The Italian Cities and the Renaissance 531 he would leave everything to me; and as for the money that would be necessary, he would refer the matter to Con Archangel, then prior of the monastery, who would draw bills upon the bank, which should be paid. The library was commenced at once, for it was his pleasure that it should be done with the utmost possible celerity ; and as I did not lack for money, I collected in a short time forty- five writers, and finished two hundred volumes in twenty-two months ; in which work we made use of an excellent list, that of the library of Pope Nicholas, which he had given to Cosimo ; in the form of a catalogue made out with his own hands . . . and all the other works necessary to a library, of which no one was wanting. And since there were not copies of all these works in Florence, we sent to Milan, to Bologna, and to other places, wherever they might be found. Cosimo lived to see the library wholly completed, and the cataloguing and the arranging of the books; in all of which he took great pleasure, and the work went forward, as was his custom, with great promptness. III. THE ARTISTS OF THE RENAISSANCE One of the most instructive and diverting of the Benvenuto sources for the Renaissance period is The Life of Ben- venuto Cdlini writtenjiy--13imself in Florence, as he written by tells us, in the fifty-eighth year of his age (1558). Cellini was the most famous goldsmith of his time, or perhaps of any time ; but he worked also in every kind of metal and produced, among other things, one famous piece of sculpture in bronze, the Perseus and Medusa, which still adorns the piazza in Florence, for which it was made, at the order of Duke Cosimo de Medici. Cellini was employed by, and came into close personal relations with, most of the princes of his time in Italy, and also in France, where he lived for some time under
