Short answers, pulled from the story.
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author born in Florence on the 3rd of November 1500. He is famous for creating Perseus with the Head of Medusa, the Cellini Salt Cellar (Saliera), and an autobiography described as one of the most important documents of the 16th century.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. The original relief from the pedestal, Perseus and Andromeda, is in the Bargello museum in Florence, replaced at the statue's base by a cast.
The Saliera is a 26-centimeter-high gold, enamel, and ivory salt cellar commissioned by Francis I of France, conservatively valued at 58,000,000 schilling. It was stolen from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna on the 11th of May 2003 and recovered by Austrian police on the 21st of January 2006.
Cellini began his autobiography in 1558 at the age of fifty-eight and stopped writing around 1563, just before a trip to Pisa. A manuscript copy was first printed in Cologne, Germany, in 1728, and the first English translation by Thomas Nugent appeared in 1771.
Cellini worked at the court of Francis I at Fontainebleau and Paris, creating the Saliera, a signed portrait medal of Francis, and beginning the unfinished Golden Gate for the Palace of Fontainebleau. Large silver statues of Jupiter, Vulcan, and Mars were also made for Francis I during this period, though they have since been lost.
Duke Cosimo I de' Medici appointed Cellini court sculptor, gave him a house in Via del Rosario in Florence with a foundry, and set his annual salary at two hundred scudi. Cosimo commissioned a bronze bust of himself and Perseus with the Head of Medusa for the Lanzi loggia.