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Lives of the Artists Volume I
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.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1550
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About the author
Giorgio Vasari
1,030 books153 followersGiorgio Vasari was an Italian painter and architect, known for his famous biographies of Italian artists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
March 2, 2016
Interesting to read about all the works that no longer exist. Also really useful in that it makes these larger-than-life artists at least semi-human. Lots of moments like this:
"Then Michaelangelo made a model in wax of a young David with a sling in his hand, and began to work in S. Maria del Fiore, setting up a hoarding round the marble, and working at it continually without any seeing it until he had brought it to perfection. Master Simone had so spoilt the marble that in some places there was not enough left for Michaelangelo's purpose, and certainly it was a miracle restoring thus one that was dead. When Piero Soderini saw it, it pleased him much, but he said to Michaelangelo, who was engaged in retouching it in certain places, that he thought the nose was too thick. Michaelangelo, perceiving that the Gonfaloniere was below the statue, and could not see it truly, to satisfy him went up the scaffold, taking a chisel in his left hand with a little marble dust, and began to work with his chisel, letting a little dust fall now and then, but not touching the nose. Then looking down to the Gonfaloniere, who was watching, he said, "Look at it now." "It pleases me better," said the Gonfaloniere; "you have given it life." So Michaelangelo came down pitying those who make a show of understanding matters about which they really know nothing."
I'm into it, especially the lives of Masaccio and Fra Angelico.
"Then Michaelangelo made a model in wax of a young David with a sling in his hand, and began to work in S. Maria del Fiore, setting up a hoarding round the marble, and working at it continually without any seeing it until he had brought it to perfection. Master Simone had so spoilt the marble that in some places there was not enough left for Michaelangelo's purpose, and certainly it was a miracle restoring thus one that was dead. When Piero Soderini saw it, it pleased him much, but he said to Michaelangelo, who was engaged in retouching it in certain places, that he thought the nose was too thick. Michaelangelo, perceiving that the Gonfaloniere was below the statue, and could not see it truly, to satisfy him went up the scaffold, taking a chisel in his left hand with a little marble dust, and began to work with his chisel, letting a little dust fall now and then, but not touching the nose. Then looking down to the Gonfaloniere, who was watching, he said, "Look at it now." "It pleases me better," said the Gonfaloniere; "you have given it life." So Michaelangelo came down pitying those who make a show of understanding matters about which they really know nothing."
I'm into it, especially the lives of Masaccio and Fra Angelico.
March 20, 2017
"But what inflicted incomparably greater damage and loss on the arts than the things we have mentioned [Constantine’s move to Byzantium, invasions, etc.] was the fervent enthusiasm of the new Christian religion. After long and bloody combat, Christianity, aided by a host of miracles and the burning sincerity of its adherents, defeated and wiped out the old faith of the pagans. Then with great fervour and diligence it strove to cast out and utterly destroy every last possible occasion of sin; and in doing so it ruined or demolished all the marvellous statues, besides the other sculptures, the pictures, mosaics and ornaments representing the false pagan gods; and as well as this it destroyed countless memorials and inscriptions left in honour of illustrious persons who had been commemorated by the genius of the ancient world in statues and other public adornments. Moreover, in order to construct churches for their own services the Christians destroyed the sacred temples of the pagan idols. To embellish and and heighten the original magnificence of St Peter’s they despoiled of its stone columns the mausoleum of Hadrian (today called Castel Sant’Angelo) and they treated in the same way many buildings whose ruins still exist. These things were done by the Christians not out of hatred for the arts but in order to humiliate and overthrow the pagan gods. Nevertheless, their tremendous zeal was responsible for inflicting severe damage on the practice of the arts, which then fell into total confusion."
- From Vasari’s Preface (pp. 36-7)
Vasari may have taken his cue from Petrarch, who wrote in his poem Africa, written in 1338, a year after he first visited Rome, addressing the poem itself: "for you, if you should long outlive me, as my soul hopes and wishes, there is perhaps a better age in store; this slumber of forgetfulness will not last forever. After the darkness has been dispelled, our grandsons will be able to walk back into the pure radiance of the past."
