Chapter 1

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LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS SCULPTORS AND ARCHITECTS BY GIORGIO VASARI VOLUME I. CIMABUE TO AGNOLO GADDI 1912

LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS SCULPTORS & ARCHITECTS

BY GIORGIO VASARI:

NEWLY TRANSLATED BY GASTON Du C. DE VERE. WITH FIVE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS: IN TEN VOLUMES

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LD. & THE MEDICI SOCIETY, LD. 1912-14

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I

PAGE

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THIS EDITION xi

DEDICATIONS TO COSIMO DE' MEDICI EDITION OF 1550 xiii EDITION OF 1568 xvii

IMPRIMATUR OF POPE PIUS V xxi

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE WHOLE WORK xxiii

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE LIVES xxxvii

GIOVANNI CIMABUE 1

ARNOLFO DI LAPO 11

NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI OF PISA [NICCOLA PISANO: GIOVANNI PISANO] 27

ANDREA TAFI 45

GADDO GADDI 53

MARGARITONE 61

GIOTTO 69

AGOSTINO AND AGNOLO OF SIENA 95

STEFANO AND UGOLINO SANESE [UGOLINO DA SIENA] 107

PIETRO LAURATI [PIETRO LORENZETTI] 115

ANDREA PISANO 121

BUONAMICO BUFFALMACCO 133

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI 153

PIETRO CAVALLINI 159

SIMONE SANESE [SIMONE MEMMI _OR_ MARTINI] 165

TADDEO GADDI 175

ANDREA DI CIONE ORCAGNA 187

TOMMASO, CALLED GIOTTINO 201

GIOVANNI DAL PONTE 209

AGNOLO GADDI 215

INDEX OF NAMES 225

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I

PLATES IN COLOUR

FACING PAGE

CIMABUE Madonna and Child Florence: Accademia, 102 10

GIOTTO Madonna and Child Florence: Accademia, 103 82

PIETRO LAURATI Madonna and Child, Assisi: Lower Church 118 with SS. Francis and John

AMBROGIO Madonna and Child, Siena: Pinacoteca, 77 156 LORENZETTI with SS. Mary Magdalen and Dorothy

SIMONE SANESE The Knighting of Assisi: Lower Church, S. Martin Chapel of S. Martin 168

LIPPO MEMMI Madonna and Child Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 1081A 172

TADDEO GADDI The Presentation Florence: Accademia, 107 182 in the Temple

ANDREA DI CIONE Christ Enthroned Florence: S. Maria ORCAGNA Novella, Strozzi Chapel 192

GIOTTINO The Descent from Florence: Uffizi, 27 206 the Cross

PLATES IN MONOCHROME

CIMABUE Madonna, Child, Paris: Louvre, 1260 2 and Angels

ROMAN SCHOOL Isaac's Blessing Assisi: Upper Church 6

ROMAN SCHOOL The Deposition Assisi: Upper Church 6 from the Cross

CIMABUE The Crucifixion Assisi: Upper Church 8

ARNOLFO DI LAPO Reclining Female Florence: (SCHOOL OF) Figure from a Tomb Collection Bardini 18

ARNOLFO DI LAPO Tomb of Adrian V Viterbo: S. Francesco 24 (SCHOOL OF)

NICCOLA PISANO Pulpit Pisa: The Baptistery 30

NICCOLA PISANO Detail: The Pisa: Relief from the Adoration of Pulpit of the Baptistery 32 the Magi

NICCOLA PISANO Detail: The Siena: Relief from Visitation and the Pulpit The Nativity of the Baptistery 34

GIOVANNI PISANO Detail: A Sibyl Siena: Duomo (façade) 38

GIOVANNI PISANO Detail: The Massacre Pistoia: Relief from the of the Innocents Pulpit, S. Andrea 40

GIOVANNI PISANO Madonna and Child Padua: Arena Chapel 42

MARGARITONE The Virgin and Child, London: N.G., 5040 64 with Scenes from the Lives of the Saints

GIOTTO The Death of S. Francis Florence: S. Croce 70

ROMAN SCHOOL S. Francis Preaching Assisi: Upper Church 72 before Pope Honorius III

ROMAN SCHOOL The Body of S. Francis Assisi: Upper Church 74 before the Church of S. Damiano

GIOTTO AND HIS The Raising of Lazarus Assisi: Lower Church 78 PUPILS

GIOTTO The Flight into Egypt Padua: Arena Chapel 88

GIOTTO The Crucifixion Assisi: Lower Church 90 (SCHOOL OF)

