Autobiography of a Florentine Master

Description

CELLINI (BENVENUTO) - LECLANCHE (LEOPOLD, TRANSL. OF). Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith and sculptor from Florence, written by himself. Paris, Jules Labitte, circa 1860. 12mo, VII & 492 pp. Hardcover binding, missing spine, damaged covers, some slight browning. Beautiful count's ex-libris. The text is adorned with lovely typographical ornaments. 'The first artist to have left an autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine goldsmith appreciated throughout Europe, a virtuoso medallist who became a sculptor late in life, wished to present himself as a genius who surpassed Michelangelo and treated on equal terms with François I, Cosimo de' Medici, Clement VII, or Paul III. The romantic fortune of his text, translated by Goethe and which inspired Berlioz, makes it difficult to appreciate his book as it might have appeared to his contemporaries in the late years of the Renaissance. This biography, peppered with accounts of his travels between Rome and Mantua, Paris and Florence, tales of brawls, murders, diamond powder poisonings, evoking the papal court, artist workshops, and episodes of the escape from the Castel Sant'Angelo, creates a climate likely to awaken romantic imagination.