A century after Petrarch, Leon Battista Alberti, the pioneer of Renaissance art theory, wrote in On Painting (De pictura) along similar lines as Vasari would do another century later: "I used to marvel and at the same time to grieve that so many excellent and superior arts and sciences from our most vigorous antique past could now seem lacking and almost wholly lost. We know from [remaining] works and through references to them that they were once widespread. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, geometricians, rhetoricians, seers and similar noble and amazing intellects are very rarely found today and there are few to praise them. (...) It must be admitted that it was less difficult for the Ancients--because they had models to imitate and from which they could learn--to come to a knowledge of those supreme arts which today are most difficult for us. Our fame ought to be much greater, then, if we discover unheard-of and never-before-seen arts and sciences without teachers or without any model whatsoever. Who could ever be hard or envious enough to fail to praise Pippo the architect on seeing here such a large structure, rising above the skies, ample to cover with its shadow all the Tuscan people, and constructed without the aid of centering or great quantity of wood? (...) if I judge rightly, it was probably unknown and unthought of among the Ancients. But there will be other places, Filippo, to tell of your fame, of the virtues of our Donato [Donatello], and of the others who are most pleasing to me by their deeds." - Alberti, On Painting, Prologue addressed to Filippo Brunelleschi (1435)
Vasari thought of the achievements in art and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans as a Golden Age, and that of the Medieval period which followed as a period of decline. (He hated Gothic art and architecture – that’s also why he chose the term "Gothic" – it was about the worst term he could think of, and he used it as a synonym for "barbaric"...) With the gradual rediscovery of the ancient works of art ("those which were produced in Corinth, Athens, Rome, and other famous cities, before the time of Constantine"), he sees a new beginning: "helped by some subtle influence in the very air of Italy, the new generations started to purge their minds of the grossness of the past so successfully that in 1250 the heaven took pity on the talented men who were being born in Tuscany [Cimabue et al.] and led them back to the pristine forms. Before then, during the years after Rome was sacked and devastadted and swept by fire, men had been able to see the remains of arches and colossi, statues, pillars and carved columns; but until the period we are discussing they had no idea how to use or profit from this fine work." (p. 45)
The Lives consists of three parts. Vasari writes in his Preface to Part Two: "I have divided the artists into three sections or, shall we say, periods, each with its own recognizably distinct character, running from the time of the rebirth of the arts up to our own times." The first part includes Cimabue and Giotto – artists that "mark a new beginning, opening the way for the better work which followed. (...) Then in the second period there was clearly a considerable improvement in invention and execution, with more design, better style, and a more careful finish." (Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Alberti, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, etc.) - This is followed by the third period when "art has achieved everything possible in the imitation of nature and has progressed so far that is thas more reason to fear slipping back than to expect ever to make further advances." (pp. 84-5) The third part includes all the giants of Renaissance art. Leonardo, Giorgione, Correggio, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian have been selected for this edition.
The Life of Michelangelo is the longest by far, and Vasari was proud of being able to call himself his friend. Michelangelo wasn’t all that happy about everything Vasari wrote. Possibly he considered Vasari most of all a useful contact between himself and Duke Cosimo de' Medici in Florence while he was working in Rome – and later he asked his friend Ascanio Condivi to write about his life and to correct some of the things Vasari had got wrong. I haven’t read Condivi’s Vita yet, but I enjoyed Vasari’s account in spite of Michelangelo’s objections to it. In fact I found even his gushing over Michelangelo both amusing and understandable, and by then I had gotten used to Vasari’s style and knew his strengths and weaknesses, so I had no problem bearing with him. – Anyway, Vasari later revised his account of Michelangelo based on that of Condivi, and he provides a wealth of information. The revised and enlarged edition of the Lives was published in 1568, and it is selections from this later edition that has been translated here.
George Bull writes in his Introduction: “The letters of introduction to Cosimo for the 1550 and 1568 editions of the Lives echo in the obsequiousness other letters addressed by artists and writers to the Medici – notably Machiavelli’s letter to Cosimo’s father, Lorenzo, at the head of The Prince: the humble posture adopted in these dedications reflected perhaps, standard modes of address as much as genuine servility. More interesting is the manner in which both Machiavelli and Vasari interpreted political and art history, respectively, in terms of inevitable progression and decline and yet, paradoxically, suggested that the decline could be arrested by genius, by the virtù of a political leader or artist, endowed by nature with great ability and taught to emulate the perfection reached in the past. This affirmation of virtù has been called the ‘fundamental theme of the Lives’.” (p. 15)
“In their entirety, the Lives may fairly be called a work of art. On one great canvas Vasari painted a harmonious and glowing composition which sustains with ease the task of conveying the revolutionary nature of of what happened in Italian art between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. He lifted the story of Tuscan art (...) to the plane of the heroic, stretching back to the quasi-legendary figures of Cimabue and Giotto, and forward to the inspired Michelangelo...” (p. 16)
As Bull also writes, it can get a bit boring at times, but you keep reading because when he really likes a piece of art, Vasari’s enthusiasm often gives his style a lift and makes him write with flair. And there are endless examples of that in this book. He’s also emphatically Florence-centric, which gets kind of entertaining, especially as the book progresses. And Vasari provides plenty of amusing anecdotes and gossip, so that this in a way makes up for the occasional parts where the writing just drags along. - There’s e.g. the story of Giotto’s O, and of how Brunelleschi, to illustrate how his dome could be self-supporting, made an egg stand upright on a slab of marble by hitting one end of the egg hard against it, and later how he feigned illness to expose the fact that Lorenzo Ghiberti (who received the same pay) was not competent to take over the work on the dome in his absence. Stories and anecdotes you may have read before, but this is where they are first told.
