Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence in 1500, and started his career with an apprenticeship with the goldsmith Michelangelo di Viviano da Gaiole. For the first half of his life, he recreated in miniature the monumental forms that his famous contemporaries created in marble and bronze, before realising that he had the skill to create in a larger scale. In 1542 Cellini started work on the doorway of the palace of Fontainebleau for King Francis I of France, and later a number of bronze busts and statues, most famous of which is his Perseus, commissioned in 1545 by Cosimo de'Medici. Benvenuto Cellini follows the life of the artist in the context of his great works, and quotes extensively from Cellini's autobiography.