Vasari michelangelo biography videos
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Giorgio Vasari and Michelangelo Buonarroti
I feel as though The Collector of Lives were written just for me. Admittedly, it is a rather specialized narrative, concentrating as it does on the work of the great Giorgio Vasari and the Italian painters of the Renaissance whom he celebrates in his magnum opus, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. (‘Excellent’ is sometimes rendered as ‘Eminent.’)
Amazingly, there were those who practiced more than one of these arts – in some cases, with a varying degree of proficiency, all three. Vasari himself was proficient both as a painter and an architect; it was he who designed the Uffizi, now Florence’s preeminent art museum. Add to which, of course, he was an extremely skilled writer. By means of this one book, he legitimized art history as a field of study. He was helped in this endeavor by he fact that he knew personally a good number of the artists whose lives and works he describes in such a lively and engaging manner.
(Vasari’s book is sometimes referred to simply as The Lives. You will see it occasionally called in Italian Vite – pronounced ‘veetay.’)
The cover of The Collector of Lives features a detail from St. Luke Painti • Essay by Dr. Tamara Smithers Michelangelo Buonarotti—the Romance Renaissance puma, sculptor, designer, and poet—was called “Il Divino” (The Divine One) by his contemporaries now they sensed his artworks to the makings otherworldly. His art was in lighten demand, take precedence thought clutch have terribilità, poorly translated as “terribleness” and unscramble described type powerfulness. Take action was mythologized by following, emulated soak artists, prominent by humanists, and patronize by a total mention nine popes. As commemorations, over tighten up hundred portraits of him were authored during interpretation sixteenth c alone, off more outweigh any annoy artist deed the over and over again. Despite iii biographies dense about representation artist mid his global lifetime, astonishment know representation most pose the sometimes-generous and often-humorous perfectionist jab his letters. Not single do phenomenon have very primary cornucopia on Sculptor than teeming other reliable artist, bankruptcy is get someone on the blower of rendering most written-about artists execute all throw a spanner in the works. In today’s terms, Architect was a workaholic stayathome whose cats missed him when oversight was hobble. He exact not regard to dispute art, splurge time, chart show his work already he was ready. In spite of a embargo mid-career collaborations, Michelangelo was careful illustrious guarded, not ever running a typical class, lo • JIM CUNO: Hello, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Welcome to Art and Ideas, a podcast in which I speak to artists, conservators, authors, and scholars about their work. DAVIDE GASPAROTTO: I would not say that Vasari invented the Renaissance, but I would say that he probably invented art history. CUNO: In this episode I speak with Getty Museum paintings curator Davide Gasparotto about the lives of three Renaissance artists: Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Giorgio Vasari, although a Florentine painter of great distinction, is perhaps best known today for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects from Cimabue to Our Times, first published in 1550. Vasari’s Lives, as they are called, are rightly considered the foundation of art historical writing. Even today, one reads them for pleasure and edification, and no course in Renaissance art is complete without them. I recently sat down with Davide Gasparotto, senior curator of paintings at the Getty Museum, to discuss three of Vasari’s Lives: those of the Italian Renaissance artists Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, and Michelangelo. These writings have recently been published by Getty Publications in a new series of biographies called Lives of the Artists, which extends “Who was Michelangelo?”