"Thus spoke Pope Paul III on learning that Cellini had murdered a fellow artist, so great was Cellini's reputation in Renaissance Italy. 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.

Celebrated goldsmith and sculptor of the Italian Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71) fits the conventional image of a Renaissance man: a skillful virtuoso and courtier; an artist who worked in marble, bronze, and gold; and a writer and poet. Using the methodologies of New Historicism, social history, and gender and sexuality studies, this book places Cellini and his cultural production in the context of contemporary discourses about sexuality, law, magic, masculinity, and honor. In his life and literary oeuvre, the notorious artist, rogue, and sodomite aligned himself with the transgressive and oppositional voices of his day.

Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa, one of Renaissance Italy’s most complex sculptures, is the subject of this study, which proposes that the statue’s androgynous appearance is paradoxical. Symbolizing the male ruler overcoming a female adversary, the Perseus legitimizes patriarchal power; but the physical similarity between Cellini’s characters suggests the hero rose through female agency. Dr. Corretti argues that although not a surrogate for powerful Medici women, Cellini’s Medusa may have reminded viewers that Cosimo I de’ Medici’s power stemmed in part from maternal influence. Drawing upon a vast body of art and literature, Dr. Corretti concludes that Cellini and his contemporaries knew the Gorgon as a version of the Earth Mother, whose image is found in art for Medici women.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1898 Edition.

Benvenuto Cellini is an incomparable source on the nature of artmaking in sixteenth century Italy. A practicing artist who worked in gold, bronze, marble, as well as on paper, he was also the author of treatises, discourses, poems and letters about his own work and the works of contemporaries. By examining how Cellini and those around him viewed the act of sculpture in the late Renaissance, Michael Cole demonstrates his continuing relevance to the broader study of artistic theory and practice in his time.