There’s also this great anecdote about Michelangelo:
"When he saw the David in place [at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria] Piero Soderini was delighted; but while Michelangelo was retouching it he remarked that he though the nose was too thick. Michelangelo noticing that Gonfalonier was standing beneath the Giant and that from where he was he could not see the figure properly, to satisfy him climbed on the scaffolding by the shoulders, seized hold of a chisel in his left hand, together with some of the marble dust lying on the planks, and as he tapped lightly with the chisel let the dust fall little by little, without altering anything. Then he looked down at the Gonfalonier, who had stopped to watch, and said:
'Now look at it.'
'Ah, that’s much better,' replied Soderini. 'Now you’ve really brought it to life.'
And then Michelangelo climbed down, feeling sorry for those critics who talk nonsense in the hope of appearing well informed.” (p. 338-9)
The Renaissance gave birth to great art (among other things), and also to the first art-history. Vasari was even the first to use the term Renaissance (rinascita) in print. One of his preoccupations was disegno: drawing and making preparatory sketches was something he saw as being of prime importance for a painter. I can agree with this to a large degree, but this and other preoccupations could make him unjust towards some painters. He also at times makes mistakes when describing paintings, getting them mixed up, etc. - possibly because he hadn’t actually seen them, but had to rely on hearsay. These are facts that doesnt really diminish his accomplishment with the Lives, because for a large part his aesthetic judgement was acute and to the point. Nevertheless it is a pity that because he was seen as an authority for such a long period of time, many of these mistakes were perpetuated, a few even into our own times. But however that may be, by delving into Vasari's Lives you’re bound to add something new to your knowledge about most of the great artists he has written about – and not the least do you get to know the art world of the early 16th century quite intimately as seen through the eyes of Vasari. For me this was not a book to simply read straight through - I've been taking my time and mostly enjoying bite-size chunks of it and letting the book rest for a while in between readings. These are all the major artists and architects of the period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries after all In this edition, George Bull has made his selection from the top shelf. Now I'll have to get hold of the second volume of his excellent translation of the Lives as well..
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
- From Vasari’s Preface (pp. 36-7)
Vasari may have taken his cue from Petrarch, who wrote in his poem Africa, written in 1338, a year after he first visited Rome, addressing the poem itself: "for you, if you should long outlive me, as my soul hopes and wishes, there is perhaps a better age in store; this slumber of forgetfulness will not last forever. After the darkness has been dispelled, our grandsons will be able to walk back into the pure radiance of the past."
A century after Petrarch, Leon Battista Alberti, the pioneer of Renaissance art theory, wrote in On Painting (De pictura) along similar lines as Vasari would do another century later: "I used to marvel and at the same time to grieve that so many excellent and superior arts and sciences from our most vigorous antique past could now seem lacking and almost wholly lost. We know from [remaining] works and through references to them that they were once widespread. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, geometricians, rhetoricians, seers and similar noble and amazing intellects are very rarely found today and there are few to praise them. (...) It must be admitted that it was less difficult for the Ancients--because they had models to imitate and from which they could learn--to come to a knowledge of those supreme arts which today are most difficult for us. Our fame ought to be much greater, then, if we discover unheard-of and never-before-seen arts and sciences without teachers or without any model whatsoever. Who could ever be hard or envious enough to fail to praise Pippo the architect on seeing here such a large structure, rising above the skies, ample to cover with its shadow all the Tuscan people, and constructed without the aid of centering or great quantity of wood? (...) if I judge rightly, it was probably unknown and unthought of among the Ancients. But there will be other places, Filippo, to tell of your fame, of the virtues of our Donato [Donatello], and of the others who are most pleasing to me by their deeds." - Alberti, On Painting, Prologue addressed to Filippo Brunelleschi (1435)
Vasari thought of the achievements in art and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans as a Golden Age, and that of the Medieval period which followed as a period of decline. (He hated Gothic art and architecture – that’s also why he chose the term "Gothic" – it was about the worst term he could think of, and he used it as a synonym for "barbaric"...) With the gradual rediscovery of the ancient works of art ("those which were produced in Corinth, Athens, Rome, and other famous cities, before the time of Constantine"), he sees a new beginning: "helped by some subtle influence in the very air of Italy, the new generations started to purge their minds of the grossness of the past so successfully that in 1250 the heaven took pity on the talented men who were being born in Tuscany [Cimabue et al.] and led them back to the pristine forms. Before then, during the years after Rome was sacked and devastadted and swept by fire, men had been able to see the remains of arches and colossi, statues, pillars and carved columns; but until the period we are discussing they had no idea how to use or profit from this fine work." (p. 45)
The Lives consists of three parts. Vasari writes in his Preface to Part Two: "I have divided the artists into three sections or, shall we say, periods, each with its own recognizably distinct character, running from the time of the rebirth of the arts up to our own times." The first part includes Cimabue and Giotto – artists that "mark a new beginning, opening the way for the better work which followed. (...) Then in the second period there was clearly a considerable improvement in invention and execution, with more design, better style, and a more careful finish." (Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Alberti, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, etc.) - This is followed by the third period when "art has achieved everything possible in the imitation of nature and has progressed so far that is thas more reason to fear slipping back than to expect ever to make further advances." (pp. 84-5) The third part includes all the giants of Renaissance art. Leonardo, Giorgione, Correggio, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian have been selected for this edition.
