Imagine hands steady enough to carve microscopic detail into solid gold, and the same hands plunging a dagger into a rival’s neck on a cobblestone street. This episode charts the pivotal turning points in the life of Benvenuto Cellini, the 16th-century goldsmith, sculptor, and author who navigated a volatile Italy of warring city-states, papal intrigue, and brutal street justice while producing some of the era’s most coveted objects.

From his refusal at 15 to become the musician his father demanded, through banishment from Florence at 16, papal favor in Rome, manning artillery during the 1527 Sack of Rome, multiple murders and multiple pardons, imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo, and an assassination attempt with crushed diamond dust, we follow him to the French court of Francis I, where he made the famous gold salt cellar, and back to Florence for the nerve-wracking bronze casting of Perseus with the Head of Medusa. We close with the sodomy accusations that led to house arrest, the boastful autobiography he wrote there, and its influence on Dumas, Berlioz, Twain, Melville, and even Rolex.

• How historians separate Cellini’s self-aggrandizing claims from documented outcomes
• Why the diamond-dust poisoning failed thanks to a greedy assassin
• The intertwined legs of the salt cellar and the 2003 Vienna heist that made it front-page news
• Pewter plates thrown into molten bronze to save the Perseus from a cold shut
• What society still forgives when the offender is recognized as a genius