No episode in Cellini's biography is narrated with more
force than the climax to his long-protracted labours, when at last, amid
the chaos and confusion of innumerable accidents, the metal in his furnace
liquefied and filled the mould. After the statue was uncovered in the
Loggia de' Lanzi, where it now stands, Cellini achieved a triumph
adequate to his own highest expectations. Odes and sonnets in Italian,
Greek, and Latin, were written in its praise. Pontormo and Bronzino, the
painters, loaded it with compliments. Cellini, ruffling with hand on hilt
in silks and satins through the square, was pointed out to foreigners as
the great sculptor who had cast the admirable bronze. It was, in truth, no
slight distinction for a Florentine artist to erect a statue beneath the
Loggia de' Lanzi in the square of the Signory. Every great event in
Florentine history had taken place on that piazza. Every name of
distinction among the citizens of Florence was connected with its
monuments. To this day we may read the course of Florentine art by
studying its architecture and sculpture; and not the least of its many
ornaments, in spite of all that may be said against it, is the "Perseus"
of Cellini.

Cellini completed the "Perseus" in 1554. His autobiography is carried down
to the year 1562, when it abruptly terminates. It appears that in 1558 he
received the tonsure and the first ecclesiastical orders; but two years
later on he married a wife, and died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving
three legitimate children. He was buried honourably, and a funeral oration
was pronounced above his bier in the Chapter House of the Annunziata.

As a man, Cellini excites more interest than as an artist; and for this
reason I have refrained from entering into minute criticism of his few
remaining masterpieces. It has been well said that the two extremes of
society, the statesman and the craftsman, find their point of meeting in
Machiavelli and Cellini, inasmuch as both recognise no moral authority but
the individual will.[388] The _virtu_, extolled by Machiavelli is
exemplified by Cellini. Machiavelli bids his prince ignore the laws;
Cellini respects no tribunal and takes justice into his own hands. The
word conscience does not occur in Machiavelli's phraseology of ethics;
conscience never makes a coward of Cellini, and in the dungeons of S.
Angelo he is visited by no remorse. If we seek a literary parallel for the
statesman and the artist in their idea