Vasari and portraiture: function, aesthetics and propaganda

[...]spread throughout the text, and implicit in the ekphrasis, the Lives makes a series of assertions about the empirical nature of portraiture.4 The claims of empiricism, though unambiguously present in the text, are not always supported by Vasari's thoughts elsewhere in the same book, by his...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of art historiography 2023-12 (29), p.1-19
Main Author: Hammond, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
16th century
Aesthetics
Art history
Empiricism
florence
Genre
Historiography
Naturalism
neoplatonism
portrait
Portraits
portraiture
propaganda
Traditions
vasari
Visual artists
Visual arts
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[...]spread throughout the text, and implicit in the ekphrasis, the Lives makes a series of assertions about the empirical nature of portraiture.4 The claims of empiricism, though unambiguously present in the text, are not always supported by Vasari's thoughts elsewhere in the same book, by his own painting practice or by the body of artworks he surveys. [...]it will consider the role these claims served both within the text, in the wider discourse of art in sixteenth-century Italy, and in Medicean Florence in particular. Any suggestion of inaccuracy or immorality would be antithetical to these functions and the viewer, doubting the reliability and utility of the image, may not esteem the subject or learn anything from it. [...]it is no surprise that the book discussed only zthe good, the better and the best', and portraits were often, by the mid-sixteenth century, understood to be frank, unmediated replications of the sitters.13 Vasari is a critical writer, and frequently notes moral and artistic lapses among artists so that they too can serve a didactic purpose, but portraits, as their sitters intended, are not cautionary tales, they are to kindle 'glory and virtue'. On 12 February 1548 Vasari raised an example, involving a painting of Pope Paul III, which, left on a terrace, caused people to make gestures of greeting and respect since they believed it was actually the pope.14 The story is clearly a literary trope, but regardless of whether or not the event actually happened Vasari used it to make his point.15 Thus he implies that a memetic lifelike quality is both a praiseworthy criterion for art in general and images of people in particular.
ISSN:2042-4752
DOI:10.48352/uobxjah.00004309