THE LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINI WRITTEN BY HIMSELF [A Florentine Artist. Containing A Variety of Curious and Interesting Particulars, relative to Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; and The History of his Own Time.] Edited and Translated by John Addington Symonds with a Biographical Sketch of Cellini by the Same Hand Together, With an Introduction to This Edition Upon Benvenuto Cellini, Artist and Writer, by Royal Cortissoz With Reproductions of Forty Original Portraits and views Illustrating the Life

2 volumes. First of the Edition issued by Brentano's. Illustrated throughout 40 full-page portraits, paintings and scenes, all with the original protective tissues intact. Tall 8vo, bound in full dark blue morocco, the covers blocked in gilt with a framework of multiple gilt filleted borders enclosing an elaborate intersecting design of gilt tooled devices and flowers, the spines with raised gilt stopped bands separating compartments richly gilt with full double gilt rules enclosing elaborately tooled panels in gilt, two compartments lettered in gilt, top edges gilt, marbled endleaves, opening leaf to the Preface, Introduction and each Book of the Life printed in red and black. [xxx], [360]; [viii], [387] pp. A very fine and handsome set, well preserved and in very pleasing condition.

Edizione: a beautifully bound set of this timeless classic. replete with fine prefatory and introductory writings on cellini by royal cortossoz and john addington symonds and concluding notes on the pedigree of cellini, a fine body of notes and an important index.<br> 'on many accounts [this is] one of the most interesting and valuable autobiographies ever written. the author was contemporaneous with raphael and michael angelo, and was the most skillful worker in metals in that age of artists.the variety of its incidents, the minuteness of its descriptions, the pictures of the people, and of the manners of the time, and, above all, the view it affords of the life of one of the most powerful characters of the age, give it at once the charm of romance and the value of a record of contemporaneous events' (adams, manual of historical literature, p. 246).