Cellini, Benvenuto

(1500-1571)

   Florentine sculptor and goldsmith; among the most important figures of Mannerist sculpture. Cellini spent his early years in Rome, creating mainly medals and decorative objects. From 1540 to 1545, he worked for King Francis I of France for whom he created a gold and enamel salt cellar (1540-1544; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) adorned with figures of Neptune, god of the sea, and Tellus, goddess of the Earth, to denote the two places from which salt and pepper respectively originate. At the king's Palace of Fontainebleau, Cellini created a bronze relief lunette above a doorway depicting Diana, goddess of the hunt (1542-1544; Paris, Louvre). In 1545, he returned to Florence to work for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, creating for him the Perseus and Medusa (1545-1554) to be placed in the Palazzo Vecchio's Loggia dei Lanzi alongside Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (1459). Cellini considered this pairing when he rendered his work. Both sculptures show the heroes reacting passively to the horror of the event and both feature two figures forming a vertical composition, with the victim resting on a cushion. Other works by Cellini include the bust portraits Bindo Altoviti (1549; Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) and Cosimo I de'Medici (c. 1545-1548; Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello) and his Crucifixion in El Escorial (1556-1562). Cellini was also an author, penning his autobiography in 1558-1562, a work that reveals his egotistic personality, violent tendencies, and tumultuous life.