The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)

Product Information

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. And it could have been even more interesting to read for an art lover, or anyone who is simply curious, if only it had at least some illustrations. i just love to see ye olde man pop off at each other about pigment sourcing, sexual proclivities, and noble patrons. In 1563, he helped found the Florentine Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, with the Grand Duke and Michelangelo as capi of the institution. I would have thought that such an opinion was enough to get one hung, drawn and quartered in Vasari's time, but apparently not so.

Reading [the interviews] only confirms the enviable lucidity and profound insight of Tomkins' writing. Art in Tuscany | Giorgio Vasari and Italian Renaissance painting | Podere Santa Pia, Holiday house in the south of Tuscany". Others are generic fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that the older master repeatedly tried to brush away, a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles. During the 1970s and 1980s, he continued to travel around the world, documenting his globetrotting through his Time Capsules. In 1547, he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni.The preceding page shows a self portrait of Vasari under the Medici coat of arms and above a miniature veduta of Florence.

Vasari’s original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgements have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time. The list of Warhol’s companions on film was not only a barometer for who was hot in the 1970s and 1980s, but also reflected his Rolodex of celebrity clients for his booming portrait business. An essential and highly pleasurable record of the era, it also amounts to a sprawling, lifelong investigation into what it means to be an artist. Antonio, as Vasari put it in a letter to a friend, was a deprived citizen and artisan but he married well and he was able to provide Vasari with his first schooling in Arezzo and some instruction in art from the French glass painter Guillaume de Marçillat who was working then in the Cathedral.Yet while he was trying to maximise the impact of his public persona in the spheres of art, popular culture and the market, he insisted on highlighting his imperfections, his personal neuroses and his claim to be ‘Nothingness Himself’.

Yet as the delegation of his artistic production slightly increased, Warhol made even more time for public appearances. The Lives of the Artists series offers illuminating, and sometimes intimate, accounts of major artists as viewed by their contemporaries.

His relentless pursuit of pleasure was not only publicly acknowledged, but it surfaced in his work, as well as in that of other artists. The book was partly rewritten and extended in 1568, [8] with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural). Vasari's Vite has been described as "by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art" [8] and "the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists". Balancing insight and observation with wit, candor, and appreciation, Tomkins is a master of the profile—his indelible prose forming fascinating portraits, each a work of art in its own right. This specially commissioned translation contains thirty-six of the most important lives as well as an introduction and explanatory notes.