The Lives of the Artists (Bellori)

The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects or Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni is a series of artist biographies written by Gian Pietro Bellori (1613–96), whom Julius von Schlosser called "the most important historiographer of art not only of Rome, but all Italy, even of Europe, in the seventeenth century".[1] It is one of the foundational texts of the history and criticism of European art.[2]

The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
Cover to the 1672 edition.
AuthorGian Pietro Bellori
Original titleLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni
CountryItaly
LanguageItalian
SubjectArtist biographies
PublisherMascardi, Rome (1672)
Publication date
1672, 1728
Published in English
2005 (in full)

The first edition (1672) contained biographies of nine painters (Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Barocci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Domenichino, Lanfranco, and Poussin), two sculptors (François Duquesnoy and Alessandro Algardi), and one architect (Domenico Fontana). The book was dedicated to Jean-Baptiste Colbert and published with French financial support.[3]

Preface

The preface to the Lives is an essay Bellori delivered to the Accademia di San Luca, Rome in 1664. The essay, entitled The Idea of the Painter, the Sculptor and the Architect (L'idea del pittore, dello scultore, e dell'architetto) contributed to a classicist reading of the Lives, as opposed the a book about near-contemporaries.[2]

Editions and translations

Bellori's treatise had an enormous influence throughout Europe. It was summarized in the December 1676 issue of the Journal des sçavans, and its key concepts were disseminated by André Félibien in his major work, Entretiens sur les vies et les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes (1666–88). Bellori's theories reached England through John Dryden's translation of The Idea of the Painter, the Sculptor and the Architect in his preface to the 1695 translation of Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy's Latin poem, De arte graphica (1667) and influenced both Shaftesbury and Reynolds.[4] William Aglionby's major work, Painting Illustrated in Three Diallogues [sic] (1685), borrows heavily from Bellori's Vite.[5] Winckelmann's theory of the "ideally beautiful" as he expounds it in Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, IV.2.33 ff., thoroughly agrees with the content of Bellori's Idea.[6]

Prior to 2005, only the Idea and the biographies of the Carracci,[7] Barocci, Caravaggio[8][9] and Van Dyck had been translated into English.[10] The 2005 translation by Alice Sedgwick Wohl[10] is based on the 1976 Italian edition by Evelina Borea[11] controlled against the editio princeps of 1672[12] and Michelangelo Piacentini's transcription of MS 2506 (one of two copies, ca. 1700) of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen, of the biographies of Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi and Carlo Maratta.[10]

Bellori was unable to obtain funding for a second edition.[13] The 12 biographies were republished in 1728 in Naples as a pirated edition, with the addition of a biography of Luca Giordano (1632-1705) by an unknown author.[14]

ImageNamePublicationPage
Annibale CarracciLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 167219
Agostino CarracciLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672103
Domenico FontanaLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672141
Federico BarocciLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672169
CaravaggioLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672201
Pieter Paul RubensLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672221
Antoon van DyckLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672253
François DuquesnoyLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672269
DomenichinoLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672289
Giovanni LanfrancoLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672365
Alessandro AlgardiLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672387
Nicolas PoussinLe vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672407

References
  1. Von Schlosser, Julius Ritter (1924). Die Kunstliteratur: Ein Handbuch zur Quellenkunde der neueren Kunstgeschichte. Vienna: Kunstverlag Anton Schroll & Co. p. 423.
  2. Cropper, Elizabeth (December 2006). "Giovan Pietro Bellori, the Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition by Alice Sedgwick Wohl". The Burlington Magazine. 148 (1245): 854. JSTOR 20074653.
  3. Zirpolo, Lilian (2007). "The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition by Giovan Pietro Bellori; Alice Sedgwick Wohl Review by: Lilian H. Zirpolo". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 38 (3): 805–807. doi:10.2307/20478523. JSTOR 20478523.
  4. Gilmore Holt, Elizabeth (2022). A Documentary History of Art. Vol. 2. Princeton University Press. p. 94. ISBN 9780691242910.
  5. Giovanni Pietro Bellori (21 November 2005). Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition. Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-521-78187-9.
  6. Panofsky, Erwin (1968). Idea: a Concept in Art Theory. University of South Carolina Press. p. 242.
  7. Bellori, Giovanni Pietro; Enggass, Catherine (1968). The lives of Annibale & Agostino Carracci. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  8. Friedlaender, Walter (1974). Caravaggio Studies. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 237–254. ISBN 9780691003085.
  9. Hibbard, Howard (1983). Caravaggio. Harper & Row. pp. 360–374. ISBN 9780064301282.
  10. Bellori, Giovanni Pietro; Wohl, Alice Sedgwick; Wohl, Hellmut; Montanari, Tomaso (2005). Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521781879.
  11. Borea, Evelina (1976). Le vite de' pittori, scultori e architetti moderni. Turin: G. Einaudi.
  12. Bellori, Giovanni Pietro (1672). Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni, Parte Prima. Rome: Mascardi.
  13. Raben, Hans (2006). "Bellori's Art: The Taste and Distaste of a Seventeenth-Century Art Critic in Rome". Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art. 32 (2/3): 126–146. JSTOR 20355327.
  14. Bell, Janis; Willette, Thomas (2002). Art History in the Age of Bellori: Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Century Rome. Cambridge University Press. pp. 278–291. ISBN 9780521782487.
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