UGOLINO SANESE SS. Paul, Peter, Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich and John the Baptist Museum, 1635 112

PIETRO LAURATI The Madonna Enthroned Arezzo: S. Maria della Pieve 116

PIETRO LAURATI The Deposition from the Assisi: Lower Church 120 Cross

ANDREA PISANO Details: Salome and The Florence: Gates of the Beheading of S. John the Baptistery 126 Baptist

ANDREA PISANO The Creation of Man Florence: Relief on the Campanile 128

NINO PISANO Madonna and Child Orvieto: Museo dell'Opera 130

AMBROGIO Madonna and Child Milan: Cagnola Collection 154 LORENZETTI

AMBROGIO Central Panel of Massa Marittima: Municipio LORENZETTI Polyptych: Madonna 158 and Child

PIETRO Detail from The Last Rome: Convent of S. Cecilia CAVALLINI Judgment: Head of an 162 Apostle

PIETRO Detail from The Last Rome: Convent of S. Cecilia CAVALLINI Judgment: Head of the 164 Christ in Glory

SIMONE SANESE Altar-piece: S. Louis Naples: S. Lorenzo 166 crowning King Robert of Naples

SIMONE SANESE The Annunciation Antwerp: Royal Museum, 257-8 170

LIPPO MEMMI Madonna and Child Altenburg: Lindenau Museum, 43 174

TADDEO GADDI The Last Supper Florence: S. Croce, the Refectory 178

BERNARDO DI CIONE Detail from The Florence: S. Maria Novella 190 ORCAGNA Paradise: Christ with the Virgin Enthroned

ANDREA DI CIONE The Death and Assumption Florence: Relief on the ORCAGNA of the Virgin Tabernacle, Or San Michele 194

FRANCESCO TRAINI S. Thomas Aquinas Pisa: S. Caterina 198

GIOVANNI DAL S. Peter Enthroned Florence: Uffizi, 1292 212 PONTE

AGNOLO GADDI The Marriage of S. Philadelphia: J. G. Johnson 218 Catharine Collection

* * * * *

+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |The CORRIGENDA have been corrected in this etext.| +-------------------------------------------------+

CORRIGENDA

Page 49, lines 1, 27, _for_ "Apollonius" _read_ "Apollonio."

Page 120, line 10, _for_ "which tabernacle is quite round" _read_ "which tabernacle is in the round."

Page 127, lines 11, 12, _for_ "oval spaces" _read_ "mandorle."

Page 196, line 18, _for_ "an oval space" _read_ "a mandorla."

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

Vasari introduces himself sufficiently in his own prefaces and introduction; a translator need concern himself only with the system by which the Italian text can best be rendered in English. The style of that text is sometimes laboured and pompous; it is often ungrammatical. But the narrative is generally lively, full of neat phrases, and abounding in quaint expressions--many of them still recognizable in the modern Florentine vernacular--while, in such Lives as those of Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelagnolo, Vasari shows how well he can rise to a fine subject. His criticism is generally sound, solid, and direct; and he employs few technical terms, except in connection with architecture, where we find passages full of technicalities, often so loosely used that it is difficult to be sure of their exact meaning. In such cases I have invariably adopted the rendering which seemed most in accordance with Vasari's actual words, so far as these could be explained by professional advice and local knowledge; and I have included brief notes where they appeared to be indispensable.

In Mrs. Foster's familiar English paraphrase--for a paraphrase it is rather than a translation--all Vasari's liveliness evaporates, even where his meaning is not blurred or misunderstood. Perhaps I have gone too far towards the other extreme in relying upon the Anglo-Saxon side of the English language rather than upon the Latin, and in taking no liberties whatever with the text of 1568. My intention, indeed, has been to render my original word for word, and to err, if at all, in favour of literalness. The very structure of Vasari's sentences has usually been retained, though some freedom was necessary in the matter of the punctuation, which is generally bewildering. As Mr. Horne's only too rare translation of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci has proved, it is by some such method that we can best keep Vasari's sense and Vasari's spirit--the one as important to the student of Italian art as is the other to the general reader. Such an attempt, however, places an English translator of the first volume at a conspicuous disadvantage. Throughout the earlier Lives Vasari seems to be feeling his way. He is not sure of himself, and his style is often awkward. The more faithful the attempted rendering, the more plainly must that awkwardness be reproduced.

Vasari's Introduction on Technique has not been included, because it has no immediate connection with the Lives. In any case, there already exists an adequate translation by Miss Maclehose. All Vasari's other prefaces and introductions are given in the order in which they are found in the edition of 1568.

