Benvenuto Cellini is an incomparable source on the nature of artmaking in sixteenth century Italy. A practicing artist who worked in gold, bronze, marble, as well as on paper, he was also the author of treatises, discourses, poems and letters about his own work and the works of contemporaries. By examining how Cellini and those around him viewed the act of sculpture in the late Renaissance, Michael Cole demonstrates his continuing relevance to the broader study of artistic theory and practice in his time.