The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a man of many talents--a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar--but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, the classic account that singlehandedly invented the genre of artistic biography and established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari's extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill rather than an intellectual pursuit, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari's visionary writings that artists like Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Their enduring reputations testify to Vasari's profound yet unspoken influence on western culture.
An advisor to kings and pontiffs--and a confidant to Titian, Donatello, and more--Vasari enjoyed an exhilarating career amid the thrilling culture of Renaissance Italy. In The Collector of Lives, Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney offer a lively and inviting introduction to this pivotal figure in art history, and immerse readers in the world of the Medici of Florence and the popes of Rome. A narrative of intrigue, scandal, and colorful artistic rivalry, this vivid biography shows the great works of western art taking shape under Vasari's keen eye--and reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.
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Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages. This is a lively, highly readable point of entry into an important and fascinating text.--Cammy Brothers
[Rowland and Charney's] account of Vasari's Tuscany, and of the facts (and fictions) that went into his "Lives," is a fitting tribute to their subject's biographical achievements.
"[A]n engaging, intricate and mesmerizing gem of a book for those who enjoy reading about the lives of artists and placing the Renaissance within a greater context."
Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney give full measure to [Vasari's] artistic skills (and the diplomatic adroitness he needed to exercise them) and place him again at the centre of 16th-century Italian art.
Insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable.--Sarah Bakewell
An immersive tour of Vasari's kaleidoscopic world, rich with court intrigue, iconographic riddles, artistic rivalries, Renaissance wordplay, naughty monkeys, and, possibly, even a lost Leonardo. Rowland and Charney have done the epic biographer proud with this affectionate, original life of the artist.--Stacy Schiff
A refreshingly sharp and original study of the man who almost single-handedly invented the very discipline of art history. Vasari emerges from this book as a visionary, but also as an unscrupulous wheeler-dealer in artistic reputations: a magnificent teller of truths, but also an outrageously inventive liar. Anyone interested in the Renaissance simply has to read it.--Andrew Graham-Dixon
Rowland and Charney lure readers in with a mystery of Dan Brown proportions. ...[A]n exciting read. Rowland and Charney are at their best when explaining the workings of the sixteenth-century art world.
[E]ngrossingly heady and detailed...a sharp study of a sometimes overlooked but always vital figure.
Absorbing and well-researched... a richly detailed life of this singular Renaissance figure.--(starred review)
The Collector of Lives is a fitting tribute to Giorgio Vasari--a book as entertainingly readable as Vasari's own gossipy tales. Rowland and Charney put this vital figure in Western culture into new contexts and perspectives, offering compelling insights that will entice and satisfy art amateurs and scholars alike.--Ross King
