Royal Revelations and Renaissance Scandals: The Tangled Tales of Prince Harry and Benvenuto Cellini

Happy Belated MLK weekend! In HR&R tradition, we are posting a shorter “update” article in honor of the holiday. This one relates to the subject of one of our most popular articles, How The Hapsburg Spare Wrote The Script For Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – namely, Prince Harry.

It was just over one year ago when Prince Harry’s bombshell autobiography, Spare, was first published. To say that the book was a behemoth is an understatement: it sold 1.4 million copies across the U.S., U.K.and Canada on its first day alone, blowing the previous record out of the water. Globally, sales reached around 3.2 million by the first week. 

Normally, such numbers should have brought unadulterated joy to the author, but this was not exactly the case. The intimate confessions subjected Prince Harry to intense ridicule – particularly from South Park, who coined his book “Waaaagh” and mercilessly mocked the former royal’s frostbitten “todger.” Even Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, reportedly has “regrets” about the memoir, per Marie Claire UK.

But Prince Harry is not the only public figure to have published a questionable autobiography, and the most famous (or perhaps, infamous) antecedent unquestionably belongs to Benvenuto Cellini.

Benvenuto Cellini lived from 1500 – 1571 and was a renowned Italian goldsmith and sculptor. Born in Florence, Italy, Cellini was a key figure in the Mannerist style, which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Among his most famous works is the "Perseus with the Head of Medusa," a bronze sculpture that stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. He also created the famed gold Salt Cellar (Saliera) for Francis I of France.

Cellini’s talent doubtlessly places him in the pantheon of Renaissance greats, along with Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. However, his artistic legacy has since been overshadowed by his memoir, which is arguably now more well known than his art.

Titled The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and available to read in full online here, Cellini’s memoir recounts his turbulent and adventurous life, marked by artistic triumphs, dramatic escapades, and frequent encounters with danger and adversity. He details his experiences working for prestigious patrons, including popes and royalty, and the creation of his masterpieces. His narrative is imbued with self-aggrandizement and personal anecdotes, even when it portrays the unsympathetic or unsavory parts of his character.

Cellini wrote in a conversational first-person narrative, a revolutionary form for the time that would later be copied by Spare. Moreover, he set the standard for frank admissions. For example, he openly admits to engaging in criminal activities, including multiple instances of murder. He included explicit details about his sexual encounters and exploits, including seducing a 14-year-old serving girl and dressing a young boy up as a woman. Lastly, he discusses his own charges of sodomy and gossips about his powerful contemporaries. 

Though Prince Harry has not lived quite as wild a life, there are many ways in which the memoirs mirror one another, and there are a few in particular that stick out to this author. The first is the aforementioned “self-aggrandizement” in Cellini’s work. As noted by the blog Lotz in Translation:

“Every page is stuffed with self-praise. He compliments himself for his robust constitution, his strong body, his keen mind, his kind nature, his skill in combat, and most of all his artistic prowess. The only artist he thinks equal to himself is Michelangelo, and with few exceptions he considers his rivals to be incompetent dunces, or worse.”

Though Harry wisely declined from exhibiting the same level of braggadocio about himself (claiming he was hamstrung by both his stuffy family and childhood trauma), he less wisely decided to transfer it to his wife, Meghan Markle. It is Meghan who has a keen mind, a kind nature, and the spirit of his deified mother.

Meanwhile, Harry’s big rival, older brother William, gets a brutally unflattering review. From making fun of his balding hairline (which, Harry made sure to note, makes him look less like Diana) to recounting how William broke his necklace in a physical altercation, Harry spares no punches against his competitor.

Both authors are keen to name-drop; Cellini talks of rubbing shoulders with princes, bishops, and even the Pope. Meanwhile, Prince Harry – while consistently emphasizing his own need for privacy – was more than willing to discuss taking hallucinogenic drugs at Courtney Cox’s Los Angeles home.

Both authors share extremely intimate details about their lives that leave the reader wondering about the mental status of the writer. To be sure, Cellini is in another league of immorality; he confesses to murder, rape, and domestic abuse. Prince Harry is fortunately far tamer, and his confessions of wetting his pants before meeting Meghan or discussing how his “todger” is uncircumcised are more bizarre than prurient. 

Lastly, both authors exhibit a victim complex when things do not go their way. To quote Lotz in Translation once more:

“Cellini would have you believe he is a decent, honest, respectful man and that all his enemies were motivated by jealousy or pure wickedness. And yet, the speed and consistency with which he finds himself surrounded by enemies, and the frequency with which he gets into disputes and fights, makes it painfully clear that he must have been a bellicose and infuriating fellow.”

Substitute Prince Harry for Cellini and the paragraph could be a review of Spare itself. According to the Duke of Sussex, the allegations of staff bullying against Harry and his wife were due to racism (even though Harry admits to having several staffers cry on the job). His family didn’t care for Meghan Markle because they were jealous of her charm and talent. Spotify fired the duo and called them “grifters;” meanwhile, insiders connected to Harry and Meghan insisted that they were simply “unlucky.”

Of course, there are some major differences between Prince Harry and Cellini. Most important is that Prince Harry’s confessions are not even close to reaching the level of depravity of Cellini. Second is that Cellini’s memoirs were published in 1728, more than 150 years after his death. Prince Harry, in contrast, unwisely published his autobiography last year, resulting in further drama with the royal family.

Last but not least, Cellini actually wrote the autobiography himself, and his informal tone and descriptions of renaissance life have helped make the book a classic, despite its unreliable and controversial narrator. Prince Harry relied on a ghostwriter, and only time will tell if his book will stand the test of time.

But, as history has shown, perhaps it would be better for the former royal if it did not. Prince Harry is clearly eager to position his legacy as a warrior prince who advocated for veterans, mental health awareness, and the environment. However, history has shown that an explosive memoir can overshadow even the most prestigious of careers. With this in mind, it is far more likely that Prince Harry will instead be remembered for dressing as a Nazi and using his mother’s lip cream on his nether regions.