Travels With Vasari

[poliphilo]

Andrew Graham Dixon's Travels with Vasari is a bit of an eye-opener.  I now know that most of what they taught me in school about renaissance art history- how medieval art was benighted until Giotto came along and how he handed the baton to Masaccio and how each artist in a fated succession progressed that little bit further until the summit of achievement was reached by the divine Michelangelo- all this and more ( the slight uncertainty as to where to place the Venetians, the grudging admiration for Correggio, the sidelining of the northern Europeans) are pure Vasari- and Vasari was a cheer-leader for his native Florence. If Vasari hadn't written his amazing book, would it ever have occured to us to tell the story of art this way?

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I don't know Vasari from a can of paint, but anyone who sidelines the medieval northern Europeans is an unmitigated sweep.

[bonus points to you if you can catch the Kipling quotation]

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've always had a particular fondness for Van Eyck and his school.

Unmitigated sweep? It sounds like it ought to be from Stalkey and Co.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Yes. There is a place where McTurk observes:

"Ruskin says anyone who would restore a church is an unmitigated sweep."

[Edit: we have an incredible Van Eyck here -- a jewel-like miniature panel painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata.]

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's time a re-read Stalky.

I believe I know that painting.