<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cellini.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-7751" title="Cellini" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Cellini-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="191" /></a>Meet <a class="zem_slink" title="Benvenuto Cellini" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini">Benvenuto Cellini</a>. Born in Florence in 1500. Died there in 1571. What an absolute bastard. Brilliant sculptor and goldsmith, not bad as a painter, musician and soldier either. And a monster through and through, something which comes across very neatly in his art.

Cellini's first name means, of course, welcome, and that's what he does a lot of today, through the statue you see here which sits midway along the Ponte Vecchio and always has a bunch of tourists photographing it. I always wonder if they'd be so keen if they knew what the man was like.

His best-known creation gets a lot of photographs too. That’s the shocking statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria. There's a little gallery of some shots of this astonishing work at the foot of this article. Boy is it compelling. A muscular Perseus stands tall and proud, his foot on the naked body of the Gorgon, entrails spewing from her severed neck. Her head is firm in his hand, the sword he's used by his side.

Close up though she is no monster. She's a woman and her dead body is very beaut

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