New 6x9 inch paperback edition. Regarded as one of the most colorful autobiographies ever written (and also one of the first autobiographies written), the chronicle of Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini's life is an epic tale of exaggerated proportions. Cellini's loves, hatreds, passions, delights, brawls and battles, along with extraordinary events, and even supernatural phenomena, are narrated in an energetic, direct, and often racy style. Completed in 1563, Cellini's autobiography is also historically important for its firsthand account of daily life in Renaissance Italy. This 1887 translation, by noted Renaissance scholar John Addington Symonds, has been the most popular English language version for over a century.