<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. There's also a fashion for lovers to write their name on padlocks and snap them onto the statue railings (which will cost you a 160 euro fine if you're nabbed). I always wonder if they'd be so keen if they knew what the man was like.


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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 beautiful. She could be Perseus's sister or wife. Cellini knew a lot about violence towards women. He murdered his own wife after catching her with a man Cellini wanted to sleep with himself. Just one foul deed in a life that was full of them. How do we know? <em>Cellini told us. </em>He wrote an astonishing biography -- you can download it from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4028" target="_blank">Project Gutenberg here</a> -- in which he confesses everything. Murder, rape, thuggery, even black magic. How this chap isn't better known as the dark hero of a comic book or some savage thriller is beyond me (no, I'm not writing it -- take the idea for free).

He was an arrogant sod. He etched his name on Perseus' belt as you can see below. He also placed his face on the back of the warrior's helmet, making the hair his own beard. I hope you can just about see this below -- it's not easy to spot given how high the statue is set.

Back during the Second World War he got a visit from a couple of fellow bastards. Mussolini invited Hitler to Florence and built some special viewing windows halfway across the Ponte Vecchio so that the Nazi leader could enjoy the view. Again you can see them below. So one day in 1944 or so Hitler and Mussolini sat there looking down at a monster from the 16th century.

Not that either of them left us anything as beautiful as Perseus, or some of Cellini's other remaining works. And that autobiography too, which is very readable given its age.

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