Il primato dei Toscani nelle ‘Vite’ del Vasari. Basilica inferiore di San Francesco (Arezzo). Until 9 January 2012, by Daniel B. Gallagher
Il primato dei Toscani nelle ‘Vite’ del Vasari. Basilica inferiore di San Francesco (Arezzo). Until 9 January 2012.
Vasari’s partiality toward Tuscan artists may have been for good reason. Classicism had become the standard, and nobody did classicism better than the Tuscans. By the time Vasari wrote the Lives, the Tuscans, unlike the Venetians and Flemish, were already showing signs of a “school” rather than merely a distinct “style.” Of all the major art centers in Europe, Florence was the most international, combining the best techniques available from north to south. Having perfected the art of representation, they only needed someone to put its rules into some kind of order.
Giorgio Vasari was just the man for the job. Thoroughly trained in the studia humanitatis by great teachers like Pollastra and Pierio Valeriano, he was convinced t hat the only hope of salvation for artists were writers. This clearly emerges from his encomium to poetry and history at the beginning of the Lives. Without writers the names of artists, like their works, were destined for oblivion. Vasari wanted to immortalize both with his pen. But in doing so, he also wanted to show the affinity between the plastic and literary arts. He constantly returned to a single, driving principle that each art inherently resembles the others, notwithstanding the different instruments they use to achieve their proper ends. Vasari hoped that by writing about artists he might also enhance their collaboration with scientists, by whose expertise they were greatly enriched.