The Life of Michelangelo is the longest by far, and Vasari was proud of being able to call himself his friend. Michelangelo wasn’t all that happy about everything Vasari wrote. Possibly he considered Vasari most of all a useful contact between himself and Duke Cosimo de' Medici in Florence while he was working in Rome – and later he asked his friend Ascanio Condivi to write about his life and to correct some of the things Vasari had got wrong. I haven’t read Condivi’s Vita yet, but I enjoyed Vasari’s account in spite of Michelangelo’s objections to it. In fact I found even his gushing over Michelangelo both amusing and understandable, and by then I had gotten used to Vasari’s style and knew his strengths and weaknesses, so I had no problem bearing with him. – Anyway, Vasari later revised his account of Michelangelo based on that of Condivi, and he provides a wealth of information. The revised and enlarged edition of the Lives was published in 1568, and it is selections from this later edition that has been translated here.
George Bull writes in his Introduction: “The letters of introduction to Cosimo for the 1550 and 1568 editions of the Lives echo in the obsequiousness other letters addressed by artists and writers to the Medici – notably Machiavelli’s letter to Cosimo’s father, Lorenzo, at the head of The Prince: the humble posture adopted in these dedications reflected perhaps, standard modes of address as much as genuine servility. More interesting is the manner in which both Machiavelli and Vasari interpreted political and art history, respectively, in terms of inevitable progression and decline and yet, paradoxically, suggested that the decline could be arrested by genius, by the virtù of a political leader or artist, endowed by nature with great ability and taught to emulate the perfection reached in the past. This affirmation of virtù has been called the ‘fundamental theme of the Lives’.” (p. 15)
“In their entirety, the Lives may fairly be called a work of art. On one great canvas Vasari painted a harmonious and glowing composition which sustains with ease the task of conveying the revolutionary nature of of what happened in Italian art between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. He lifted the story of Tuscan art (...) to the plane of the heroic, stretching back to the quasi-legendary figures of Cimabue and Giotto, and forward to the inspired Michelangelo...” (p. 16)
As Bull also writes, it can get a bit boring at times, but you keep reading because when he really likes a piece of art, Vasari’s enthusiasm often gives his style a lift and makes him write with flair. And there are endless examples of that in this book. He’s also emphatically Florence-centric, which gets kind of entertaining, especially as the book progresses. And Vasari provides plenty of amusing anecdotes and gossip, so that this in a way makes up for the occasional parts where the writing just drags along. - There’s e.g. the story of Giotto’s O, and of how Brunelleschi, to illustrate how his dome could be self-supporting, made an egg stand upright on a slab of marble by hitting one end of the egg hard against it, and later how he feigned illness to expose the fact that Lorenzo Ghiberti (who received the same pay) was not competent to take over the work on the dome in his absence. Stories and anecdotes you may have read before, but this is where they are first told.
There’s also this great anecdote about Michelangelo:
"When he saw the David in place [at the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria] Piero Soderini was delighted; but while Michelangelo was retouching it he remarked that he though the nose was too thick. Michelangelo noticing that Gonfalonier was standing beneath the Giant and that from where he was he could not see the figure properly, to satisfy him climbed on the scaffolding by the shoulders, seized hold of a chisel in his left hand, together with some of the marble dust lying on the planks, and as he tapped lightly with the chisel let the dust fall little by little, without altering anything. Then he looked down at the Gonfalonier, who had stopped to watch, and said:
'Now look at it.'
'Ah, that’s much better,' replied Soderini. 'Now you’ve really brought it to life.'
