 1527 Sack of Rome, escaped from Castel Sant'Angelo, was recaptured, and was freed in December 1539.
- Began his autobiography, the Vita, in 1558; it circulated in manuscript and was first printed in 1728.
- Made the bronze bust of Cosimo I de' Medici (1546-47), now in Florence's Bargello museum.
- Represented sculpture at Michelangelo's funeral in 1564 and published treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture in 1568.
