ABSTRACT
The foundry tale related to Benvenuto Cellini Perseus depicts a shop on fire, an unattended drop in furnace temperature and the household tin cutlery and dishes thrown into the melt to decrease freezing temperature. Some twenty years later, there is a parallel, but incomplete legend regarding the casting of El Giraldillo by Bartolome Morel. Nevertheless, in this second case the tin content remains relatively low and the lead content exceeds the usual values for Renaissance bronze statues. A characterization of lead isotopic composition may reveal whether it comes from a single source, that is, the lead was bought and added intentionally to the melt or whether every lead object at hand was used in a hurry to decrease the freezing temperature. Additionally, certain lead objects retrieved during the 2001–2005 restoration of El Giraldillo have also been analysed.
