Being chosen as a member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno shows the respect he commanded: not just as an artist but as a patron of Florence. When he died in 1571, at the age of 70, he was buried with great honours in the Church of the Santissima Annunziata. The man who had so much admired Michelangelo, and copied his painting as a child, had maybe become more like him than he would have ever realised. He left behind many masterpieces, now scattered from France to Vienna, but surely his most crowning achievement stand right in the Loggia dei Lanzi gallery in Piazza della Signoria in his beloved Florence: the Perseus with the Head of Medusa. Legend says that he would throw books, chair and even tables from his own house into the furnace to raise the temperature enough to melt the bronze needed for the sculpture. If ever proof of dedication was needed! The statue was removed from the piazza in 1996 for a long restoration project that lasted several years, but has since been returned to take its rightful place: just a stone’s throw away from where Michelangelo’s (original) David once stood. For all his faults, Benvenuto Cellini remains a hero of Florence, in the Piazzale Degli Uffizzi, outside the famous Uffizi Gallery, a life size sculptor of him stands alongside the great masters of renaissance art, Da Vinci, Rafael and, of course, Michelangelo . It seems that the image he projected of himself was not one looking for self-justification, or even to heighten his reputation, but simply of a man who saw the world in black and white…and gold, silver and bronze. - See more at: http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/italys-treasures-benvenuto-cellini#sthash.ChHaGrml.dpuf