And then Michelangelo climbed down, feeling sorry for those critics who talk nonsense in the hope of appearing well informed.” (p. 338-9)
The Renaissance gave birth to great art (among other things), and also to the first art-history. Vasari was even the first to use the term Renaissance (rinascita) in print. One of his preoccupations was disegno: drawing and making preparatory sketches was something he saw as being of prime importance for a painter. I can agree with this to a large degree, but this and other preoccupations could make him unjust towards some painters. He also at times makes mistakes when describing paintings, getting them mixed up, etc. - possibly because he hadn’t actually seen them, but had to rely on hearsay. These are facts that doesnt really diminish his accomplishment with the Lives, because for a large part his aesthetic judgement was acute and to the point. Nevertheless it is a pity that because he was seen as an authority for such a long period of time, many of these mistakes were perpetuated, a few even into our own times. But however that may be, by delving into Vasari's Lives you’re bound to add something new to your knowledge about most of the great artists he has written about – and not the least do you get to know the art world of the early 16th century quite intimately as seen through the eyes of Vasari. For me this was not a book to simply read straight through - I've been taking my time and mostly enjoying bite-size chunks of it and letting the book rest for a while in between readings. These are all the major artists and architects of the period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries after all In this edition, George Bull has made his selection from the top shelf. Now I'll have to get hold of the second volume of his excellent translation of the Lives as well..
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
July 2, 2016
Umpth time reread.
July 2, 2021
"Design, however, is the foundation of both these arts, or rather the animating principle of all creative processes; and surely design existed in absolute perfection before the Creation when Almighty God, having made the vast expanse of the universe and adorned the heavens with His shining lights, directed His creative intellect further, to clear air and the solid earth. And then, in the act of creating man, He fashioned the first forms of painting and sculpture in the sublime grace of created things."
I picked this up in a used bookshop with great curiosity after having read so many snippets and fragments from it as well as studying Vasari himself for art history at university. I thought it'd be interesting to read this pivotal work in its entirety and learn a little more about the Renaissance artists I know so well from one of their contemporaries.
This is certainly a dense work, denser, perhaps, than I had anticipated, but I found its level of detail, and Vasari's commitment to the facts, incredibly impressive. The vignettes he offered up were amusing, and I was surprised to learn just how much overlap there was across the lives of many of these artists.
I think it would be a stretch to really say I enjoyed this, as, again, it was pretty dense. My main issue was that Vasari spent a lot of time going into detail describing specific works, which, even with ones I was familiar with, I found difficult to visualize. I suppose at the time when you couldn't just quickly Google these pieces, this would have been helpful, but I honestly found these descriptions uninteresting and even sometimes rather overwhelming. I think reading an illustrated edition of this would be a wonderful experience, much more fulfilling than just reading a blanket description; I suppose I could have Googled this pieces as they arose for myself, but I honestly didn't really go to that effort.
All in all, I'm glad I picked this up, though, again, for the modern reader, I'd recommend seeing if you can find an illustrated edition that includes the works Vasari references, as I think it would allow for a far more rounded appreciation of both this text and the lives of the artists celebrated here themselves.
September 21, 2007
Visari is not the most articulate art critic, but this book is worth reading for some of the anecdotes. Highlights include Michaelangelo throwing wooden planks at the Pope for sneaking a look at his work.
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May 5, 2024Largo y aburrido. Tiene el tipo de datos que resultan interesantes -los chismes- pero escondidos en montones y montones de descripciones y listas. De a ratos la experiencia se me hizo parecida a la de leer a D. F. Wallace, como entrar en un trance. De buena gana me hubiera leído un resumen, pero de todas formas entiendo el valor que tiene para mostrar una época, una manera de ver el arte y evaluar el ego y la vida de los artistas.
No deja de resultarme curiosa la manera en la que Vasari cambia de primera a tercera persona sin ningún tipo de criterio. Tendré que averiguar el por qué de tan extraña manera de escribir.
No deja de resultarme curiosa la manera en la que Vasari cambia de primera a tercera persona sin ningún tipo de criterio. Tendré que averiguar el por qué de tan extraña manera de escribir.
March 30, 2023
Extremely interesting account of various Renaissance (and earlier) Italian artists written by an artist/architect who was a friend of Michelangelo.
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November 20, 2025A bit (a lot) dull! But some fun stuff I guess
March 4, 2021
Art historical writing suffers from one major drawback, which is certainly not unique to Vasari: a dearth of pictures. In Vasari’s time it would have been incomprehensively expensive to reproduce all the works described in his books, but there’s no reason in the year of our Lord 2021 that this edition couldn’t have had even some black and white prints. Then again, books that do attempt to include pictures of the art usually don’t include all of it, and unless I read with a search-bar open nearby I don’t get a great sense of the pictures described. It doesn’t help that Vasari is describing religious works, which have a stultifying similarity of characters and scenes, or that he’s restricted - by writing in 1568 - from suggesting that yet another picture of the Virgin Mary is passé, could we try something fun and new maybe?
“[…] all the beauty that belongs to an image of the Virgin Mary: modesty in her eyes, honour in the brow, grace in the nose, and virtue in the mouth; not to mention that Our Lady’s garment reflects her infinity simplicity and purity.”
Setting this year’s trend, eh, Big V? (This is what they all read like. YAWN.)
