f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] The Autobiography Of Benvenuto Cellini [Author] Benvenuto Cellini [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1999 [Read] 2012/10/05 [Review] 
To read this, one wonders how Cellini survived to age 20, much less age 70! He is constantly killing and being attacked, wenching his models, contracting hideous illnesses (or noting in passing the constant unexpected death of others), and being betrayed (by this account) or insulting others. It’s an endless exhausting cycle such that even Cellini had to notice its futility and danger. One has to wonder how much he exaggerates: aside from the demonology and weather-controlling, it seems so routine for people to go around armed and attacking for minor insults and then dying of a scratch. Then there is his strange attitude to his patrons: on the one hand, he seems largely unable to criticize them or the system despite wallowing in their corruption and wealth (surely the King of France wasn’t all that, and given the sheer servility & ignobility & criminality of the popes he deals with, his tolerance of them is astounding), but on the other hand, he almost goes out of his way to mess with them. Well, it’s fun in small doses, the constant tumult of Cellini’s life suggests that the constant murder & assault & theft & large gifts we read of in picaresques or stories (like the Decameron) are much more realistic than we give them credit for, and it’s pretty cool to look at the Wikipedia article and see images of the works he labors over at such length in his autobiography.
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