Lives of the Artists is a consistent homage to Florentines that tends to present them as the leading figures in the development of Renaissance art , while the Venetian production was ignored, as well as of the rest of Europe.
However, before writing the extended edition Vasari visited Venice and presented Venetian art including Titian. By combining the tradition of biographical writing with a modern critical approach including a pinch of gossip , Vasari created an excellent work that provides significant portrayals of masters such as Brunelleschi, Giotto, Mantegna, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, including his own biography at the end of the volume.
Lives of the Artists was also used very often by the scholars as a classical reference guide for the artists' names , which differ from one source to another.
As mentioned, the book was dedicated to Cosimo I de' Medici so it starts with a preface focused on his personality, continuing with technical texts about architecture, sculpture, and painting. For a very long time, Lives of the Artists was the most relevant source regarding the Italian Early Renaissance that was used by the generations of scholars, even though it practically ignored the Renaissance production of the rest of Italy and the rest of Europe.
Even today, translated into many languages, this particular book is unsurprisingly considered the most influential guide through the history of Renaissance art since it stands as a prime pioneering example for writing artist biographies and is an instrumental book for surveying the Italian Renaissance and the role it had on Florence and Rome. In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance , Giorgio Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect.
Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari's own early career.
On Painting. The Bookseller of Florence. Short Stories. Nat Tate. A Month in Siena. The Five. Playing To The Gallery. Perry Grayson , Grayson Perry. Our top books, exclusive content and competitions. Straight to your inbox. Throughout his career, Vasari practiced as an artist.
He entered the Arezzo studio of Guillaume de Marcillat, whose previous commissions at the Vatican in Rome brought Vasari into conversance with the work of Michelangelo and Raphael. There Vasari and the two Medici received further instruction by Pierio Valeriano — He studied ancient and modern Roman art and architecture again with Salviati. There he also met Paolo Giovio, an important force for his Vite years later.
From that point on, he decided to exist on his own. He painted several work for the monks at Camaldoli before journeying to Rome in , accompanied by his assistant Giovanni Battista Cungi. Already he was interested in studying ancient with a view of their effect on contemporary art, the core idea later into his masterwork of writing, the Vite.
Vasari went to Venice in The printer was the Florentine humanist Lorenzo Torrentino d. After its appearance several other biographies of artists appeared, most notably the life of Michelangelo by Asconio Condivi q. Vasari corrected and enlarged his text, issuing a second edition in It is this version that all subsequent editions and translations are based, and for which Vasari owes his fame. The work is divided into a preface proemio , a discussion of the various media, and then three sections devoted to artist biographies arranged chronologically.
When Vasari wrote his lives he was concerned mainly with Florentine artists. Michelangelo was the only artist still living when the Vite appeared. Several indexes complete the work. Chronological biographies of artists had previously existed.
Core to Vasari was the notion of the rebirth of art, a rinascita. Art had a history and by new birth, it reestablished itself as a noble pursuit worthy of study. This, too, was not a novel conception with Vasari, but in his book, it took on a logical sense of order. Cimabue, Giotto and others formed the naissance of art, inspired by the imitation of nature, a primary stage primi lumi.
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