gold and enamel table salt cellar.
made for Francis I of France, 1543Cover image on Cellini's Autobiography
Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71) was a famous Florentine goldsmith and sculptor, a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful C16th politicos and artists. His father had wanted Benvenuto to follow in him as a musician working at the Florentine Medici court. Despite playing well, the young man chose goldsmithing, working in other cities before joining the prestigious Florentine goldsmiths’ guild.
This goldsmith, sculptor, poet, soldier and musician was also a murderer, priest, communicator with the dead and sodomiser who knew all about papal persecution and prisons, AND the royal court's adulation. In Autobiography (1558-63), kings, cardinals and artists all appeared.
Once a famous Italian Renaissance artist, and now a neglected figure compared to his predecessors Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Cellini’s story provided a unique perspective on the era. In 1558, as commissions dried up, Cellini began dictating My Life to an assistant, a scandalous account of C16th art and society.
His surviving art and writings revealed less an idyllic Golden Age, and more an era of political and religious turbulence. Largely based on life in Cellini’s native Florence & his career working elsewhere, his autobiography had both fact and fiction. Rely on Jerry Brotton and Martin Chorzempa.
The C15th Italian peninsula was a series of small republics ruled by powerful families. These powerful figures gave rise to great art, once they commissioned artists in the city states. But the Italian Wars, starting with the French Invasion, was changing the political balance of these feuding cities, bringing French and Spanish empires in.
bronze sculpture,1545–54.
in the Loggia dei Lanzi, FlorenceBack in Florence, Cellini saw the Florentines took advantage of the turmoil in Rome to banish the Medicis and proclaim a republic. Worse, a plague had ravaged the city such that the beautiful streets once bursting with noble citizens were now filthy and stinking. The fear of plague led artists to move across Italy, obtaining patronage where they could.
Cellini fled to Rome and established his own goldsmith’s business there. He exploited his Medici ties to win Giulio de’ Medici’s patronage, who was appointed Pope Clement VII in 1523. But the wider geopolitics surrounding the Italian peninsula quickly submerged him. In 1527 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s imperial army invaded Rome, leading to an orgy of looting, violence and killing c25,000 civilians. Cellini was ordered by the Pope to hide the papal jewels, before the Pope fled the city.
The plague saw Cellini working in Mantua, Venice, Naples and Paris as a goldsmith. By 1529 the re-installed pope needed Cellini’s skills in renewing Rome, appointing him Head of the Papal Mint. But the artist’s brother was murdered, leading Cellini to confront the killer and stabbing him very deeply. The pope told Cellini he should work hard and keep quiet. Cellini out-Caravaggio’d Caravaggio.
Patronage was the artist’s life-line, and when Pope Clement VII died in 1534, Cellini realised his days of papal support were numbered. The new Pope Paul III was a Farnese man with little interest in backing Medici supporters in Rome.
Cellini killed another rival, Pompeo de’ Capitaneis, and was exiled again. The pope absolved him but anti-Florentine factions within the papacy re-opposed him. Hearing that the French King Francis I was searching for artists to help transform his royal Fontainebleau Palace, Cellini headed to Paris. Unhappy with the reception he received, Cellini made the fateful decision to return to Rome in 1537.
The pope’s son Pier Luigi Farnese, Cellini’s nemesis, imprisoned him in the Castel Sant’Angelo! The artist was charged with stealing papal jewellery, and in one of the most harrowing accounts of imprisonment written then, Cellini described attempts to poison him. Instead he read the Bible and had a miraculous conversion, including visions of Christ. As papal machinations swirled him, powerful patrons like Ferrara Cardinal Ippolito d’Este Cellini finally got him released. His conversion should have led to glorious redemption, but reality was more violent.
Once free, Cellini returned to France and to Francis I’s patronage, some of Cellini’s happiest and most productive. He began working on larger sculptural projects, Francis being keen to show that his patronage of the arts rivalled that of the pope and of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Cellini made the unusual, elegant salt cellar (see above).
Alas Cellini quarrelled openly with Francis I’s mistress and was accused again of sodomy. He returned to Florence in 1545 with the prospect of a powerful new patron: Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Cosimo had reasserted Medici control in Florence and wanted to commission a piece of large public art to celebrate Medici power: sculpture of Perseus slaying Medusa. This classical story represented the masculine Medici asserting their will over the feminine, malevolent republican ideals that typified the city’s recent rule. For 9 years Cellini worked on the Perseus, cast in bronze in one piece to outshine da Vinci.
