This book explores the rich literary character and rhetorical strategies of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, which tells the story of Italian art as it unfolded from its beginnings in the fourteenth century to its pinnacle in Michelangelo and the art of the Academy in the mid-sixteenth century. The contributors of Reading Vasari propose ways to understand Vasari's text in the light of recent disputes over what is fact, fiction, or biography, and who may have read Vasari's editions when they were first published. The book isolates and analyses select threads from Vasari's luxurious textual tapestry: these range from architecture, cosmology and philosophy to biography, comedy, elegy and travelogue.

The 4th century BC Greek painter Parrhasius murdered his model--an old man who was his slave--to achieve, so the story goes, a more lifelike depiction of nature. The tale has inspired similar, more elaborate stories about both well known and obscure artists--including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Rubens. Elements of the tale have appeared in theater, literature and film, as well as in comments by painters, historians, critics and anatomists. Challenging the archetype of the artist as a sympathetic lover of nature, this book examines the artist as cruel and murderous in service of art and ambition, and indirectly addresses a different understanding of the relationship between art and life.

This book explores the rich literary character and rhetorical strategies of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, which tells the story of Italian art as it unfolded from its beginnings in the fourteenth century to its pinnacle in Michelangelo and the art of the Academy in the mid-sixteenth century. The contributors of Reading Vasari propose ways to understand Vasari's text in the light of recent disputes over what is fact, fiction, or biography, and who may have read Vasari's editions when they were first published. The book isolates and analyses select threads from Vasari's luxurious textual tapestry: these range from architecture, cosmology and philosophy to biography, comedy, elegy and travelogue.

The 4th century BC Greek painter Parrhasius murdered his model--an old man who was his slave--to achieve, so the story goes, a more lifelike depiction of nature. The tale has inspired similar, more elaborate stories about both well known and obscure artists--including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Rubens. Elements of the tale have appeared in theater, literature and film, as well as in comments by painters, historians, critics and anatomists. Challenging the archetype of the artist as a sympathetic lover of nature, this book examines the artist as cruel and murderous in service of art and ambition, and indirectly addresses a different understanding of the relationship between art and life.