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Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author
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- Benvenuto Cellini (/ ˌbɛnvəˈnjuːtoʊ tʃɪˈliːni, tʃɛˈ -/, Italian: [beɱveˈnuːto tʃelˈliːni]; 3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author.
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Benvenuto Cellini (/ ˌbɛnvəˈnjuːtoʊ tʃɪˈliːni, tʃɛˈ -/, Italian: [beɱveˈnuːto tʃelˈliːni]; 3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author.
- Overview
- Early career
- Later years
Benvenuto Cellini (born Nov. 1, 1500, Florence—died Feb. 13, 1571, Florence) Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, 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.
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.
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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).
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.
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- John Pope-Hennessy
- Mark Cartwright
- Life & Works. Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence in 1500 CE, the son of a stonemason. Benvenuto's father had hoped he would also train to become a mason, perhaps to become a woodwind player, too.
- The Nymph of Fontainebleau. Commissioned by Francis I, the Nymph of Fontainebleau is a larger-than-lifesize bronze plaque showing a reclining Diana from Greek/Roman mythology.
- The Gold Salt Cellar. The finest example of Cellini's skills as a goldsmith is the salt cellar he made for Francis I, in the early 1540s CE. Made using enamel and gold set on an ebony base it has two reclining nude figures at the top.
- The Perseus Statue. Cellini's signature work is a bronze statue of Perseus, the hero from Greek mythology, made between 1545 and 1554 CE. The figure was commissioned by Cosimo I and it was an opportunity for Cellini to show that his stint abroad had not diminished his position as one of the city's foremost artists.
Feb 12, 2024 · Benvenuto Cellini (b. 1500–d. 1571) was a Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and writer.
Benvenuto Cellini, (born, Nov. 1, 1500, Florence—died Feb. 13, 1571, Florence), Italian sculptor and goldsmith active principally in Florence. Early in his career he worked in Rome, producing coins, medallions, seals, vessels, and a variety of other objects in precious and semiprecious metals.
Benvenuto Cellini (Firenze, 3 novembre 1500 – Firenze, 13 febbraio 1571) è stato uno scultore, orafo e scrittore italiano, considerato uno dei più importanti artisti del manierismo. Durante la sua vita scrisse anche poesie e una celebre autobiografia. Di indole inquieta, nel 1523 dovette fuggire a Roma dopo essere rimasto coinvolto in una rissa.
May 18, 2018 · Cellini was a close friend of the painter and poet Agnolo Bronzino, the philosopher and historian Benedetto Varchi, and the court physician Guido Guidi; he was a rival to the goldsmith Leone Leoni, the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, and the painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574).