The plague saw Cellini working in Mantua, Venice, Naples and Paris as a goldsmith. By 1529 the re-installed pope needed Cellini’s skills in renewing Rome, appointing him Head of the Papal Mint. But the artist’s brother was murdered, leading Cellini to confront the killer and stabbing him very deeply. The pope told Cellini he should work hard and keep quiet. Cellini out-Caravaggio’d Caravaggio.
Patronage was the artist’s life-line, and when Pope Clement VII died in 1534, Cellini realised his days of papal support were numbered. The new Pope Paul III was a Farnese man with little interest in backing Medici supporters in Rome.
Cellini killed another rival, Pompeo de’ Capitaneis, and was exiled again. The pope absolved him but anti-Florentine factions within the papacy re-opposed him. Hearing that the French King Francis I was searching for artists to help transform his royal Fontainebleau Palace, Cellini headed to Paris. Unhappy with the reception he received, Cellini made the fateful decision to return to Rome in 1537.
The pope’s son Pier Luigi Farnese, Cellini’s nemesis, imprisoned him in the Castel Sant’Angelo! The artist was charged with stealing papal jewellery, and in one of the most harrowing accounts of imprisonment written then, Cellini described attempts to poison him. Instead he read the Bible and had a miraculous conversion, including visions of Christ. As papal machinations swirled him, powerful patrons like Ferrara Cardinal Ippolito d’Este Cellini finally got him released. His conversion should have led to glorious redemption, but reality was more violent.
Once free, Cellini returned to France and to Francis I’s patronage, some of Cellini’s happiest and most productive. He began working on larger sculptural projects, Francis being keen to show that his patronage of the arts rivalled that of the pope and of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Cellini made the unusual, elegant salt cellar (see above).
Alas Cellini quarrelled openly with Francis I’s mistress and was accused again of sodomy. He returned to Florence in 1545 with the prospect of a powerful new patron: Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Cosimo had reasserted Medici control in Florence and wanted to commission a piece of large public art to celebrate Medici power: sculpture of Perseus slaying Medusa. This classical story represented the masculine Medici asserting their will over the feminine, malevolent republican ideals that typified the city’s recent rule. For 9 years Cellini worked on the Perseus, cast in bronze in one piece to outshine da Vinci.
c1550, marble
Legion of Honour Museum, San Fran
In 1554 the Perseus statue was triumphantly unveiled in the Loggia dei Lanzi, opposite Michelangelo’s David. Perseus was holding up the severed head of Medusa; Cosimo was thrilled.
Sadly the artist was quarrelling with everyone, even Cosimo. He had a son by a different model and fought endlessly with artist Bartolommeo Bandinello (1493-1560). Bandinelli accused Cellini of being a dirty sodomite, in front of Cosimo!
Even when Cellini finally secured the critical adulation he craved, he injured another rival goldsmith, was arrested and gaoled in 1556. Released on bail, he was re-accused of sodomy by an apprentice the next year. Court records revealed he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 4 years’ gaol. Cosimo commuted the sentence to house arrest, but Cellini’s reputation never recovered.
Cellini married, fathered children with other models and servants. He turned to religion, working on a tall marble crucifix, but Cosimo wasn’t interested. Afterall there were younger, more exciting sculptors available. So Cellini withdrew and took religious vows, but renounced them after some years.
As Cellini’s influence at the Medici court waned, artist-writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) all but wrote the Florentine out of his influential The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects.
Cellini died in Feb 1571 and this brawler-murderer was buried with great pomp in Santissima Annunziata Church. The funeral oration praised the fine disposition of Cellini’s incomparably virtuous life!
Sadly the artist was quarrelling with everyone, even Cosimo. He had a son by a different model and fought endlessly with artist Bartolommeo Bandinello (1493-1560). Bandinelli accused Cellini of being a dirty sodomite, in front of Cosimo!
Even when Cellini finally secured the critical adulation he craved, he injured another rival goldsmith, was arrested and gaoled in 1556. Released on bail, he was re-accused of sodomy by an apprentice the next year. Court records revealed he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 4 years’ gaol. Cosimo commuted the sentence to house arrest, but Cellini’s reputation never recovered.
Cellini married, fathered children with other models and servants. He turned to religion, working on a tall marble crucifix, but Cosimo wasn’t interested. Afterall there were younger, more exciting sculptors available. So Cellini withdrew and took religious vows, but renounced them after some years.
As Cellini’s influence at the Medici court waned, artist-writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) all but wrote the Florentine out of his influential The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects.
Cellini died in Feb 1571 and this brawler-murderer was buried with great pomp in Santissima Annunziata Church. The funeral oration praised the fine disposition of Cellini’s incomparably virtuous life!