holding up the head of the enemy general, Holofernes,

she'd just beheaded.

But Judith had been set up on the Piazza Della Signoria,

in front of the seat of Florence's government

to celebrate chasing the Medici despots out of Florence.

So when, almost a century later,

Cosimo de' Medici became duke,

he wanted a statue which would reverse all that,

a manly hero beheading a female monster.

And Cellini, an alpha-male who knew all about bloody killings,

seized his chance.

Donatello had cast Judith in pieces,

Cellini promised to do the Perseus in one casting.

"Impossible," Scoffed the duke.

"The liquid bronze won't reach all those extremities."

"Watch me," Said Cellini, who liked talking back to his patrons.

Cellini was playing for the highest stakes imaginable,

the casting of the Perseus was the moment that was going to

transform him from a goldsmith, a craftsman, a mere artisan,

to whom everybody condescended, into an artist superhero -

the real thing.

Having set up everything just right,

suddenly as the melted bronze

was going to be poured, Cellini falls deathly ill

of a terrible fever.

So sick, so ill, he's sure he's going to die.

There's an incredible storm.

Wind, rain, the roof is partly removed,

the cover of the furnace explodes.

And most fatally, the temperature of the molten bronze

starts to lower.

That word that nobody wants to hear in a foundry - caking.

The premature coagulation of the alloy starts to be set.

The assistants come running, "Maestro, maestro!"

Everything is going pear-shaped.

The bronze alloy will cool, it won't run to all the extremities

of the mould, and you end up with this little, kind of, dwarfish homunculus.