In 1545 Cellini, suspected of embezzling precious
metal and gemstones, fled from France back to Florence.
There he persuaded Cosimo I to commission a group of
two over-life-size bronze figures—Perseus and Medusa
(1545–54)—to match Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes of
a century earlier under the arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi.
Cellini’s original wax and bronze models are in the
Bargello; they are much more elongated than the finished
work. A bronze study for the head of Medusa is in the Vic-
toria and Albert Museum, London. The Perseus and
Medusa is the most obviously mannerist sculpture in Flo-
rence (see MANNERISM). Its decorative marble pedestal
comprises a repertory of mannerist motifs and contains
four bronze statuettes of the ancestors of Perseus, as well
as a narrative relief in bronze of Perseus rescuing An-
dromeda. Challenged by BANDINELLIto prove his worth as
a sculptor by carving marble, Cellini produced several
statues on classical themes, but his masterpiece in the
medium is the Crucifixion, now in the Escorial.
Cellini’s Vita was first published in Naples in 1728.
The original manuscript then vanished for many years be-
fore being rediscovered in the early 19th century; it is now
housed in the Laurenziana library in Florence. English
versions have been variously titled Life, Memoirs, or Auto-
biography. The first English translation, made by Thomas
Nugent (1771), has often been reprinted, as has the later
version by John Addington Symonds (2 vols, 1888); an
abridgment of the latter by Charles Hope and Alessandro
Nova appeared in 1983. The version of the Autobiography
for the Penguin Classics series (1956, rev. ed. 1999) was
made by George Bull. A more recent translation is that by
Julia Conaway Bondanella (Oxford World’s Classics:
2002).
Further reading: John Pope-Hennessy, Cellini (Lon-
don: Macmillan and New York: Abbeville, 1985).
Celtis, Konrad (1459–1508) German humanist and poet
Born a peasant near Würzburg, Celtis ran away at age 18
to study. He spent the next 20 years studying and teaching
at a succession of universities—Cologne, Heidelberg, Er-
furt, Rostock, Leipzig, Cracow, Nuremberg, Ingolstadt—
before settling at Vienna university to teach poetry and
rhetoric (1497). His travels included two years in Italy
(1487–89), where he met many Italian humanists. Al-
though generally disillusioned by Italy, he was inspired by
LETO’s academy in Rome to start similar societies in Ger-
many where humanists could meet and work together—
most notably the “Sodalitas danubiana” in Vienna.
PEUTINGERand PIRCKHEIMERwere among his friends and
correspondents.
Celtis’s own studies of Greek and Hebrew, his editions
of Latin authors, and his Latin dramas were important in
the humanist movement, as were his introduction of lit-
erary studies to various universities and his ideas on
education. Resenting Italian cultural domination, he pas-
sionately wanted to revive German culture; significant
here was his discovery (1492/93) at Regensburg of six
Latin dramas by Hrosvitha von Gandersheim, a 10th-
century nun, and his edition (1500) of the Germania of
the Roman historian Tacitus. His great ambition was to
write the first comprehensive geographical and historical
survey of Germany, although only a few preparatory stud-
ies were completed. The first German to be crowned poet
laureate by the emperor (1487), he was a gifted poet, as
seen especially from his Quattuor libri amorum (1502).
This is a semiautobiographical verse narrative of four love
affairs, highly entertaining, with an amoral sensuality.
Celtis died in Vienna of syphilis.
Further reading: Lewis W. Spitz, Conrad Celtis: The
German Arch-Humanist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1957).Cenacolo See LAST SUPPERCenci, Beatrice (1577–1599) Roman noblewoman
Her controversial execution under Pope CLEMENT VIII
aroused great public interest and became the subject of
numerous poems, dramas, and novels, notably Shelley’s
The Cenci (1819) and Alberto Moravia’s Beatrice Cenci
(1958). Treated with extraordinary cruelty by her father
Francesco Cenci, Beatrice finally murdered him with the
help of servants and other members of her family. They
were all brought to trial, tortured, and sentenced to death,
despite pleas for leniency on their behalf. The subsequent
confiscation of the Cenci property was rumored to have
been the pope’s real object in the prosecution.Cenni di Peppi See CIMABUEcensorship The invention of PRINTINGwas quickly per-
ceived by both secular and religious authorities in the Re-
naissance to be a massive threat to their ability to control
the spread of subversive ideas. The idea of censorship was
not new, but the laborious production of manuscripts by
scribes could relatively easily be dealt with by seizure and
destruction of the finished product—as authorized, for in-
stance, in the case of LOLLARDtexts in England by the
Merciless Parliament of 1388. The rapid multiplication of
copies by printing made it expedient to introduce mecha-
nisms of control at an earlier stage of production. One
widely employed method was to require printers to sub-
mit material they proposed to publish to be licensed by an
official censor or other competent body before it could
legally be printed.
As European exploration in pursuit of trade routes
gathered pace, there is evidence that some polities en-
deavored to suppress the dissemination of commercially
sensitive information. For instance, a chart of Vasco da
GAMA’s voyage to India had to be smuggled out of Lisbon
in 1502 by the agent of the duke of Ferrara, and PETERcceennssoorrsshhiipp 9977