The intriguing and misunderstood Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) is receiving a much-needed reappraisal in current scholarship. Michael W. Cole’s anticipated Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture is a valuable addition to this effort and indeed to Renaissance studies as a whole. Cole focuses on Cellini as an artist rather than a personality and provides a revealing study of how a sixteenth-century sculptor functioned in his larger cultural milieu in order to “understand the sculptural act” (3), as the author writes in the introduction. Taking the formal and thematic conceptualization of Cellini’s works as his subject, Cole explores the complex social and artistic structures in which Cellini functioned, presenting him as an intellectually curious creator whose works demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the issues that affected artists of his time. While there are some omissions and weaknesses that leave the door open for further investigation, the book does much to dispel the common myth of Cellini as a protomodern aberration and presents him as a sculptor working very much within the context of the sixteenth century.

The book is divided into four chapters and an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix. The first three chapters examine individual works representing Cellini’s three major sculptural media: precious metals, bronze, and marble. The fourth addresses the artist’s broader creative process (represented by the Italian word disegno), and the appendix includes archival material related to the disputed Bargello Ganymede.

Chapter 1, “Salt, Composition, and the Goldsmith’s Intelligence,” is an assessment of the function and meaning of the gold Saltcellar of Francis I of 1540–45 (formerly Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). As Cellini was a goldsmith first and foremost, this most important of his completed fine metalworks was an opportunity for the artist to display his expertise. By including this work in a volume dedicated to the artist’s sculpture, Cole, like Cellini, suggests that the piece deserves consideration as fine art rather than decorative art. Cole presents thought-provoking classical and Renaissance material on the nature of salt and salinity that implies a greater cosmic role for the Saltcellar than as a mere receptacle for condiments. While we may wonder if some of these sources were actually known to the artist, the discussion complements the notion of the Saltcellar as a work that is monumental in conception, suggesting a greater intellectual component in Cellini’s creative process than he is usually credited with. Cole also examines the self-reflective nature of this precious object, which may well include a self-portrait of the artist in its ornamentation, and so invokes the artist’s creative genius as well as the glory of its patron, Francis I.

The second chapter, “Casting, Blood, and Bronze,” is an expanded version of Cole’s Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize–winning article of 1999, entitled “Cellini’s Blood” (The Art Bulletin 81, no. 2: 215–35). The Perseus in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence was certainly Cellini’s most successful sculpture in terms of composition, execution, reception, and lasting reputation, and so deserves pride of place in any such study. Cole concentrates on the nature of bronze casting—not so much on the technical aspects of the process as the way in which the physical act of casting parallels the act of creation. The author revisits the issue of the decapitated Medusa and her voluminous blood, which evokes both “the narrative that blood entailed … [and] the sculptural inheritance it claimed” (64–65). This dual nature of the blood demonstrates Cole’s central theme: that Cellini was able to assume elements, even those dictated by his patron Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, into his larger program of celebrating his own sculptural achievement. Cole concludes this chapter with the association between Medusa’s blood and the coral it eventually engenders (although in Ovid’s text this is not simultaneous with her decapitation) to assert the precious, ultimately life-giving act of casting.

Chapter 3 addresses Cellini’s often-neglected marble Apollo and Hyacinth of ca. 1550 (Florence, Bargello), positioning it as a major statement of artistic practice. Cole argues that the statue is a self-conscious masterwork that demonstrates through form and subject Cellini’s self-initiated efforts to triumph in marble, notably the chosen medium of Michelangelo and the ancients. While the Apollo may not be Cellini’s most successful piece in aesthetic terms, it reveals its creator’s interest in expanding his sculptural horizons. In its form and subject, the Apollo demonstrates Cellini’s use of the visual arts to address theoretical issues, as Cole discusses issues of creation and destruction, as well as maiming and healing, that are inherent in this subject. This chapter also includes an intriguing but brief discussion of Cellini’s marble Escorial Crucifixion as a Dantesque vision of a Christ-Apollo.

