| Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori), first published in 1550 and revised and expanded for the second edition of 1568, is the original history of Italian Renaissance art. While the account is structured as a sequence of biographies, Vasari incidentally assesses the art he records. Critical views and values inhere in all parts of his text: formal Prefaces, descriptions of works, lists of an artist's skills, commentary in general. This dissertation tracks and analyzes Vasari's views on painting.;Vasari wrote to explain, honor, and memorialize the arts for which Italy had become famed. He revered painting in particular and was proud of his own mastery. He critiques paintings as he made them: as aggregations of cose dell'arte, the things or parts of painting. Understanding Vasari's language of picture-making must radically alter the age-old view that Renaissance painters strove to paint a scene as seen through a window, that they sought above all to imitate reality.;Section I establishes context: the circumstances of Vasari's life that led to the writing of, and the content of, the book; the literary and historiographic tradition in which he worked. Sections II through V, paralleling the progression of the text, study salient issues as they crystallize. |
