The Life of Benvenuto Cellini: A Florentine Artist. Containing A Variety of Curious and Interesting Particulars, relative to Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and The History of his own Time. Written by Himself in the Tuscan Language, and translated form the originla by Thomas Nugent

London: Printed for T. Davies..., 1771. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 212 x 113 mms., pp. [v] vi - x, 512; [xlvi including contents of both volumes, one gathering in duplicate], 403 [404 Errata],fine engraved portrait of Cellini as frontispiece in volume 1, contemporary calf, spines richly gilt in compartments, with red and black morocco labels; some waterstaining to upper portions of text, particularly early leaves, three hinges strengthened with cellotape, some browning of end-papers, very slight wear to binding, but a very good set of impeccable provenance, with the armorial bookplate of William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland (1857-1943), the bookplate being signed in print "W. P. B.", initials standing for the British artist and esteemed bookplate designer William Phillips Barrett (1861-1938) of John & Edward Bumpus Ltd. This is the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571). Cellini was, as every schoolboy knows, one of Italy's greatest artists, though he was more than that, being also a goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, the author of poetry and a famous autobiography, first published in Italian in 1728, and the subject of an opera by Hector Berlioz. Thomas Nugent's translation of Cellini's autobiography precedes the translations by Thomas Roscoe and John Addington Symonds. It was reviewed in 1771 in The Monthly Review, where the anonymous critic concluded: "On the whole, though Cellini is often intolerably minute and circumstantial in relating the most trifling incidents of his life, and of the works in which he was successively engaged, yet the many vicissitudes which he experienced will not fail to interest his readers in his various reverses of fortune; - and the anecdotes of other geniuses, his contemporaries, will also contribute to the entertainment they will receive from this very singular performance: a performance which may, in some measure, though in a lower rank of life, be considered as a companion to the picture which the romantic Lord Herbert of Cherbury has given us of himself" (Monthly Review, August 1771, pp. 148-9). I can't help thinking that the reviewer didn't give his full attention to Cellini's narrative nor to Nugent's workmanlike translation. The provenance of this copy is a fine match to the subject matter. The set has the attractive and elaborate armorial bookplate of William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland (1857-1943), the great art collector and great book collector. He became the sixth Duke of Portland in December 1879, and by the early 1890s had become sufficiently serious about his accumulation of books to have a catalogue of them compiled by John Nicholson (librarian of Lincoln's Inn) and printed for private circulation: Catalogue of the Printed Books in the Library of His Grace the Duke of Portland, at Welbeck Abbey, and in London (London, 1893). Shelfmarks are not given in the 1893 catalogue, which makes the text of the bottom of the spines of the two volumes on offer all the more interesting: "V. 3473" in gilt, which looks like a shelfmark, appears in the lower compartments of the spine on each volume. Of the four works the duke owned on Cellini and his art, Nugent's translation of the life was the only work in the English language, and of the four it is the work given the fullest entry in the catalogue (p. 83). ESTC T145593. Franks 2262.