Exposición - Bibliotheca artis - Lives of ' the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architetori
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A small section of the exhibition is devoted to artists’ lives, the first model of the first type of art historical studies.
The founding work in this genre was Vasari’s extremely celebrated text
known as the Lives, of which two editions were published during the artist’s lifetime, in 1550 and 1568.
The exhibition has a copy of the second edition of 1568,
which included significant new additions with respect to the first edition.
Firstly, Vasari expanded the number of artists,
adding figures from his own time (including his own autobiography) and secondly,
he included portrait prints of the subjects.
They include figures of the stature of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto, represented by major works in the Museo del Prado.
The importance of the Lives was two-fold. It was, as noted above, the founding work of art-historical literature,
while it also offered highly detailed information on the Italian Renaissance painters.
Even in the present day it continues to be a fundamental text for a knowledge of Italian Quattrocento and Cinquecento painting.
Inevitably, it has limitations characteristic of its period, such as a rigidity of approach that led Vasari to consider medieval art barbaric
and to state that the arts had been reborn in Tuscany, in particular in Florence,
and had progressed towards perfection until reaching their high point in the work of Michelangelo.
