Horizon Information Portal

HSPLS site

eBooks/Audiobooks

Reading Program

Giorgio Vasari : art and history / Patricia Lee Rubin.

by Rubin, Patricia Lee, 1951-

View full image

New Haven : Yale University Press, c1995.

Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574 -- Criticism and interpretation.

Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574. Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architettori.

viii, 448 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm.

I. Il Molto Magnifico Messer Giorgio Vasari: The Invention of Identity -- II. Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo -- III. Memory's Itinerary: Research and Publication -- IV. "In Another's Profession": Vasari and the "Writers of Histories" -- V. The Second Edition: Changing History -- VI. "As a Painter": Writing about the Arts -- VII. Giotto: "The First Light" -- VIII. "On Friendship": Donatello and the Artists of the Second Age -- IX. Raphael, the New Apelles.

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.

Horizon Information Portal 3.25_9884

Powered by Dynix

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal