Cellini 1523

Speranza

In January of 1523 Cellini was prosecuted for sodomy.

The prosecution, initiated by the Otto di Guardia e di Balia, charged that Cellini and a certain Giovanni di Ser Matteo Rigoli had had homosexual relations with Domenico di Ser Giuliano da Ripa.

The case must have been trivials, since it was dealt with leneintly (Cellini was condemned not to the maximum fine of thirty golden florins but to a smaller penalty of twelve measures of flour).

Similar charges were brought at other points in his career, and passage after passage in his autobiography reveals his often innocent sensibility to male beauty and to the male form.

As his only assistant after his return to Rome Cellini recruited a boy of fourteen called Paolino, 'the most honest and best-looking boy I ever saw in my whole life. His modest behaviour, together with his extraordinary beauty and his affection for me, bred in me as great a love for him as a man's breast can hold. This passionate love led me often to play to him, so that I could watch his marvelous face, which was usually serious and melancholy, relax. When I took up my cornet, he broke into a smile so honest and sweet that I do not marvel at the fables which the Greeks have weritten about the deities of heaven.'

Cellini was not however 'homosexual' in the exclusive sense in which the term is used today.