Thanks to various art podcasts and half of ‘The Agony and The Ecstasy’, I know the gag reel of Vasari’s anecdotes already. What surprised me is that they’re quite rare. For every one description of Michaelangelo being a snotty bitch, Giotto painting real good flies, or Donatello dropping his eggs, there’s ten pages of eye-glazing fresco description, or a run-down of the economics of building big-ass churches. And, obviously, all these ‘gals being pals!’ interludes were never going to be interpreted by Vasari in the light of romantic relationships. I ship Donatello/Brunellechi, anyway.
The book is very heavy on the Michelangelo love. I’ve written in the margin of the intro, ‘did a snake write this?’
“When a son of Francia’s was introduced to him as a very handsome young man Michelangelo said to him: ‘The living figures your father makes are better than those he paints.’”
Ooh, you FLIRT.
The thing is, though, this is a primary document, thus its value far outstrips its quality. Vasari was writing between 0 and 100 years of the deaths of the artists he’s describing. It’s required reading for that reason. It would have been nice, though, for that documentarian to have been someone who gave one fuck about dates.
“[…] all the beauty that belongs to an image of the Virgin Mary: modesty in her eyes, honour in the brow, grace in the nose, and virtue in the mouth; not to mention that Our Lady’s garment reflects her infinity simplicity and purity.”
Setting this year’s trend, eh, Big V? (This is what they all read like. YAWN.)
Thanks to various art podcasts and half of ‘The Agony and The Ecstasy’, I know the gag reel of Vasari’s anecdotes already. What surprised me is that they’re quite rare. For every one description of Michaelangelo being a snotty bitch, Giotto painting real good flies, or Donatello dropping his eggs, there’s ten pages of eye-glazing fresco description, or a run-down of the economics of building big-ass churches. And, obviously, all these ‘gals being pals!’ interludes were never going to be interpreted by Vasari in the light of romantic relationships. I ship Donatello/Brunellechi, anyway.
The book is very heavy on the Michelangelo love. I’ve written in the margin of the intro, ‘did a snake write this?’
“When a son of Francia’s was introduced to him as a very handsome young man Michelangelo said to him: ‘The living figures your father makes are better than those he paints.’”
Ooh, you FLIRT.
The thing is, though, this is a primary document, thus its value far outstrips its quality. Vasari was writing between 0 and 100 years of the deaths of the artists he’s describing. It’s required reading for that reason. It would have been nice, though, for that documentarian to have been someone who gave one fuck about dates.
May 19, 2023
[Bull Translation / May (McCaddon) Narration]
This was a really great interactive learning experience for me. As I read the audiobook, I was actively looking through the catalog of each artist in question, and pausing the book to read Wikipedia entries about the various works that stuck out most to me. Where the book itself touched only briefly on something, I then took the opportunity to learn more outside the book. This of course muddles my perception of actual book to a degree, but I think its ignition of my interest does speak to the Vasari’s descriptive power. It was especially interesting when telling little anecdotes and (often false) stories. It really creates a picture of the Renaissance era, in all its forms. The section on Michelangelo felt very overlong however, and I believe that in Bull’s translation it’s even shortened a bit(!) Narration by Nadia May (billed as “Wanda McCaddon” on the cover) is very good, though I wish she differentiated her voice between normal narration and author footnotes a bit. It became hard to distinguish Vasari’s words from Bull’s in parts. [LIBRARY AUDIOBOOK]
いい機会ね、読む途中にいろんな美術館の作品をグーグルで見ていた。けどミケランジェロの部分、ちょっと情報多すぎた😵💫
This was a really great interactive learning experience for me. As I read the audiobook, I was actively looking through the catalog of each artist in question, and pausing the book to read Wikipedia entries about the various works that stuck out most to me. Where the book itself touched only briefly on something, I then took the opportunity to learn more outside the book. This of course muddles my perception of actual book to a degree, but I think its ignition of my interest does speak to the Vasari’s descriptive power. It was especially interesting when telling little anecdotes and (often false) stories. It really creates a picture of the Renaissance era, in all its forms. The section on Michelangelo felt very overlong however, and I believe that in Bull’s translation it’s even shortened a bit(!) Narration by Nadia May (billed as “Wanda McCaddon” on the cover) is very good, though I wish she differentiated her voice between normal narration and author footnotes a bit. It became hard to distinguish Vasari’s words from Bull’s in parts. [LIBRARY AUDIOBOOK]
いい機会ね、読む途中にいろんな美術館の作品をグーグルで見ていた。けどミケランジェロの部分、ちょっと情報多すぎた😵💫
January 17, 2026
Wonderfully interesting bio's of artists in Florence and Rome. Da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo feature prominently but so do many more. I don't know if this was written before the invention of the biography and hence the pieces are relatively short and full of paintings and sculptures and their sites. I wish I had read this and had it with me when I spent time in both those cities of art and culture. To look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and imagine Michelangelo throwing planks at the Pope as reported in this book, along with another different version of legend, would have made my days all the more enjoyable. I enjoyed this and will look forward to volume two.
