THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENVENUTO CELLINI. ILLUSTRATED BY SALVADOR DALI.

Tittle: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Author: Benvenuto Cellini (Italian, 1500-1571)

Illustrator: Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)

Language: English

Translated by: John Addington Symonds

Publisher: Doubledy & Company, Inc., Garden City (New York).

Date: 1948 (1st edition)

Pages: 442

Size: 15,00 x 22,00 cm

Format: Cloth Hard Cover

REVIEW

Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 - 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote a famous autobiography and poetry.

He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism. He is remembered for his skill in making pieces such as the Cellini Salt Cellar and Perseus with the Head of Medusa.

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini was started in the year 1558 at the age of 58 and ended abruptly just before his last trip to Pisa around the year 1563 when Cellini was approximately 63 years old. The memoirs give a detailed account of his singular career, as well as his loves, hatreds, passions, and delights, written in an energetic, direct and racy style; as one critic wrote "other goldsmiths have done finer work, but Benvenuto Cellini is the author of the most delightful autobiography ever written. Cellini's writing shows a great self-regard and self-assertion, sometimes running into extravagances which are impossible to credit. He even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders carrying them out. He writes of his time in Paris:

When certain decisions of the court were sent me by those lawyers, and I perceived that my cause had been unjustly lost, I had recourse for my defense to a great dagger I carried; for I have always taken pleasure in keeping fine weapons. The first man I attacked was a plaintiff who had sued me; and one evening I wounded him in the legs and arms so severely, taking care, however, not to kill him, that I deprived him of the use of both his legs. Then I sought out the other fellow who had brought the suit, and used him also such wise that he dropped it.

Part of his tale recount some extraordinary events and phenomena; such as his stories of conjuring up a legion of devils in the Colosseum, after one of his mistresses had been spirited away from him by her mother; of the marvelous halo of light wich he found surrounding his head at dawn and twilight after his Roman imprisonment, and his supernatural visions and angelic protection during that adversity; and of his being poisoned on two separate occasions.

The autobiography has been translated into English by Thomas Roscoe, by John Addington Symonds, by Robert H.H. Cust and Sidney J.A. Churchill, and by Anne Macdonell. It has been considered and published as a classic, and commonly regarded as one of the most colorful autobiographies (certainly the most important autobiography from the Renaissance).

ILLUSTRATIONS

In 1946, more than twenty years before his little-know and lovely illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was commissioned by the creatively ambitious Doubleday publishing house to illustrate The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Dalí, forty-two, leapt at the opportunity.

The book contains 41 illustrations, between plates and drawings, all of which (except one) are owned by the Gala - Salvador Dalí Foundation, which also has some studies and an additional drawing that was not finally used. Of these 41 original drawings, all of them made in Chinese ink, 15 are colored with watercolor. Most are signed and dated as "Dalí 1945", "Gala Dalí 1945" and "Salvador Dalí 1945", and were made on the same type of paper, cut in different formats for each drawing.