Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Giorgio Vasari: The Lives of the Artists

I wonder if Vasari was satisfied with his life.  Here we have a seminal work, indispensable to historians, art and otherwise, filled with delightful and quirky anecdotes that are seemingly found nowhere else.  And neither does he seem to have been the sort of creator who was unappreciated in his own time, apparently on friendly terms with the some of the greatest minds and artists of all human history.

Was it enough for him?  Was he content to have documented the lives of these demigods, knowing full well he would never be one of them?  If something of him still remains among us, is he upset or content that his name is known only as a writer, not as an artist, and that by only a small fraction of a fraction of people?

If it is any consolation, Vasari, I am glad to have met you.  You seem to have been a pretty unremarkable fellow, and both your writing and your art leave something to be desired.  But fate dropped you in your proper slot, and you did what was required of you.  One could wish for nothing more.