| The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects | |
| Title Orig: | Le Vite de più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri |
| Translator: | Eliza Foster |
| Orig Lang Code: | it |
| Author: | Giorgio Vasari |
| Country: | Duchy of Florence |
| Language: | Italian |
| Subject: | Artist biographies |
| Publisher: | Torrentino (1550), Giunti (1568) |
| Pub Date: | 1550, enlarged and revised in 1568 |
| English Pub Date: | 1850 |
| Pages: | 369 (1550), 686 (1568) |
| Oclc: | 458416630 |
| Dewey: | 709.22 |
| Congress: | N6922 V4924 |
| Native Wikisource: | Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (1568) |
The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Italian: Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori), often simply known as The Lives (Italian: Le Vite), is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered "perhaps the most famous, and even today the most-read work of the older literature of art",[1] "some of the Italian Renaissance's most influential writing on art",[2] and "the first important book on art history".[3]
Vasari published the work in two editions with substantial differences between them; the first edition, two volumes, in 1550 and the second, three volumes, in 1568 (which is the one usually translated and referred to). One important change was the increased attention paid to Venetian art in the second edition, even though Vasari still was, and has ever since been, criticised for an excessive emphasis on the art of his native Florence.
The writer Paolo Giovio expressed his desire to compose a treatise on contemporary artists at a party in the house of Cardinal Farnese, who asked Vasari to provide Giovio with as much relevant information as possible. Giovio instead yielded the project to Vasari.[4]
As the first Italian art historian, Vasari initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that continues today. Vasari's work was first published in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino in Florence,[5] and dedicated to Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It included a valuable treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. It was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568 and provided with woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural).
The work has a consistent and notorious favour of Florentines and tends to attribute to them all the new developments in Renaissance art – for example, the invention of engraving. Venetian art in particular, let alone other parts of Europe, is systematically ignored.[6] Between his first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art (finally including Titian) without achieving a neutral point of view. John Symonds claimed in 1899 that, "It is clear that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions" (in regards to Vasari's life of Nicola Pisano), while acknowledging that, despite these shortcomings, it is one of the basic sources for information on the Renaissance in Italy.[7]
Vasari's biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip. Many of his anecdotes have the ring of truth, although likely inventions. Others are generic fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that the older master repeatedly tried to brush away, a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles. He did not research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation and the immediately preceding one. Modern criticism—with all the new materials opened up by research—has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. The work is widely considered a classic even today, though it is widely agreed that it must be supplemented by modern scientific research.
Vasari includes a forty-two-page sketch of his own biography at the end of his Vite, and adds further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco de' Rossi.
Vasari's Vite has been described as "by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art"[8] and "the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists".[1] Its influence is situated mainly in three domains: as an example for contemporary and later biographers and art historians, as a defining factor in the view on the Renaissance and the role of Florence and Rome in it, and as a major source of information on the lives and works of early Renaissance artists from Italy.
The Vite has been translated wholly or partially into many languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Polish, Russian and Spanish.
The Vite formed a model for encyclopedias of artist biographies. Different 17th century translators became artist biographers in their own country of origin and were often called the Vasari of their country. Karel Van Mander was probably the first Vasarian author with his Painting book (Het Schilderboeck, 1604), which encompassed not only the first Dutch translation of Vasari, but also the first Dutch translation of Ovid and was accompanied by a list of Italian painters who appeared on the scene after Vasari, and the first comprehensive list of biographies of painters from the Low Countries.[1] Similarly, Joachim von Sandrart, author of Deutsche Akademie (1675), became known as the "German Vasari" and Antonio Palomino, author of An account of the lives and works of the most eminent Spanish painters, sculptors and architects (1724), became the "Spanish Vasari".[9] In England, Aglionby's Painting Illustrated from 1685 was largely based on Vasari as well.[1] In Florence the biographies of artists were revised and implemented in the late 17th century by Filippo Baldinucci.
The Vite is also important as the basis for discussions about the development of style.[10] It influenced the view art historians had of the Early Renaissance for a long time, placing too much emphasis on the achievements of Florentine and Roman artists while ignoring those of the rest of Italy and certainly the artists from the rest of Europe.[11]
For centuries, it has been the most important source of information on Early Renaissance Italian (and especially Tuscan) painters and the attribution of their paintings. In 1899, John Addington Symonds used the Vite as one of his basic sources for the description of artists in his seven books on the Renaissance in Italy,[12] and nowadays it is still, despite its obvious biases and shortcomings, the basis for the biographies of many artists like Leonardo da Vinci.[13]
The Vite contains the biographies of many important Italian artists, and is also adopted as a sort of classical reference guide for their names, which are sometimes used in different ways. What follows is the complete list of artists appearing the second (1568) edition. In a few cases, different very short biographies were given in one section.
The 1568 edition was published in three volumes. Vasari divided the biographies into three parts. Parts I and II are contained in the first volume. Part III is presented in the two other volumes.
The first volume starts with a renewed dedication to Cosimo I de' Medici,[14] followed by an additional one to Pope Pius V.[15] The volume contains an index of names and objects mentioned,[16] and subsequently a list of illustrations, and finally an index of places and their buildings also with references to the passages where they are mentioned in the text.[17] All these indexes are features, that facilitate using the book, and are still a model for today's art historical publications. Hereafter an almost 40 pages long lettera by Florentine historian Giovanni Battista Adriani to Vasari on the history of art is printed.[18] The principal part of the volume begins with a preface,[19] followed by an introduction into the background, the materials and techniques of architecture, sculpture, and painting.[20] [21] A second preface follows,[22] introducing the actual "Vite".
Biographies, first part
Biographies, second part
Biographies, third part
Biographies, third part (continued)
There have been numerous editions and translations of the Lives over the years. Many have been abridgements due to the great length of the original.
The first English-language translation by Eliza Foster (as "Mrs. Jonathan Foster") was published by Henry George Bohn in 1850-51, with careful and abundant annotations. According to professor Patricia Rubin of New York University, "her translation of Vasari brought the Lives to a wide English-language readership for the first time. Its very real value in doing so is proven by the fact that it remained in print and in demand through the nineteenth century." [24]
The most recent new English translation is the abridged translation by Peter and Julia Conaway Bondanella, published in the Oxford World's Classics series in 1991.[25]
Italian
English