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Fama And Fortuna: Giorgio Vasari’S Michelangelo, Peter Kanelos

Quidditas

The life of Michelangelo is set indisputably as the capstone to Giorgio Vasari’s monumental, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori (1568). Cathedral-like in its detail and expanse, Vasari’s collection of biographies is itself a carefully designed and constructed work of art. Its separate parts are crafted with concern for the whole; from its series of individual narratives, a single grand narrative emerges. Buonarroti’s position in this is conspicuous, and purposefully so. In the first edition of the Vite (1550)—his biography, the only one granted a living artist—concludes the work decisively. It is the final entry and the …