The final chapter departs from the single-object format to examine Cellini’s larger creative practice. Cole focuses on the complex term disegno, which he extracts from its traditional association with Giorgio Vasari’s famous pronouncement on the subject and replaces it in Cellini’s context as “not the end of knowledge, but the means to virtue” (121). This thematic rather than object-based chapter includes some of Cole’s most interesting writing, such as his discussion of the connections between Cellini’s vested interest in the rise of the Accademia del Disegno and the reliefs on the base of the Perseus. This material demonstrates how a Renaissance artist employed visual means to celebrate the fine arts as an intellectual pursuit. Cole broadens his analysis to include works by Michelangelo and Giambologna, suggesting a broader social currency for Cellini’s ideas. He also identifies the figure of “Furor” on the Perseus base both as a thematic support to the illustrated Ovidian text and as a reference to the sculptor’s own activity. Unfortunately, the book’s conclusion ends with the sort of retrospective moral judgment that has colored traditional scholarship on the artist, as Cole assesses Cellini as a “foil of modern morality” who is “violent, vain, and misogynistic” and guilty of “egregious self-display” (160). It does not seem necessary to this reader to apologize for Cellini, particularly in a study that explores his role as a sculptor, and this passage undermines Cole’s assertion of Cellini as a great artist by suggesting that he had a deficient personality.

The book closes with a discussion in the appendix of the marble Ganymede now in the Bargello, which is among several works associated with Cellini but whose authorship has been questioned. Cole notes that while some scholars view the statue as one of Cellini’s “most intimate and personally symbolic creations” (161), others have maintained that it is the only surviving marble work by the neglected Flemish sculptor Willem de Tetrode, who was active in Cellini’s workshop in 1549. Cole ultimately concludes that the marble was executed by Tetrode. The Ganymede also has thematic significance for Cole’s study both as an illustration of the artist’s visceral connection to the classical models that shaped his work and as a self-reflective subject demonstrating the artist’s perception of his role at the Medici court. It would have been interesting if he considered it in the context of the Apollo and Hyacinth as a work that is not entirely successful but that was meaningful conceptually to the artist. These points are not fully articulated, however, in the appendix format: while Cole presents some interesting new archival material suggesting that Cellini might have had two Northern assistants by the same name active in his workshop, the issue remains inconclusive, and it seems that this material might have been better integrated into the larger arguments of the volume.

Throughout Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture, Cole’s impressive command of classical and Renaissance culture is fully displayed. One of the most valuable things about the book are the myriad references to lesser-known texts that generally fall outside art-historical scholarship—and it is here that Cole makes his greatest scholarly contribution. While this contextual material can occasionally lead the reader away from the main thrust of his argument, the author effectively regrounds the text at the end of each section. The limited scale of the book, however, leaves many questions unanswered. One voice this reader missed throughout the book was Cellini’s own; while Cole quotes from Cellini’s poetry and technical trattati, references to the Vita are rather few and far between. For example, when Cole discusses the association between art and medicine and notes that Titian had been praised as a doctor (97), why does he not footnote Cellini’s claims to medical ability in the autobiography?¹ Such references would bolster Cole’s important point that Cellini placed himself in the center of this larger debate that spilled into the artistic arena. Perhaps the author did this deliberately in order to set his study apart from others, notably John Pope-Hennessy’s Cellini (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985) that rely heavily on the Vita for material on the artist’s works, but for this reader the omission is puzzling.

Also conspicuously absent is an in-depth treatment of Cellini’s marble Crucifix at the Escorial. The Crucifix, a major work in Cellini’s sculptural oeuvre, is illustrated on the cover of the book but appears only as a point of reference in chapter 2, on the Apollo and Hyacinth, and briefly at the beginning of chapter 4, “The Design of Virtue.” Given that a quarter of the book was already published in article form, it might have been appropriate to include a new analysis of this major work as well—especially given the interesting ideas Cole proposes on this sculpture.

Finally, the production values of this volume are generally disappointing, which is no fault of the author. The substandard black-and-white illustrations (e.g., figs. 1, 23, 24, 31, 43, and 57) tarnish Cole’s text. Overall, however, Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture is an engaging and thought-provoking addition to Cellini scholarship that provides a valuable counterpoint both to classic texts and to more recent and forthcoming work; all Renaissance scholars should hope that this is not Cole’s final word on this subject.