Here is the most important autobiography from Renaissance Italy and one of the most spirited and colorful from any time or place, in a translation widely recognized as the most faithful to the energy and spirit of the original.

Benvenuto Cellini was both a beloved artist in sixteenth-century Florence and a passionate and temperamental man of action who was capable of brawling, theft, and murder. He counted popes, cardinals, kings, and dukes among his patrons and was the adoring friend of—as he described them—the “divine” Michelangelo and the “marvelous” Titian, but was as well known for his violent feuds. At age twenty-seven he helped defend the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, and his account of his imprisonment there (under a mad castellan who thought he was a bat), his escape, recapture, and confinement in “a cell of tarantulas and venomous worms” is an adventure equal to any other in fact or fiction. But it is only one in a long life lived on a grand scale.

Cellini's autobiography is not merely the record of an extraordinary life but also a dramatic and evocative
account of daily life in Renaissance Italy, from its lowest taverns to its highest royal courts.

'Men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, need not be subject to the law.'
--Pope Paul III on learning that Cellini had murdered a fellow artist

Benvenuto Cellini was beloved in Renaissance Florence. A renowned sculptor and goldsmith whose works include the famous salt-cellar made for the King of France, and the statue of Perseus with the head of the Medusa, Cellini's life was as vivid and enthralling as his creations. A man of action as well as an artist, he took part in the Sack of Rome in 1527; he was temperamental, passionate, and conceited, capable of committing criminal acts ranging from brawling and sodomy to theft and murder. He numbered among his patrons popes and kings and members of the Medici family, and his autobiography is a fascinating account of sixteenth-century Italy and France written with all the verve of a novel.

This new translation, which captures the freshness and vivacity of the original, is based on the latest critical edition. It examines in detail the central event in Cellini's narrative, the casting of the statue of Perseus.

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Grande scultore e orafo cinquecentesco, autore di alcuni tra i più celebri capolavori del Rinascimento italiano, con la sua autobiografia, scritta tra il 1558 e il 1566, Benvenuto Cellini ci ha lasciato una delle testimonianze letterarie più alte e rilevanti del tempo. Attraverso la rievocazione degli eventi che vanno dall'infanzia alla maturità, nelle pagine della 'Vita', Cellini tratteggia il vivace affresco di buona parte del XVI secolo, alternando i fatti celebri e i grandi protagonisti ai godibili episodi e aneddoti della sua vita privata. E non mancano pagine memorabili come quelle sul sacco di Roma del 1527, o la descrizione della fuga da Castel Sant'Angelo e ancora l'eroica impresa della creazione del suo grande capolavoro 'Perseo'.