What makes this book different from others on the life of Cellini is my emphasis on the times during which Cellini lived, the historical people and events that laid the foundations of the Florence and Rome of Cellini's day, which vitally influenced Cellini and his art, events greater than the most imaginative fiction: the political turmoil of the Sack of Rome, the attempt on the life of Lorenzo de' Medici and the havoc caused by the plague; the lives of Renaissance warlords, Cesare Borgia, the warrior popes Julius II and Alexander VI; along with the world's never-equaled artists: da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, among others. Renaissance Italy was the center of seismic shocks, the wrath of Henry VIII, the wars of François I and Charles V, and, on the sidelines, the unbelievable discoveries of Cortés, Magellan and Pizarro--the wealth they generated paying for the construction of palaces begging to be decorated by artists like Cellini, money that funded his masterpiece, Perseus. This book thoroughly covers the murders Cellini committed, as well as the subject other sources skirt or avoid completely, the epicenter of Cellini's art: his homosexuality.