Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini | Page 5

but it
brings the record down only to 1562. The remainder of Cellini’s life
seems to have been somewhat more peaceful. In 1565 he married Piera
de Salvadore Parigi, a servant who had nursed him when he was sick;
and in the care of his children, as earlier of his sister and nieces, he
showed more tenderness than might have been expected from a man of
his boisterous nature. He died at Florence, May 13, 1571, and was
buried in The Church of the Annunziata in that city.
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Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
I
ALL men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of
excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they
are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own
hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have
passed the age of forty. This duty occurs to my own mind now that I
am travelling beyond the term of fifty-eight years, and am in Florence,
the city of my birth. Many untoward things can I remember, such as
happen to all who live upon our earth; and from those adversities I am
now more free than at any previous period of my career-nay, it seems
to me that I enjoy greater content of soul and health of body than ever I
did in bygone years. I can also bring to mind some pleasant goods and
some inestimable evils, which, when I turn my thoughts backward,
strike terror in me, and astonishment that I should have reached this age
of fifty-eight, wherein, thanks be to God, I am still travelling
prosperously forward.
II
IT is true that men who have laboured with some show of excellence,
have already given knowledge of themselves to the world; and this
alone ought to suffice them; I mean the fact that they have proved their
manhood and achieved renown. Yet one must needs live like others;
and so in a work like this there will always be found occasion for
natural bragging, which is of divers kinds, and the first is that a man
should let others know he draws his lineage from persons of worth and
most ancient origin.
I am called Benvenuto Cellini, son of Maestro Giovanni, son of Andrea,
son of Cristofano Cellini; my mother was Madonna Elisabetta,
daughter to Stefano Granacci; both parents citizens of Florence. It is
found written in chronicles made by our ancestors of Florence, men of
old time and of credibility, even as Giovanni Villani writes, that the
city of Florence was evidently built in imitation of the fair city of Rome;
and certain remnants of the Colosseum and the Baths can yet be traced.

These things are near Santa Croce. The Capitol was where is now the
Old Market. The Rotonda is entire, which was made for the temple of
Mars, and is now dedicated to our Saint John. That thus is was, can
very well be seen, and cannot be denied, but the said buildings are
much smaller than those of Rome. He who caused them to built, they
say, was Julius Cæsar, in concert with some noble Romans, who, when
Fiesole had been stormed and taken, raised a city in this place, and each
of them took in hand to erect one of these notable edifices.
Julius Cæsar had among his captains a man of highest rank and valour,
who was called Fiorino of Cellino, which is a village about two miles
distant from Monte Fiascone. Now this Fiorino took up his quarters
under the hill of Fiesole, on the ground where Florence now stands, in
order to be near the river Arno, and for the convenience of the troops.
All those soldiers and others who had to do with the said captain, used
then to say: “Let us go to Fiorenze;” as well because the said captain
was called Fiorino, as also because the place he had chosen for his
quarters was by nature very rich in flowers. Upon the foundation of the
city, therefore, since this name struck Julius Cæsar as being fair and apt,
and given by circumstance, and seeing furthermore that flowers
themselves bring good augury, he appointed the name of Florence for
the town. He wished besides to pay his valiant captain this compliment;
and he loved him all the more for having drawn him from a very
humble place, and for the reason that so excellent a man was a creature
of his own. The name that learned inventors and investigators of such
etymologies adduce, as that Florence is flowing at the Arno, cannot
hold; seeing that Rome is flowing at the Tiber, Ferrara is flowing at the
Po, Lyons is flowing at the Saone, Paris is flowing at the Seine, and yet
the names