Chapter Lavoro e vita in Benvenuto Cellini

Abstract

The Life of Benvenuto Cellini allows us to understand what work was like for a sixteenth-century craftsman. In Cellini the activity of work detaches itself from necessity and becomes the object of a choice, of continuous improvement, of a passion independent of the need to provide for the reproduction of material existence (which it obviously provides), and therefore becomes a process of spiritual elevation and identity construction, self-realization and that is a need. This idea of work presupposes a high degree of freedom which Cellini achieves by refusing to manufacture objects based on someone else's design. This passion and freedom of work has a price in terms of a life unilaterally articulated around work: everything in Cellini's existence is linked directly or indirectly to work.