A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the first name of the person the large bronze door-knocker is no longer attributed to?, using the article: In a collection of Renaissance metalwork Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) represents the ultimate attribution, as his genuine works as a goldsmith are rarer than paintings by Giorgione.  In his 1902 catalogue Charles Hercules Read mentions that many of the pendants had been attributed to Cellini, but refrains from endorsing the attributions.  A small silver hand-bell (WB.95) had belonged to Horace Walpole, who praised it extravagantly in a letter as "the uniquest thing in the world, a silver bell for an inkstand made by Benvenuto Cellini. It makes one believe all the extravagant encomiums he bestows on himself; indeed so does his Perseus. Well, my bell is in the finest taste, and is swarmed by caterpillars, lizards, grasshoppers, flies, and masques, that you would take it for one of the plagues of Egypt. They are all in altissimo, nay in out-issimo relievo and yet almost invisible but with a glass. Such foliage, such fruitage!"  However Baron Ferdinand had realized that it was more likely to be by Wenzel Jamnitzer, goldsmith to the Emperor Rudolf II, to whom it is still attributed.  Another piece no longer attributed to Cellini is a large bronze door-knocker, with a figure of Neptune, 40 cm high, and weighing over 11 kilos.One category of the bequest that has seen several demotions is the 16 pieces and sets of highly decorated cutlery (WB.201–216).  Read dated none of these later than the 17th century, but on the British Museum database in 2014 several were dated to the 19th century, and were recent fraudulent creations when they entered the collection, some made by Reinhold Vasters.  Doubts have also been raised over a glass cup and cover bearing the date 1518 (WB.59), which might in fact be 19th-century.  Eight pieces of silver plate were redated to the 19th century by Hugh Tait, and some of the jewellery., what would be the answer ?



Benvenuto