The experience of law and art literature in the sixteenth century: Benvenuto Cellini's La Vita

International audienceWhen one focuses on what literature owes to law, one naturally looks at the learned milieux. Nevertheless, if one wishes to appreciate the extent of the presence of law in literature, it may be of interest to seek its traces in authors characterised by a certain marginality, to the extent that they have no legal training and very little literary training either. Cellini constitutes a borderline case for law and literature, two areas he experienced without having either the formal knowledge or the skills for them. This reflection, which inscribes Cellini's work in the juridical system of the Middle Age and the early Modern Age, allows us to understand how this work claims, through the language of Law, an image of sovereign artist, which places Cellini above the law and side by side with the great princes