"THE MOST COMPLETE ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE TIME"

CELLINI, Benvenuto. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Written by Himself. London and New York: J.M. Dent and E.P. Dutton, 1903. Two volumes. Small octavo, contemporary three-quarter turquoise calf, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt. $600.

“Temple Autobiographies” edition of Cellini’s famous Life, translated by Anne Macdonell, with two frontispiece portraits, in handsome publisher’s deluxe binding.

Cellini was considered one of the greatest artists of his time, an expert goldsmith who became a noted sculptor, serving two popes, the de Medici family and French monarch Francis I. He wrote treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. "It is, however, the Life which has won Cellini his immortality" (Bull, 13). "Modern scholarship has shown that in fact his account of life in Florence, Rome and Paris in the 1500s is remarkably accurate (apart from being the most complete account of the life of the time)" (Parker, 2).

Interiors fine; toning to spines. A fine copy.