How Do Artists See Art In Vasari's Biographies Essay

How Do Artists See Art In Vasari's Biographies - Essay Example We have to be aware of the social and cultural history of the period before we attempt an assessment of Vasari. The rising social and cultural claims of the visual arts led in the sixteenth century in Italy to an important new development that occurred in the other European countries somewhat later: the three visual arts, painting, sculpture and architecture were, for the first time clearly separated from the crafts with which they had been associated in the preceding period. The term Arti del disegno, was coined by Vasari , who used it as the guiding concept for his famous collection of the biographies. Besides, at the time of Vasari the opinion of the crowd was still considered a significant factor in the evaluation of art and therefore the addition of popular elements including a discrete element of fiction could not be faulted1. Perhaps, Vasari's verbal portraits of artists do not have the intensity or the gravity of the oeuvre of the geniuses described therein. However, his yardsticks seem to have been versatility as well as originality. Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), for example, was a Florentine architect of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, his 'genius was so commanding that we can surely say he was sent by heaven to renew the art of architecture'. Perhaps the greatest contribution made by Brunelleschi to art was to that of design through a very careful study of the perspective (The perspectival rendering of a scene is a projection of a scene from an eye point, as sectioned by the plane of the canvas.). At the time of Brunelleschi, the practice of art with the use of perspective was at an all-time low because of the errors of practice of others2 . The perfection in perspective that he achieved made him so happy that he took the trouble of drawing the Piazza san Giovanni and showed all the squares in black-and-white marble receding beautifully. In fact, Brunelleschi's genius contributed significantly to the origins of a naturalistic trait in art and a clear shift from the highly stylized modes of Renaissance art In a review of the book Georgio Vasari: Art and History that appeared in The Art Bulletin (June, 1998), Paul Barolsky has written that there was an element of mythopoesis in the writings of Vasari and this pleasurable mix of myth, document and fact has given Lives a unique place which cannot be claimed by the modern art historians. Whereas modern art historians chose to flaunt their scholarship through monographs, Vasari chose to hide himself in the glorified biographies of the artists he admired and in the process he carefully mixed into what he wrote classical and even Biblical allusions. This lent his biographies a sense of mystery and inexplicable adulation of the artists themselves and their views on art. Donatello (1386-1466) was another artistic genius whom Vasari chose to portray. He was a Florentine sculptor who had an awesome impact on the arts and artists of the Renaissance. He invented the shadow relief technique called schiacciato ('flattened out'), a technique in which the sculpture seems very deep even when done on a shallow plane. A great friend of Brunelleschi, Donatello had once remarked, after seeing an artwork based on crucifixion similar to the one made by him and criticized by Brunelleschi, that 'Your job is making Christs and mine is making peasants.' It was Donatello's humble submission of the lofty genius of his friend