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Lives of the Artists: A Selection v. 2 (Classics)
by: Giorgio Vasari

List Price: £9.99

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 709.45
EAN: 9780140444605
ISBN: 0140444602
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: August 27, 1987
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Sales Rank: 86510

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Editorial Review:

Book Information:
In writing his Lives, Vasari revealed a literary talent that matched, or even outshone, his abilities as an artist and architect.

Vasari's original vision of the arts, in which he sees the artist as divinely inspired, permeates this second volume as much as the first. Although at times inaccurate (prompting some dry remarks from Michelangelo), the Lives have a striking immediacy conveyed in the character sketches, anecdotes and detailed recordings of conversations.

Michelangelo praised the work for endowing artists with immortality. Vasari's shrewd judgements and his precise pinpointing of the emotions aroused by individual works of art bear out his prediction that Vasari would have a worldwide influence on the history of art. In this selection George Bull includes the lives of Perugino, Piero di Cosimo and Sansovino.

Synopsis:
In his "Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance", Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari's own early career. Vasari's original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgments have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time.

About the Author:
Vasari 1511-74

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Extremely Detailed
This is a long, long book with a great deal of information. Clocking in at over five hundred pages and covering about thirty artists of the Italian Renaissance, it is fairly comprehensive and detailed.

Some of Vasari's 'facts' have been discredited over the years and so the reader should not take everything here as gospel and indeed should be using this as a supplementary text with other material to get the best use out of it. Nevertheless it remains an important contemporary text and one of the first books on 'art history' ever produced.

I have to admit that I found it extremely hard going. There are great long lists of works and their subjects and the patrons of artists which it is easy to get bored or confused by ... Read More:

Rating:

- The One-Eyed King May 19, 2003
'In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.'

This is badly-written, badly-structured, gossipy, confused, misleading, and in too many places downright dishonest. Nevertheless it remians our main source of biographical information on the great artists of the Renaissance and Mannerist periods.

Most of these geniuses were considered so unimportant in their own lifetimes that the details of their lives weren't thought worthy to be recorded. It is telling therefore that it was Vasari, himself a rather vainglorious and self-important artist, who first conceived the notion of setting down the minutae of his own class. Unfortunately he was more a man of the brush than the pen and used his biographical duties to settle a few ... Read More:

Rating:

- For A level and later on an invaluable book
This book will appeal to either the history of art student or someone interested in Renaissance writings. A very useful book in that it offers a chance to see what a Mannerist artist thought about his contemporaries. It provides information on the fashions of the time and even insights into the very character of the artist, including some highly amusing stories and occasionally very biased points of view! If you can put a quote in an essay or exam then you will definately stand out as a good candidate.

Books : Lives of the Artists: A Selection v. 2 (Classics)