文章推荐：这次文章摘自经济学人一期的艺术方面的文章，是雅思/托福考试常常涉及到的主题，对艺术不甚熟悉的同学可以好好读一下。

The first artists’ biographer

TOWARDS the end of his life Michelangelo Buonarroti, the most famous artist of the Italian Renaissance, began burning his drawings. He did not consider them works of art in their own right so much as pictorial scaffolding. They aided the difficult process of deciding what a painting or sculpture would look like when it was finished and demonstrated his very real struggles to achieve aesthetic perfection. By eliminating these drawings he wanted posterity, when thinking of the great Michelangelo, to be confronted with a towering figure of insurmountable genius, one as cold and stiff as the marble he worked with—in short, a man who conjured up the great masterpieces in Western art with minimal effort.

That people can see behind this facade is due to the timely intervention of another influential figure of the Renaissance: Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), a painter, architect and author, who saved many drawings from the artist’s purge. Safeguarding the legacy of those around him, as well as that of their predecessors, became Vasari’s obsession. In 1550 he published his magnum opus, “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects”. In it he records the many flaws, rivalries, vices and eccentricities that together create a family photo- graph of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Vasari pulls his subjects down off their artistic pedestals, and sketches in characteristics that are all too human. Masaccio was absent-minded. Filippo Lippi had an insatiable libido despite being a monk. Paolo Uccello once fled from his work when served cheese.

In “The Collector of Lives”, an insightful and gripping new book about Vasari, In- grid Rowland and Noah Charney avoid the endless debate over which of the biographer’s stories are true or false. Instead, they focus on what has been included in the biography as a way of learning more about Vasari himself.

Thus a suspiciously melodramatic story of Leonardo da Vinci dying in the arms of King Francis I of France, bitterly lamenting his own lack of devotion to his art, reveals more about Vasari’s attitude to work than Leonardo’s. Vasari achieved contemporary fame and wealth by his rigorous work ethic. His ability to stick to deadlines often exhausted him, but it ensured a steady stream of important com- missions from the Medici and the papacy. Shrugging off taunts from jealous rivals about his short stature, Vasari created work across the Italian peninsula that was lauded by contemporaries and made him as celebrated as many of the artists he wrote about. His unattractive appearance may well be the reason, the authors believe, that Vasari championed the similarly plain-looking Giotto and Brunelleschi, reminding the reader that “lumps of earth of- ten conceal veins of gold.”

Ms. Rowland and Mr. Charney draw a panoramic view of the art-world during the Renaissance, placing Vasari at the centre. He went to great lengths to preserve pieces of scrap paper. They contained sketches by Michelangelo, and he deemed them valuable. This was a time when artists were traditionally anonymous, uneducated craftsmen of “pretty things”. By prioritising the creators themselves over what they created, championing their deeds and elevating their status, Vasari helped lay the foundations for art history as well for how art is understood today. This is an important book and long awaited. The authors have done a commendable job of returning to his rightful place the man who inflated the reputation of art and artists so successfully that he himself was squeezed out of the picture.

文章精读：

The first artists’ biographer

摘自The Economist January 20th 2018

文章中出现的画家简介：

Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475年3月6日—1564年2月18日) 米开朗琪罗 (文艺复兴时期大艺术家，无需介绍)

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) 乔尔乔·瓦萨里是米开朗基罗的学生,艺术理论家

Leonardo da Vinci ( 1452年4月15日-- 1519年5月2日)列奥纳多·达·芬奇

Masaccio 马萨乔(1401—1428) 意大利文艺复兴的先驱，位使用透视法的画家

Filippo Lippi (约1406～1469)风流僧侣画家,生于佛罗伦萨

Brunelleschi (1377年-1446年4月15日),意大利文艺复兴早期颇负盛名的建筑师)

TOWARDS the end of his life Michelangelo Buonarroti, the most famous artist of the Italian Renaissance, began burning his drawings. He did not consider them works of art in their own right so much as pictorial scaffolding. They aided the difficult process of deciding what a painting or sculpture would look like when it was finished and demonstrated his very real struggles to achieve aesthetic perfection. By eliminating these drawings he wanted posterity, when thinking of the great Michelangelo, to be confronted with a towering figure of insurmountable genius, one as cold and stiff as the marble he worked with—in short, a man who conjured up the great masterpieces in Western art with minimal effort.

That people can see behind this facade is due to the timely intervention of another influential figure of the Renaissance: Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), a painter, architect and author, who saved many drawings from the artist’s purge. Safeguarding the legacy of those around him, as well as that of their predecessors, became Vasari’s obsession. In 1550 he published his magnum opus, “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects”. In it he records the many flaws, rivalries, vices and eccentricities that together create a family photograph of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Vasari pulls his subjects down off their artistic pedestals, and sketches in characteristics that are all too human. Masaccio was absent-minded. Filippo Lippi had an insatiable libido despite being a monk. Paolo Uccello once fled from his work when served cheese.

In “The Collector of Lives”, an insightful and gripping new book about Vasari, Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney avoid the endless debate over which of the biographer’s stories are true or false. Instead, they focus on what has been included in the biography as a way of learning more about Vasari himself. Thus a suspiciously melodramatic story of Leonardo da Vinci dying in the arms of King Francis I of France, bitterly lamenting his own lack of devotion to his art, reveals more about Vasari’s attitude to work than Leonardo’s.

Vasari achieved contemporary fame and wealth by his rigorous work ethic. His ability tostick to deadlines often exhausted him, but it ensured a steady stream of importantcommissions from the Medici and the papacy. Shrugging off taunts from jealous rivals about his short stature, Vasari created work across the Italian peninsula that waslauded by contemporaries and made him as celebrated as many of the artists he wrote about. His unattractive appearance may well be the reason, the authors believe, that Vasari championed the similarly plain-looking Giotto and Brunelleschi, reminding the reader that “lumps of earth often conceal veins of gold.”

Ms. Rowland and Mr. Charney draw a panoramic view of the art world during the Renaissance, placing Vasari at the centre. He went to great lengths to preserve pieces of scrap paper. They contained sketches by Michelangelo, and he deemed them valuable. This was a time when artists were traditionally anonymous, uneducated craftsmen of “pretty things”. By prioritising the creators themselves over what they created, championing their deeds and elevating their status, Vasari helped lay the foundations for art history as well for how art is understood today. This is an important book and long awaited. The authors have done a commendable job of returning to his rightful place the man who inflated the reputation of art and artists so successfully that he himself wassqueezed out of the picture.

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