256 Sculpture in the Renaissance Period. Jonah in the Cappella Chigi, in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome, is certainly from the great painter's own hand ; and the Elijah in the same place is said to be after his design by the Florentine Lorenzetto. Benvenuto Cellini (1500 — 1571), a native of Florence, was one of the most celebrated workers in metal the world has ever known. Among his patrons were the Pope Clement VII. , Cardinal de' Medici, the Grand Duke Cosmo of Florence, and Francis I., King of France. He lived at various times at Florence, Siena, Rome, Milan, Naples, Padua, Ferrara, and Paris. He enriched the Louvre with many fine works, of which the most remarkable is the high-relief figure of Diana, called the Nymph of Fontaine- bleau.* It represents a colossal nude female figure in a semi-recumbent attitude of careless grace, with one arm flung round the neck of a stag, and is a good specimen of the long-drawn proportions of the human form, in which Cellini delighted. But his most celebrated work is his statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa, in the Piazzo del Granduca, Florence (Fig. 108). Cellini principally excelled, however, in minor works, such as chased vases, etc. A celebrated salt-cellar now in the Schatzkamner at Vienna, in embossed gold enriched with enamels and adorned with high-relief figures of Neptune and Cybele, and a frieze of symbolic figures of the Hours and the Winds, is really a masterpiece in its way : there is also a magnificent shield in Windsor Castle, said to be by the same artist, f
- Casts are in the South Kensington Museum and the Crystal
Palace. f A translation of Benvenuto's celebrated autobiography is pub- lished in Bonn's Library.
