Italian sculptor and memoirist Benvenuto Cellini was BOTD in 1500. Born in Florence to a family of musicians, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith at 15. He moved to Rome aged 19, and was appointed one of Pope Clement’s court musicians, winning a number of artistic commissions. His renown as a sculptor was matched by his penchant for violence, fleeing to Naples after his involvement in several homicides. After being imprisoned and nearly executed for embezzlement, he worked in the French Royal court for many years. He returned to Florence in the 1540s, where he became court sculptor to the Medici family, creating his most famous work, Perseus with the Head of Medusa. His work revealed a strong appreciation for the male body, not replicated in his sculptures of women. He became equally as famous for his 1563 autobiography, admired for its lively accounts of his love life and vivid picture of Renaissance Italy. Cellini slept with many of his female models, fathering an illegitimate daughter, whom he named Costanza. He was also repeatedly accused of committing sodomy with young men. In 1556, his apprentice Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano accused him of having sodomised him many times while “keeping him for five years in his bed as a wife”. In 1562, he married Piera Parigi, with whom he claimed to have had five children. Hailed as one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, he died in 1571, aged 71.