Author of one of the most celebrated autobiographies ever written, Benvenuto Cellini has been the fabled subject of opera, drama, fiction, and poetry. Famed--and self-proclaimed--as a genius, warrior, murderer, as well as a seducer of men and women, Cellini was above all an intense and dedicated artist-craftsman. His was by every measure a major life. Yet, with much of his artistic production lost and the facts of his biography colored by centuries of romantic myth, to study this enigmatic man is a daunting task. This is the first significant monograph to appear on the artist in over one hundred years. In it, Sir John Pope-Hennessy endeavors to "correlate a body of works of art with the human personality by which they were produced." Whereas our knowledge of most artists derives from their works, we know more about Cellini than any other individual of his age. Thanks to his autobiography and to the extraordinary wealth of material contained in the Ricordi and other sources, his habits, his manner of speech, the very fiber of his being, are all fully reconstructable, and he may be apprehended as a man, not simply as an artist. --jacket.