Perseus and Medusa
Benvenuto Cellini
bronze, 18 feet high
1545-54.Cellini executed several pieces of sculpture on a grander scale. The most distinguished of these is the bronze group of "Perseus holding the head of Medusa", a work (first suggested by Duke Cosimo I de Medici) now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, full of the fire of genius and the grandeur of a terrible beauty, one of the most typical and unforgettable monuments of the Italian Renaissance. He wanted to surpass in a superlative way Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. In doing so, he has achieved one of the high points in European sculpture. The casting of this great work gave Cellini the utmost trouble and anxiety; and its completion was hailed with rapturous homage from all parts of Italy. The original relief from the foot of the pedestal — Perseus and Andromeda — is in the Bargello, and replaced by a cast.