CELLINI, BENVENUTO (150o-1571), Italian artist, metal worker and sculptor, born in Florence on Nov. 1, 15oo. His father was a musician and artificer of musical instruments, who married Maria Lisabetta Granacci, and 18 years elapsed before they had any children. Benvenuto (meaning "welcome") was the third child. The father destined him for his own profession and tried to thwart his inclination for design and metal work. At 15, however, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, Antonio di Sandro, named Marcone. He had already attracted some notice in Flor ence when, being implicated in a brawl, he was banished to Siena where he worked for Francesco Castoro, a goldsmith. He visited Bologna and Pisa, and returned to Florence before he went to Rome in 1519. To this period belong a silver casket, some silver candlesticks, a vase for the bishop of Salamanca, and the gold medallion of "Leda and the Swan"—the head and torso of Leda cut in hard stone—executed for Gonfaloniere Gabbrello Cesarino, which is now in the Vienna museum. In the attack upon Rome (1527) by the constable de Bourbon, the bravery of Cellini proved of signal service to Pope Clement VII. ; if we may believe his own accounts, his was the hand which shot the Bourbon dead, and he afterwards killed Philibert, prince of Orange. His exploits paved the way for a reconciliation with the Florentine magistrates and his return to Florence. Here he worked on medals, the most famous of which are "Hercules and the Nemean Lion," in gold re pousse work, and "Atlas supporting the Sphere," in chased gold. From Florence he went to the court of the duke of Mantua, and thence again to Rome, where he was employed in the working of jewellery and the execution of dies for private medals and for the papal mint. Here, in 1529, he avenged a brother's death by slay ing the slayer ; soon afterwards he had to flee to Naples to shelter himself from the consequences of an affray with a notary, Ser Benedetto, whom he wounded, but on the accession of Paul III. he was reinstated. The plots of Pierluigi Farnese, a natural son of Paul III., led to his retreat from Rome to Florence and Venice, and once more he was restored with greater honour than before.
On returning from a visit to the court of Francis I., being now aged 37, he was imprisoned for some time on a charge (appar ently false) of having embezzled during the war the gems of the pontifical tiara. At last, however, he was released at the interces sion of Pierluigi's wife, and more especially of the Cardinal d'Este of Ferrara. For a while after this he worked at the court of Francis I. at Fontainebleau and in Paris. But the enmity of the duchesse d'Etampes and the intrigues of the king's favourites led him, after about five years of laborious and sumptuous work, to retire in 1545 in disgust to Florence. During the war with Siena, Cellini was appointed to strengthen the defences of his native city. He died in Florence on Feb. 14, 1571, unmarried, and was buried in the church of the Annunziata.
Besides the works in gold and silver which have been men tioned, Cellini executed several pieces of sculpture. The most distinguished is the bronze group of "Perseus holding the head of Medusa," now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, one of the most typical monuments of the Italian Renaissance.
Not less characteristic of its splendidly gifted and barbarically untameable author are his autobiographical memoirs begun in Florence in 1558—a production of the utmost energy, directness, and racy animation, setting forth one of the most singular careers in all the annals of fine art. His amours and hatreds, his passions and delights, his love of the sumptuous and the exquisite in art, his self-applause and self-assertion, make this one of the most singular and fascinating books in existence. The original manu script is at the Laurenziana in Florence. Cellini also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's art, on sculpture, and on design (translated by C. R. Ashbee, 1899).
Among his works of art, many of which have perished, were a colossal Mars for a fountain at Fontainebleau and the bronzes of the doorway, coins for the papal and Florentine states, a Jupiter in silver of life size, and a bronze bust of Bindo Altoviti. His other works in existence to-day are the celebrated salt-cellar made for Francis I. at Vienna; a medallion of Clement VII. in corn memoration of the peace between the Christian princes, 153o, signed with the artist's name ; a medal of Francis I. with his por trait, also signed; and a medal of Cardinal Pietro Bembo. Cellini, while employed at the papal mint at Rome during the papacy of Clement VII. and later of Paul III., executed the dies of several coins and medals, some of which still survive. He also executed in 1535 for Alessandro de' Medici, first duke of Florence, a 40 soldi piece, with a bust of the duke on one side and standing fig ures of the saints Cosmo and Damian on the other.
The important works which have perished include the uncom pleted chalice intended for Clement VII. ; a gold cover for a prayer-book as a gift from Pope Paul III. to Charles V.; large silver statues of Jupiter, Vulcan, and Mars, wrought for Francis I. during his sojourn in Paris; a bust of Julius Caesar; and a silver cup for the cardinal of Ferrara. The magnificent gold "button," or morse, made by Cellini for the cope of Clement VII., appears to have been sacrificed by Pius VI., in furnishing the indemnity of 30,000,00o francs demanded by Napoleon in 1797. Fortunately there are in the print room of the British Museum three water colour drawings of this splendid morse done by F. Bertoli in the first half of the 18th century.