April 30, 2023
Well written translation of an irreplaceable perspective on the history of art ancient and leading up to and including the author's day (though a trifle wearisome to wade through descriptions of extant paintings). Inasmuch as Vasari was an artist himself, his insights is of even greater value to me than those of writers and historians who may misinterpret the actions, words, feelings and intentions of artists.
April 24, 2024
Great book if your interested in the renaissance or just art in general. Definitely a book I will refer to in the future
Read
February 17, 2025No rating, partly because idk what to rate it, partly because my secondhand copy missed a few chapters in exchange for some double chapters (it is pretty funny the journey it caused me to go on)
July 23, 2025
real housewives of the rinascimiento. vasari would make a great reunion host and i am sure somebody will have something to say about brunelleschi’s last season wooden shoes.
November 7, 2025
3.5- this volume is a treasure
May 31, 2016
I have never been a great follower of art, but reading this selection has awakened an interest. Vasari's prose style is lively and readable, and he even knew some of the great Renaissance artists personally, not to mention being an artist of middling fame in his own right. Translator's footnotes indicate that some of his dates and ages are wrong for artists that he did not know, but this is perhaps forgiveable considering how difficult it is even for modern researchers to pin down often poorly-documented lives. This was the first work of its kind since classical times, after all.
The parts of the book that engaged me most fully pertained to Toscana, and in particular Florence, as I now know it slightly. It is startling to just what an extent the Renaissance in art was a Tuscan affair, and having visited a couple of times I find Vasari speaking of doors and domes that I have seen at close quarters. This renders the writing so much more accessible that I would go so far as to say you should view some of the works or places before reading. The Porta del Paradiso by Ghiberti, for instance, has to be seen to be believed, and reading this book places it in a living context.
It is particularly striking that so many of the artists were so polymathic in their talents. Many were accomplished in painting, sculpture and architecture all at once. I have tended to think of architecture as a primarily engineering discipline, but an acquaintance who is studying architecture in his first year reports that it is a firmly artistic course of study. Reading about Brunelleschi and Michelangelo, one begins to understand how this came to be.
I would hesitate to name a favourite Life. The one weakness I found is that the stories focus almost entirely on the works of the artists rather than their lives. The classic genius of the period is, of course, Leonardo, who had a bad habit of leaving work unfinished, but his polished charm, physical strength, personal elegance and prodigious creative output take the biscuit. The notoriously obnoxious Michelangelo, by contrast, comes across in Vasari's Life as more understandable and principled that I might have expected, not to mention more professional and consistent. Purely based on those doors, I might plump for Lorenzo Ghiberti. Go and see them.
The Renaissance is recorded as the rebirth of classical art and thinking, but interestingly enough it began to ignite spontaneously. Roman sculpture was excavated and studied once the Renaissance was in progress, but the study of perspective and the advances over the flat Byzantine style began earlier. More than I thought, this was a truly Tuscan achievement, and may perhaps be most truly traced back to the growth of political liberalism.
The parts of the book that engaged me most fully pertained to Toscana, and in particular Florence, as I now know it slightly. It is startling to just what an extent the Renaissance in art was a Tuscan affair, and having visited a couple of times I find Vasari speaking of doors and domes that I have seen at close quarters. This renders the writing so much more accessible that I would go so far as to say you should view some of the works or places before reading. The Porta del Paradiso by Ghiberti, for instance, has to be seen to be believed, and reading this book places it in a living context.
It is particularly striking that so many of the artists were so polymathic in their talents. Many were accomplished in painting, sculpture and architecture all at once. I have tended to think of architecture as a primarily engineering discipline, but an acquaintance who is studying architecture in his first year reports that it is a firmly artistic course of study. Reading about Brunelleschi and Michelangelo, one begins to understand how this came to be.
I would hesitate to name a favourite Life. The one weakness I found is that the stories focus almost entirely on the works of the artists rather than their lives. The classic genius of the period is, of course, Leonardo, who had a bad habit of leaving work unfinished, but his polished charm, physical strength, personal elegance and prodigious creative output take the biscuit. The notoriously obnoxious Michelangelo, by contrast, comes across in Vasari's Life as more understandable and principled that I might have expected, not to mention more professional and consistent. Purely based on those doors, I might plump for Lorenzo Ghiberti. Go and see them.
The Renaissance is recorded as the rebirth of classical art and thinking, but interestingly enough it began to ignite spontaneously. Roman sculpture was excavated and studied once the Renaissance was in progress, but the study of perspective and the advances over the flat Byzantine style began earlier. More than I thought, this was a truly Tuscan achievement, and may perhaps be most truly traced back to the growth of political liberalism.
December 27, 2020
It's a bit of a struggle to get through this volume (and that's only half of it).
I'll start with an appropriated misquote from Douglas Adams: "where it is innaccurate it is at least definitively innaccurate".
