Giorgio Vasari

Vasari's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects are and always have been central texts for the study of the Italian Renaissance. They can and should be read in many ways. Since their publication in the mid-sixteenth century, they have been a source of both information and pleasure. Their immediacy after more than four hundred years is a measure of Vasari's success. He wished the artists of his day, himself included, to be famous. He made the association of artistry and genius, of renaissance and the arts so familiar that they now seem inevitable. In this book Patricia Rubin argues that both the inevitability and the immediacy should be questioned. To read Vasari without historical perspective results in a limited and distorted view of The Lives. Rubin shows that Vasari had distinct ideas about the nature of his task as a biographer, about the importance of interpretation, judgment, and example - about the historian's art. Vasari's principles and practices as a writer are examined here, as are their sources in Vasari's experiences as an artist.

“Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages.” —Wall Street Journal Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as “insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable,” The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1571) is well known for his celebrated work on the lives of the Renaissance artists. But not many people know that Vasari was a painter and architect as well as a biographer, and that he wrote one of the most valuable treatises on the technical methods of the painters, architects, and sculptors of his time. This is the first and only English translation of this important technical material (originally published in 1550 as an introduction to Vasari's Lives of the Artists). Vasari, as a practical craftsman, brings to his work as unusual understanding of the processes and materials he writes about, and conveys this knowledge to the reader in a style of the pleasantest and most readable kind. In the section on architecture, he describes the methods used in constructing rustic fountains and grottos; how Michelangelo developed new uses for architectural materials; the architectural uses of enriched plaster; the Renaissance view of Ionic, Doric, Gothic, and other types of architecture; and many similar topics. In the selection on sculpture, the reader will learn about the making of the model, completion of the statue, reliefs, bronze casting, modelled plaster work, sculpture in wood, and other processes. The final section, on painting, discusses aesthetics, perspective, foreshortening, how colors were blended, fresco painting, painting in tempera, oil painting, and much more. Scholars and historians of art have long used this book as the most detailed and valuable sourcebook of its time. But its full, readable discussions, combined with the sense of actuality and historical presence it contains, make it also perhaps the best possible description of the Renaissance artists in the heyday of their achievement.

This book examines the artistic, cultural, and historical influence of Giorgio Vasari's teachers, mentors, and patrons on his sacred and profane paintings. As a Maniera artist, Vasari learns to admire and assimilate the art of the ancient masters. With the guidance of Dante's literary writings and Marsilio Ficino's Neoplatonic philosophy, Vasari reveals a moral and didactic vision in his art. Additionally, Vasari's artistic patronage is influenced by the political views of Niccolò Machiavelli. In the integration of both ancient art and myths with the didactic legacy of biblical figures and moral personifications, Vasari manifests his artistic theory and symbolism in his sacred and profane paintings.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari brings together the world's foremost experts on Vasari as well as up-and-coming scholars to provide, at the 500th anniversary of his birth, a comprehensive assessment of the current state of scholarship on this important-and still controversial-artist and writer. The contributors examine the life and work of Vasari as an artist, architect, courtier, academician, and as a biographer of artists. They also explore his legacy, including an analysis of the reception of his work over the last five centuries. Among the topics specifically addressed here are an assessment of the current controversy as to how much of Vasari's 'Lives' was actually written by Vasari; and explorations of Vasari's relationships with, as well as reports about, contemporaries, including Cellini, Michelangelo and Giotto, among less familiar names. The geographic scope takes in not only Florence, the city traditionally privileged in Italian Renaissance art history, but also less commonly studied geographical venues such as Siena and Venice.

Giorgio Vasari was one of the few artists in the history of art who built, designed, and decorated his homes. This book is the first to focus on Vasari's decorative cycles for his homes in Arezzo and Florence, revealing the significance of the artistic, cultural, and historical milieu of the sixteenth century. This study breaks new ground in two ways: First, in a personal and original manner, the imagery is related to Vasari's artistic ideas on history painting and the role of the artist. And second, Vasari's imagery portrays visual galleries applauding his teachers, antiquity and the creation of art.

Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Great men, and their immortal works, are brought vividly to life, as Vasari depicts the young Giotto scratching his first drawings on stone; Donatello gazing at Brunelleschi's crucifix; and Michelangelo's painstaking work on the Sistine Chapel, harassed by the impatient Pope Julius II. The Lives also convey much about Vasari himself and his outstanding abilities as a critic inspired by his passion for art.

Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the 13th century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo.