The versatile Benvenuto Cellini, besides his works…
1554 CE
The versatile Benvenuto Cellini, besides his works in gold and silver, executes sculptures of grander scale.
The most distinguished of these is the bronze group of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, a work (first suggested by Duke Cosimo I de Medici) now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, his attempt to surpass Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes.
Cellini completes his Perseus in 1554; a celebrated, larger-than-life, group of great spatial daring and technical virtuosity, portraying the Greek hero holding aloft the bloody head of Medusa.
The casting of this work has caused Cellini much trouble and anxiety, but it is hailed as a masterpiece as soon as it was completed.
The original relief from the foot of the pedestal—Perseus and Andromeda—is in the Bargello, and replaced by a cast.
Centuries of environmental pollution exposure had streaked and banded the statue by December of 1996, when it was removed from the Loggia and transferred to the Uffizi for cleaning and restoration, a slow, years-long process; the restored statue was not returned to its home until June 2000.