Vasari's Book 1 starts 250 years before his time and is, let's say, sometimes dubious.
Enjoy the ride but remember:
He's very biased towards Florence - and his home town of Arezzo.
He's outright sycophantic towards the Medici.
He has some very set ideas of how artists should be.
He's very weak on the role and agency of patrons.
History was a moral tale at this time.
The language is a bit stilted and repetative - not Vasari's fault as he's inventing art history and the way to comment on artists and their works.
I can't tell if some of the faults here are Vasari's or the translator's. One thing that hinted at the latter is that he tries to avoid Italian words like "putti" and replaces with "young boys", which leads to some vey odd readings. I'm sure there are others I didn't spot.
I'll start with an appropriated misquote from Douglas Adams: "where it is innaccurate it is at least definitively innaccurate".
Vasari's Book 1 starts 250 years before his time and is, let's say, sometimes dubious.
Enjoy the ride but remember:
He's very biased towards Florence - and his home town of Arezzo.
He's outright sycophantic towards the Medici.
He has some very set ideas of how artists should be.
He's very weak on the role and agency of patrons.
History was a moral tale at this time.
The language is a bit stilted and repetative - not Vasari's fault as he's inventing art history and the way to comment on artists and their works.
I can't tell if some of the faults here are Vasari's or the translator's. One thing that hinted at the latter is that he tries to avoid Italian words like "putti" and replaces with "young boys", which leads to some vey odd readings. I'm sure there are others I didn't spot.
September 4, 2015
As nonfiction goes, that was an entertaining ride. I listened to this audiobook over the course of weeks on my commutes to and from work, and there were several times I had to pause to laugh at Vasari's wit, both intentional and un. I will admit that most of the reason that I read this is because I narrated two chapters of this LibriVox version, and so I get Goodreads author credit for it. Still, I had no idea when I was reading it what a firecracker Vasari was, or how entertaining his stories are, despite a clunky English translation by Gaston de Vere. Not at all what I'd expected, but quite fun -- I only wish I'd had the visual references alluded to throughout. Problems of an audiobook on visual art, I guess.
December 4, 2024
"Provided they are honest and innocent of lies, books travel freely and are trusted wherever they go."--Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, page 209.
"What a deplorable contrast is presented by our modern artists who are not content with injuring one another, but who viciously and enviously rend others as well."--page 139
"And if I have failed to mention any other foreigners and Florentines who have gone there to study, let me just say that where great artists flock, so do the lesser."--page 131
"[T]his comes at no surprise, since everyone in Florence has pretensions to understanding art as much as the experience master."--page 146
"What a deplorable contrast is presented by our modern artists who are not content with injuring one another, but who viciously and enviously rend others as well."--page 139
"And if I have failed to mention any other foreigners and Florentines who have gone there to study, let me just say that where great artists flock, so do the lesser."--page 131
"[T]his comes at no surprise, since everyone in Florence has pretensions to understanding art as much as the experience master."--page 146
November 4, 2020
I started reading this thinking it would cover the techniques and materials of the Renaissance masters. Apparently, that's another Vasari book (unsurprisingly) called, "Vasari on Technique." This is more of a straight up accounting of the major works of the period. Having someone describe artworks through words doesn't really make for the most exciting read. There's only so many ways you can say, "His painting was almost indistinguishable from nature." The most interesting parts of the book are the various anecdotes about the day-to-day activities of the old masters. But those stories a few and far between the rote cataloguing of works.
March 18, 2019
While this work is certainly informative for those like myself, who are basically unschooled in the history of art, I think the piece would be better appreciated by people who already has some knowledge of renaissance artists. And because of the many references to specific works of art, it might be helpful if a volume was in print that showed some of them in some form. Perhaps there already is.
June 13, 2007
This book is hilarious and so, so opinionated. Wholly entertaining, to say the least.
September 23, 2010
Vasari is my go-to volume for a trip to Italy. Nothing gives Renaissance Italian art even more life than the gossipy history of one of its comtemporaries.
March 24, 2015
This would be my 'Desert Island' book - I've loved it and lived in it since I was 16.
July 17, 2015
I'm not very knowledgable about these artists, but Vasari's refreshingly simple emphasis on design, technique, decorum and grace makes it a very pleasurable read.
July 23, 2015
Entertaining stories about iconic Italian artists. Take the stories with a grain of salt, but they are fun to read and insightful for a 'greater' truth than whats written on the page.
November 1, 2019
An important document. An entertaining read if you are into art history.
It was amusing to see Vasari lose his cool when it came to Michaelangelo.
Vasari could've used an editor.
It was amusing to see Vasari lose his cool when it came to Michaelangelo.
Vasari could've used an editor.
November 1, 2021
The lives grew more interesting as the pages turned - culminating in the best tale of all, Michelangelo.
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