If you want people to be reading your autobiography almost more than five hundred years later, write as entertaining a book as this one. A treasure.

Five? Ten!? A whole pouch of golden stars wouldn't be enough of an award for this book.

Here, Cellini unclothes his soul to the reader, but beware for it is a black soul, a gullet which leads down into a sea of caustic vengeance and dark ambition. A few would want to have anything to do with such a

There's a lot of name dropping and talking himself up, which is a bit annoying, but there's also a lot of risks given the time and place he's writing. Maybe an early example of autofiction, considering that I kind of think he doesn't actually expect you to believe certain details? Like how the murde

Cellini was a goldsmith and sculptor of genius and little of his work survives today. Perseus with the Head of Medusa, the bronze sculpture he made in 1545, being a stunning exception. Precious metals tend to be melted down, especially in times of strife. One of the text's greatest pleasures, theref

All men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they be persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand

Why we like or dislike someone, why we admire or despise them, why we are happy or ann