Giorgio Vasari's Lives Of The Artists

A Critical Review of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists is considered “by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art"[7] and has been described as “an indispensable source of historical information.” In addition to this, the text has played a vital role in the modern understanding of Renaissance art and culture, as well as the development of various historical methods that are relevant to the study of art history. Modern scholarship often considers factual information as more valuable than literature, and for this reason Vasari’s arguably semi-fictional Lives is often approached with trepidation. Many scholars fail to see how the fictional and literary elements of the work …show more content…
For example, in the life of Michelangelo Vasari tells a story of a young Michelangelo who endeavoured to copy a marble faun’s head. The head was supposedly “old and wrinkled with the nose damaged and a laughing mouth.” He then proceeded to copy the sculpture perfectly with the exception of the mouth for which he fixed the teeth. Lorenzo commented that old people never have all of their teeth so Michelangelo knocked one out from his sculptures mouth. Vasari was supposedly told this story by Condivi who could have possibly heard it first hand from Michelangelo. It was also alleged that this ‘masterful’ carving was “the first time he had ever touched a chisel or worked in marble.” Marble is a very hard stone and it takes a lot of skill and training to be able to work with it. The idea that Michelangelo managed to carve a perfect replica on his first encounter with the craft it highly unlikely. This gives further merit to the theory that Vasari has used anecdotes to presented Michelangelo and Da Vinci in an exceptionally positive light that reflects their reception in the artworld during the sixteenth century. This insight into how prominent Renaissance artists and artworks were received at the time of their creation provides valuable information for the contemporary …show more content…
This, however, is not always the case, as seen in the life of Donatello. The story starts with a young Donatello who had spent a long time carving a cross which is then criticised by Filippo. Donatello responds that it is much easier to judge than to do which resulted in Filippo spending several months crafting a cross to perfection. One evening Donatello “found Filippo 's crucifix arranged in a good light; and stopping to consider it, he found it so perfect that, overcome with surprise and admiration, he let his apron drop, and the eggs and cheese and all the other things that he was carrying in it fell to the ground and were broken.” Similar to several other passages in Vasari’s Lives, it is very unlikely that the events described in this story actually occurred in this way, let alone at all. Unlike the anecdotes in Da Vinci and Michelangelo’s biographies the story of Donatello is much more ambiguous. Small factoids can be drawn from the text such as the approximate length of time that one might spend carving a cross and the general relationship between Donatello and Filippo, but these do not contribute much to the contemporary