With this much explanation, I may pass to personal matters, and record my thanks to many Florentine friends for help in technical and grammatical questions; to Professor Baldwin Brown for the notes on technical matters printed with Miss Maclehose's translation of "Vasari on Technique"; and to Mr. C. J. Holmes, of the National Portrait Gallery, for encouragement in a task which has proved no less pleasant than difficult.

G. DU C. DE V.

LONDON, _March 1912_.

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSIMO DE' MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE

MY MOST HONOURED LORD,

Seeing that your Excellency, following in this the footsteps of your most Illustrious ancestors, and incited and urged by your own natural magnanimity, ceases not to favour and to exalt every kind of talent, wheresoever it may be found, and shows particular favour to the arts of design, fondness for their craftsmen,[1] and understanding and delight in their beautiful and rare works; I think that you cannot but take pleasure in this labour which I have undertaken, of writing down the lives, the works, the manners, and the circumstances of all those who, finding the arts already dead, first revived them, then step by step nourished and adorned them, and finally brought them to that height of beauty and majesty whereon they stand at the present day. And because these masters have been almost all Tuscans, and most of these Florentines, of whom many have been incited and aided by your most Illustrious ancestors with every kind of reward and honour to put themselves to work, it may be said that in your state, nay, in your most blessed house the arts were born anew, and that through the generosity of your ancestors the world has recovered these most beautiful arts, through which it has been ennobled and embellished.

Wherefore, through the debt which this age, these arts, and these craftsmen owe to your ancestors, and to you as the heir of their virtue and of their patronage of these professions, and through that debt which I, above all, owe them, seeing that I was taught by them, that I was their subject and their devoted servant, that I was brought up under Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and under Alessandro, your predecessor, and that, finally, I am infinitely attached to the blessed memory of the Magnificent Ottaviano de' Medici, by whom I was supported, loved and protected while he lived; for all these reasons, I say, and because from the greatness of your worth and of your fortunes there will come much favour for this work, and from your understanding of its subject there will come a better appreciation than from any other for its usefulness and for the labour and the diligence that I have given to its execution, it has seemed to me that to your Excellency alone could it be fittingly dedicated, and it is under your most honoured name that I have wished it to come to the hands of men.

Deign, then, Excellency, to accept it, to favour it, and, if this may be granted to it by your exalted thoughts, sometimes to read it; having regard to the nature of the matter therein dealt with and to my pure intention, which has been, not to gain for myself praise as a writer, but as craftsman to praise the industry and to revive the memory of those who, having given life and adornment to these professions, do not deserve to have their names and their works wholly left, even as they were, the prey of death and of oblivion. Besides, at the same time, through the example of so many able men and through so many observations on so many works that I have gathered together in this book, I have thought to help not a little the masters of these exercises and to please all those who therein have taste and pleasure. This I have striven to do with that accuracy and with that good faith which are essential for the truth of history and of things written. But if my writing, being unpolished and as artless as my speech, be unworthy of your Excellency's ear and of the merits of so many most illustrious intellects; as for them, pardon me that the pen of a draughtsman, such as they too were, has no greater power to give them outline and shadow; and as for yourself, let it suffice me that your Excellency should deign to approve my simple labour, remembering that the necessity of gaining for myself the wherewithal to live has left me no time to exercise myself with any instrument but the brush. Nor even with that have I reached that goal to which I think to be able to attain, now that Fortune promises me so much favour, that, with greater ease and greater credit for myself and with greater satisfaction to others, I may perchance be able, as well with the pen as with the brush, to unfold my ideas to the world, whatsoever they may be. For besides the help and protection for which I must hope from your Excellency, as my liege lord and as the protector of poor followers of the arts, it has pleased the goodness of God to elect as His Vicar on earth the most holy and most blessed Julius III, Supreme Pontiff and a friend and patron of every kind of excellence and of these most excellent and most difficult arts in particular, from whose exalted liberality I expect recompense for many years spent and many labours expended, and up to now without fruit. And not only I, who have dedicated myself to the perpetual service of His Holiness, but all the gifted craftsmen of this age, must expect from him such honour and reward and opportunities for practising the arts so greatly, that already I rejoice to see these arts arriving in his time at the greatest height of their perfection, and Rome adorned by craftsmen so many and so noble that, counting them with those of Florence, whom your Excellency is calling every day into activity, I hope that someone after our time will have to write a fourth part to my book, enriching it with other masters and other masterpieces than those described by me; in which company I am striving with every effort not to be among the last.

