Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) was a native of Florence, the son of a musician and instrument maker in via Chiara. Although a talented player of the flute and cornet, young Cellini preferred sculpture, and like so many sculptors he started out apprenticed to a goldsmith.

Before he attained fame for his art, Cellini made a name as a brawling hoodlum, in a career that would include more than one murder. He got himself exiled from Florence at the tender age of sixteen, and worked in Siena, Bologna and Pisa before settling in Rome. There he opened his own workshop and quickly became popular with the bishops and cardinals, creating mostly small, decorative works: medals, jewellery, tableware, and small sculptures in gold and bronze. He would spend almost all of his life in this lucrative trade, and he left behind very few large-scale sculptural works.

Cellini put his natural pugnacity to good use in 1527, when Rome was threatened by an out-of-control Imperial army. He fought in the city's defense with conspicuous bravery, and he even claimed to have killed the Imperial commander, the Connetable de Bourbon (if it's true, then he was personally responsible for the grisly Sack of Rome, and for changing the course of French history, too).