The Lives of the Artists (Bellori)

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The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
File:Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni.jpg
Cover to the 1672 edition.
Author Gian Pietro Bellori
Original title Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni
Country Italy
Language Italian
Subject Artist biographies
Publisher Marcardi, Rome (1672)
Publication date
 1672, 1728
Published in English
 2005 (in full)

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 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

Prior to 2005, only the Idea and the biographies of the Carracci,[4] Barocci, Caravaggio[5][6] and Van Dyck had been translated into English.[7] The 2005 translation by Alice Sedgwick Wohl[7] is based on the 1976 Italian edition by Evelina Borea[8] controlled against the editio princeps of 1672[9] 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.[7]

Bellori was unable to obtain funding for a second edition.[10] 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.[11]

References

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