BENVENUTO CELLINI, Italian artist, born (d. 1571); an Italian goldsmith, painter, sculptor, soldier and musician of the Renaissance, who also wrote a famous autobiography. His art, often celebratory of the young male form, is a testimonial to his appreciation of that beauty.

Cellini was charged four times with sodomy, only one of which is covered in his autobiography. At the age of twenty-three with a boy named Domenico di ser Giuliano da Ripa, an accusation was settled with a small fine (perhaps thanks to his youth at the time).  

While in Paris, a former model and lover brought charges against him of using her "after the Italian fashion." This is the only charge recounted in his autobiography, possibly because his confrontation with his accuser at court led to a dismissal of charges.

In Florence in 1548, Cellini was accused by a woman named Margherita, for having certain familiarities with her son, Vincenzo. Perhaps this was a private quarrel, one from which he simply fled, and undeserving of attention.

Finally, in 1556, his apprentice Fernando, after being fired for an altercation, accused his mentor of Cinque anni ha tenuto per suo ragazzo Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano, giovanetto con el quale ha usato carnalmente moltissime volte col nefando vitio della soddomia, tenendolo in letto come sua moglie (For five years he kept as his boy Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano, a youth whom he used carnally in the abject vice of sodomy numerous instances, keeping him in his bed as a wife.) This time the penalty was a hefty fifty golden scudi fine, and four years of prison, remitted to four years of house arrest thanks to the intercession of the Medicis.

His writings are consistently more highly descriptive of the men in his life than of the women, many of whom he does not even name. His references to his boy models (and possibly lovers) are more tender and affectionate than his references to women, including his wife. In his sculpture, the male is always more convincingly modeled than the female - his Venus of Fontainebleau is unconvincing as a representation of the realistic female body.

Besides his works in gold and silver, Cellini executed sculptures of grander scale. The most distinguished of these is the bronze group of "Perseus holding the head of Medusa", a work (first suggested by Duke Cosimo I de Medici now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, his attempt to surpass Michelangelos David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. The casting was hailed as a masterpiece as soon as it was completed. The original relief from the foot of the pedestal — Perseus and Andromeda — is in the Bargello, and replaced by a cast.

TERENCE MCNALLY, American Playwright, born;an American playwright considered one of the leading American dramatists still writing today. In addition to four Tony Awards, McNally has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served as vice-president since 1981. McNally is married to playwright Thomas Kirdahy.

His first credited Broadway musical was The Rink in 1984, a project he entered after the score by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb had been written. In 1990, McNally won an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Miniseries or Special for Andre's Mother, a drama about a woman trying to cope with her son's death from HIV-AIDS. A y ear later, he returned to the stage with another AIDS-related play Lips Together, Teeth Apart, a study of the irrational fears many people harbor towards homosexuals and people who have the disease. In the play, two married couples spend the Fourth of July weekend at a summer house on Fire Island. The house has been willed to Sally Truman by her brother who has just died of AIDS, and it soon becomes evident that both couples are afraid to get in the swimming pool once used by Sally's brother.

With Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1992, McNally returned to the musical stage, collaborating with Kander and Ebb on a script which explores the complex relationship between two men caged together in a Latin American prison. Kiss of the Spider Woman won the 1993 Tony Award for Best Book of A Musical.. He collaborated with Stephen Flaherty And Lynn Ahrens on Ragtime in 1997, a musical adaptation of the E. L. Doctorow novel, which tells the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr., a fiery black piano man who demands retribution when his Model T is destroyed by a mob of white troublemakers. The play also features such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Booker, T. Washington, J.P.Morgan and Henry Ford.

McNally's other plays include 1994's Love! Valor! Compassion! which examines the relationships of eight Gay men; and Master Class (1995), a character study of legendary opera soprano Maria Callas which won the Tony for Best Play.

In 1997, McNally stirred up a storm of controversy with Corpus Christi, a modern day retelling of the story of Jesus' birth, ministry, and death in which both he and his disciples are homosexuals. In fact, the play was initially cancelled because of death threats against the board members of the Manhattan Theater Club which was to produce the play. However, several other playwrights such as Tony Kushner threatened to withdraw their plays if Corpus Christi was not produced, and the board finally relented. When the play opened, the Theater was besieged by almost 2000 protesters, furious at what they considered blasphemy. When Corpus Christi opened in London, a British Muslim group called the Defenders of the Messenger Jesus even went so far as to issue a fatwa sentencing McNally to death.

DAVID HO, HIV-AIDS researcher, was born on this date; a Taiwan-born American AIDS researcher famous for pioneering the use of protease inhibitors in treating HIV-infected patients with his team. Ho devised the method of treating HIV with "cocktails". He theorized that combining the powerful protease inhibitor drugs with other HIV medications would provide a more effective way to treat the disease. Ho is married to artist Susan Kuo, with whom he has three children. Many of us owe our lives to his work.