Upon the question of Cellini the artistic world has long been divided into two camps. The majority of those who have previously dealt with the subject have considered it sufficient to sum up the whole history of the jeweller's art of the sixteenth century under the name of this one artist, and to attribute everything important to him. The lively and singularly attractive narrative of his own life and adventures contains such candid glorification of himself and his work, that the temptation is strong to follow the majority, and, unmindful of his contemporaries, to associate with him, as he himself has done, the finest jewellery of the whole Renaissance. Eugène Plon, for example, Cellini's chief exponent, in his magnificent work, _Benvenuto Cellini, Orfèvre, Médailleur, Sculpteur_ (1883), though eminently just, and on the whole fair in his attributions, cannot disguise an evident desire to ascribe to the Florentine goldsmith, or at any rate to his school, not only several jewels which might conceivably be associated with Cellini, but also several others of more doubtful origin. Among these is the important group of jewels in the Rothschild Collection in the British Museum, known as the Waddesdon Bequest, the real origin of all of which is held by those best entitled to judge to be incontestably German. Cellini's critics, on the other hand, sceptical, and in the main dispassionate, have placed him under a more searching light, and despoiled him of the halo with which his own memoirs have encircled him. He remains, however, an excellent and many-sided artist, thoroughly versed in all the technicalities of his craft, and one who without doubt strongly influenced his contemporaries. Admirable goldsmith and jeweller as he certainly was, he is entitled to the highest distinction, but not so much on account of the references in his _Vita_ and _Trattati_ to his own productions, as for his lucid treatment of technical questions. "Artists," says Mr. Symonds, "who aspire to immortality should shun the precious metals." Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the _Leda and the Swan_ at Vienna (Pl. XXIX, 5), the _Chariot of Apollo_ at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the _Four Cæsars_ and the _Centaur and the Bacchic Genii_ in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous golden salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith's point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewellers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.