23 Facts About Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author.

Benvenuto Cellini's parents were Giovanni Cellini and Maria Lisabetta Granacci.

The son of a musician and builder of musical instruments, Cellini was pushed towards music, but when he was fifteen, his father reluctantly agreed to apprentice him to a goldsmith, Antonio di Sandro, nicknamed Marcone.

At the age of 16, Benvenuto Cellini had already attracted attention in Florence by taking part in an affray with youthful companions.

Benvenuto Cellini was banished for six months and lived in Siena, where he worked for a goldsmith named Fracastoro.

Benvenuto Cellini took up the cornett again, and was appointed one of the pope's court musicians.

Benvenuto Cellini's bravery led to a reconciliation with the Florentine magistrates, and he soon returned to his hometown of Florence.

Benvenuto Cellini fled to Naples to shelter from the consequences of an affray with a notary, Ser Benedetto, whom he had wounded.

Benvenuto Cellini was confined to the Castel Sant'Angelo, escaped, was recaptured, and was treated with great severity; he was in daily expectation of death on the scaffold.

Benvenuto Cellini then worked at the court of Francis I at Fontainebleau and Paris.

Benvenuto Cellini is known to have taken some of his female models as mistresses, having an illegitimate daughter in 1544 with one of them while living in France, whom he named Costanza.

Benvenuto Cellini considered the Duchesse d'Etampes to be set against him and refused to conciliate with the king's favorites.

In 1548, Benvenuto Cellini was accused by a woman named Margherita of having committed sodomy with her son Vincenzo, and he temporarily fled to seek shelter in Venice.

Besides his works in gold and silver, Benvenuto Cellini executed sculptures of a grander scale.

On this statue, Benvenuto Cellini crafted three anthropomorphic heads on to the armour of the duke.

Benvenuto Cellini's most distinguished sculpture is the bronze group of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, a work now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, his attempt to surpass Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes.

One of the more important works by Benvenuto Cellini from late in his career was a life-size nude crucifix carved from marble.

Benvenuto Cellini, while employed at the papal mint at Rome during the papacy of Clement VII and later of Paul III, created the dies of several coins and medals, some of which still survive at this-defunct mint.

Benvenuto Cellini was in the service of Alessandro de Medici, first duke of Florence, for whom he made in 1535 a 40-soldi piece with a bust of the duke on one side and standing figures of the saints Cosima and Damian on the other.

The known drawings and sketches by Benvenuto Cellini are as follows:.

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini was started in the year 1558 at the age of 58 and ended abruptly just before his last trip to Pisa around the year 1563 when Cellini was approximately 63 years old.

Benvenuto Cellini even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders before carrying them out.

Benvenuto Cellini wrote treatises on the goldsmith's art, on sculpture, and on design.