Lives of the Artists

by Giorgio Vasari

  1.Fresco secco – as opposed to bum fresco – is painted on dry plaster and was rarely used, even for retouching, by Michelangelo’s time.

  1. In fact, five pendentives on either side. Vasari’s description, however, is substantially accurate, though in describing the histories he follows the logical sequence of the frescoes rather than the order in which they were painted. Michelangelo started work on the ceiling in 1508, the frescoes were unveiled in the summer of 1511, and the project was completed in 1512, setting the seal on his reputation as the greatest living artist.

  1. Vasari has transposed the two sibyls: the first is the Persian sibyl, and the second the Erythraean.

  1. Here, as elsewhere, I have translated divino by ‘inspired’ rather than ‘divine’. The adjective divino was widely used of Michelangelo during his lifetime, though Vasari does use it of other artists as well.

  1. The old sacristy of San Lorenzo was rebuilt by Brunelleschi after the basilica had been destroyed by fire in 1423. Michelangelo became involved in plans to complete the Medici church of San Lorenzo after 1515. The first project – the creation of a façade – was abandoned; in 1520 he began planning the Medici Chapel attached to San Lorenzo; and subsequently he was commissioned to design the Laurenziana Library in the cloister. The marvellous sculptural decoration of the chapel is discussed (along with the rest of Michelangelo’s work as a sculptor) by John Pope Hennessy in his Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture (Phaidon, 3 vols, 1963).

  1 Cf. the Preface to Part Three of the Lives where Vasari discusses the meaning of these terms. Vitruvius was a Roman architect (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) whose De Architectura, Libri x – rediscovered in the fifteenth century -exercised a profound influence on Renaissance architectural theory.

  1. In fact, a David.

  1. Here and elsewhere I have usually translated terribile by ‘awesome’ or ‘sublime’. The terribilità, of Michelangelo’s style and subjects was recognized by many of his contemporaries. The implications of the word are discussed by Robert J. Clements in Michelangelo’s Theory of Art (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963).

  1. Morti li morti, e i vivi paren vivi. Purgatory xii, 67.

  1. Canto III, Inferno (Sayers’s translation).

  1. Michelangelo’s appointment as Chief Architect to St Peter’s was confirmed in January 1547. He remained responsible for this tremendous undertaking until his death.

  1. This ‘dialogue’ is lost.

  1. This translation of the sonnet ‘Se con lo stile e co’ colori avete’ is by John Addington Symonds.

  1. The first complete edition in English of Michelangelo’s letters (1506–1563) was published in 1963 (The Letters of Michelangelo translated by E. H. Ramsden, Peter Owen, London).

  1. In fact, the letter was dated 28 December.

  1. Symonds’s translation of the sonnet, ‘Giunto è gia’l corso della vita mia’.

  1. The chapel of the king – la cappella del re – refers to the southern hemicycle of the transept of St Peter’s.

  1. Vasari now goes on to describe in considerable and somewhat confused detail Michelangelo’s model for the dome of St Peter’s. A brief account of Michelangelo’s work on St Peter’s may be found in An Outline of European Architecture by Nikolaus Pevsner (Penguin Books). For a detailed and scholarly appreciation of Michelangelo as architect the student should see The Architecture of Michelangelo by James S. Ackerman (Zwemmer, London, 1961).

  1. I shall teach the wicked your ways, and the impious will be converted to you.

  1. The Ragionamenti, published by Vasari’s nephew in 1588.

  1. The technical section (teoriche) is the three-part Introduction to the Lives, dealing with Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting.

  1. Michelangelo died on 18 February 1564.

  1. Marcello Venusti (1512–79).

  1. Ascanio Condivi.

  2. Symonds’s translation of:

  Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto,

  Ch’un marmo solo in se non circonscriva…

  3. Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547), intimate friend of Michelangelo and Castiglione, one of the most famous women of Renaissance Italy.

  1. Benedetto Varchi (1503–65), Florentine historian, who was asked by Cellini (and refused) to correct the style of his Autobiography.

  1. The ‘Rector of the hospital’ was Vincenzo Borghini, prior of the Innocenti, the Foundling Hospital established early in the fifteenth century.

  1. Vasari continues with his description of the catafalque, with its paintings (showing episodes from the life of Michelangelo), its inscription to ‘the greatest painter, sculptor, and architect that ever lived’, and various colossal figures and statues. The church itself, he records, was lavishly decorated with hangings, pictures, and statues, representing the great artists of antiquity and of modern times, and other scenes showing the honours conferred on Michelangelo during his lifetime: altogether an extraordinary demonstration of the veneration in which he was held by Vasari’s contemporaries, as if he were a saint as well as the ‘divine’ artist. A fascinating account of the obsequies of Michelangelo and of the role of Vasari can be read in The Divine Michelangelo by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower (Phaidon, 1964). This contains a facsimile edition of a booklet on the memorial service which is closely related to Vasari’s own account: Jacopo Giunti’s Esequie del divino Michelagnolo (1564).

  1. Raphael, of course, and Michelangelo.

  1. … e Tizitm che onora

  Non men Cador, che quei Venezia e Urbino.

  1. Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), a scurrilous, talented, and versatile writer.

  1. Giovanni Antonio Pordenone (1483/4–1539) was a north Italian painter who settled in Venice where for a short while he seemed to rival Titian’s supremacy.

  1. Danese Cattaneo (1509–73).

  1. In 1566 when Vasari saw him in Venice Titian was about ninety, not seventy-six as Vasari says earlier.

  1. The Camera degli Sposi.