Meanwhile, I am content if your Excellency has good hope of me and a better opinion than that which, by no fault of mine, you have perchance conceived of me; beseeching you not to let me be undone in your estimation by the malignant tales of other men, until at last my life and my works shall prove the contrary to what they say.

Now with that intent to which I hold, always to honour and to serve your Excellency, dedicating to you this my rough labour, as I have dedicated to you every other thing of mine and my own self, I implore you not to disdain to grant it your protection, or at least to appreciate the devotion of him who offers it to you; and recommending myself to your gracious goodness, most humbly do I kiss your hand.

Your Excellency's most humble Servant, GIORGIO VASARI, _Painter of Arezzo_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The word "artist" has become impossible as a translation of "artefice." Such words as "artificer," "art-worker," or "artisan," seem even worse. "Craftsman" loses the alliterative connection with "art," but it comes nearest to expressing Vasari's idea of the "artefice" as a practical workman (_cf._ his remark about Ambrogio Lorenzetti: "The ways of Ambrogio were rather those of a 'gentiluomo' than of an 'artefice'").]

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSIMO DE' MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE AND SIENA

MY MOST HONOURED LORD,

Behold, seventeen years since I first presented to your most Illustrious Excellency the Lives, sketched so to speak, of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects, they come before you again, not indeed wholly finished, but so much changed from what they were and in such wise adorned and enriched with innumerable works, whereof up to that time I had been able to gain no further knowledge, that from my endeavour and in so far as in me lies nothing more can be looked for in them.

Behold, I say, once again they come before you, most Illustrious and truly most Excellent Lord Duke, with the addition of other noble and right famous craftsmen, who from that time up to our own day have passed from the miseries of this life to a better, and of others who, although they are still living in our midst, have laboured in these professions to such purpose that they are most worthy of eternal memory. And in truth it has been no small good-fortune for many that I, by the goodness of Him in whom all things have their being, have lived so long that I have almost rewritten this book; seeing that, even as I have removed many things which had been included I know not how, in my absence and without my consent, and have changed others, so too I have added many, both useful and necessary, that were lacking. And as for the likenesses and portraits of so many men of worth which I have placed in this work, whereof a great part have been furnished by the help and co-operation of your Excellency, if they are sometimes not very true to life, and if they all have not that character and resemblance which the vivacity of colours is wont to give them, that is not because the drawing and the lineaments have not been taken from the life and are not characteristic and natural; not to mention that a great part of them have been sent me by the friends that I have in various places, and they have not all been drawn by a good hand. Moreover, I have suffered no small inconvenience in this from the distance of those who have engraved these heads, because, if the engravers had been near me, it might perchance have been possible to use in this matter more diligence than has been shown. But however this may be, our lovers of art and our craftsmen, for the convenience and benefit of whom I have put myself to so great pains, must be wholly indebted to your most Illustrious Excellency for whatever they may find in it of the good, the useful, and the helpful, seeing that while engaged in your service I have had the opportunity, through the leisure which it has pleased you to give me and through the management of your many, nay, innumerable treasures, to put together and to give to the world everything which appeared to be necessary for the perfect completion of this work; and would it not be almost impiety, not to say ingratitude, were I to dedicate these Lives to another, or were the craftsmen to attribute to any other than yourself whatever they may find in them to give them help or pleasure? For not only was it with your help and favour that they first came to the light, as now they do again, but you are, in imitation of your ancestors, sole father, sole lord, and sole protector of these our arts. Wherefore it is very right and reasonable that by these there should be made, in your service and to your eternal and perpetual memory, so many most noble pictures and statues and so many marvellous buildings in every manner.

But if we are all, as indeed we are beyond calculation, most deeply obliged to you for these and for other reasons, how much more do I not owe to you, who have always had (would that my brain and my hand had been equal to my desire and right good will) so many valuable opportunities to display my little knowledge, which, whatsoever it may be, fails by a very great measure to counterbalance the greatness and the truly royal magnificence of your mind? But how may I tell? It is in truth better that I should stay as I am than that I should set myself to attempt what would be to the most lofty and noble brain, and much more so to my insignificance, wholly impossible.

Accept then, most Illustrious Excellency, this my book, or rather indeed your book, of the Lives of the craftsmen of design; and like the Almighty God, looking rather at my soul and at my good intentions than at my work, take from me with right good will not what I would wish and ought to give, but what I can.

Your most Illustrious Excellency's most indebted servant, GIORGIO VASARI.

FLORENCE, _January 9, 1568_.

PIUS PAPA QUINTUS