What did the maker of the world’s most expensive salt shaker do with pigeon blood?

So, the world’s most expensive salt shaker is usually said to be the Cellini Salt Cellar which is currently worth $60 million. It was made by the Italian goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini in the sixteenth century for Francis I of France. Finished by 1543, the cellar is decorated by a gold enameled sculpture of two figures. The cellar is currently on display in Vienna. But you can read all this on Wikipedia. Apart from being a goldsmith, Cellini wrote a great set of memoirs. This is his description of the Cellar:

"I first laid down an oval framework, considerably longer than half a cubit… upon this ground, wishing to suggest the interminglement of land and ocean, I modelled two figures, considerably taller than a palm in height, which were seated with their legs interlaced, suggesting those lengthier branches of the sea which run up into the continents. The sea was a man, and in his hand I placed a ship, elaborately wrought in all its details, and well adapted to hold a quantity of salt. Beneath him I grouped the four sea-horses, and in his right hand he held his trident. The earth I fashioned like a woman, with all the beauty of form, the grace, and charm of which my art was capable. She had a richly decorated temple firmly based upon the ground at one side; and here her hand rested. This I intended to receive the pepper. In her other hand I put a cornucopia, overflowing with all the natural treasures I could think of. Below this goddess, in the part which represented earth, I collected the fairest animals that haunt our globe. In the quarter presided over by the deity of ocean, I fashioned such choice kinds of fishes and shells as could be properly displayed in that small space."

Well, it is a detailed description, apart from the considerably rough measurements, It seems that the Italians predicted the adjective ‘choice.’ What does this have to do with Pigeon blood then? Well, in another passage of the same autobiography, Cellini, working on different projects describes an accident.

“It so happened on one of those mornings… …that a very fine splinter of steel flew into my right eye, and embedded itself so deeply in the pupil that it could not be extracted. I thought for certain I must lose the sight of that eye. After some days I sent for Maestro Raffaello dé Pilli, the surgeon, who obtained a couple of live pigeons, and placing me upon my back across a table, took the birds and opened a large vein they have beneath the wing, so that the blood gushed out into my eye. I felt immediately relieved, and in the space of two days the splinter came away, and I remained with eyesight greatly improved.”

A coincidental recover. But there is the answer to the question. The designer of the world’s most expensive salt shaker used pigeon’s blood to remove a steel splinter from his eye.

Links

Famed 'La Saliera' sculpture back on display in Vienna – 2013 Article
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/uk-art-austria-saliera-idUSLNE91R02420130228


Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini on Project Guttenberg -
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4028/pg4028.html