Benvenuto Cellini, Life and Works

Abstract

Much of what we know about Benvenuto Cellini comes from his own pen. He was born in Florence in Via Chiara on 3 November 1500 to Giovanni Cellini and Elisabetta Granacci. The Cellini family originated in Val D’Ambra, between Siena and Arezzo, but had lived in Florence since the time of Cellini’s great-grandfather. His grandfather Andrea was listed as a bricklayer (muratore) in the Florentine tax records, known as the Catasto, of 1487.¹ His father, a court musician, artist, architect, and engineer, called his son Benvenuto (Welcome) after his wife and the midwife told him to expect another girl, a third daughter. Giovanni hoped that Benvenuto would follow in his footsteps and study music, his passion and part-time occupation. His son acquiesced to please his father but only if he could also study the art of drawing using the sketches of Leonardo and Michelangelo as models and be apprenticed to a local goldsmith. Cellini’s youth was spent primarily in Florence at the shops of various goldsmiths. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, he was apprenticed at the workshop of Baccio Bandinelli’s father, Michelangelo di Viviano. At fifteen he joined the shop of Antonio Giamberti, known as “Marcone.” At eighteen, he worked at the shop of Francesco Salimbene; and at twenty-one, at Giovambattista Sogliani’s. During these years Cellini spent some time in Siena, Pisa, and Bologna.