georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

Notes 28328. In his frescoes in the Cancelleria in Rome, Vasari celebrated the patronage of PopePaul III with personifications of Fama and Eternità—and he named the composition LaRimunerazione della Vertù . . . proof that the eternity of History has need of a prince’sremuneration. J. Kliemann (‘‘Su alcuni concetti,’’ 80) has aptly remarked that Vasari herecombined two a priori heterogeneous conceptions of virtù: one humanist, the othercourtly.29. ‘‘Giorgio Vasari was not a profound or original thinker’’: such is the beginning ofBoase, Giorgio Vasari.30. According to André Chastel, Vasari produced ‘‘a history that is calmly ordered,and conceived in accordance with a grand doctrine’’ (introduction to the eleven-volumeFrench translation of Vasari overseen by Chastel [Paris: Berger-Lebrault, 1981–88), 1:13). Bycontrast, R. Le Mollé asks: ‘‘Did he even have a doctrine?’’ (100).31. See Zygmunt Wazbinski, ‘‘L’Idée de l’histoire dans la première et la seconde éditiondes Vies de Vasari,’’ in Il Vasari storiografo e artista, 1.32. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York: Harper andRow, 1969), 33.33. Erwin Panofsky, ‘‘The First Page of Vasari’s ‘Libro,’ ’’ 205–20, where Vasari is ultimatelycharacterized as ‘‘the typical representative of a period which, though outwardlyself-confident, was deeply insecure and often close to despair’’ (220).34. See Écrits, 855–77 (‘‘La science et la vérité’’).35. This double nature, totalizing and rhetorical, was remarkably analyzed by Juliusvon Schlosser, La Littérature artistique, 319–25. Bazin retained the gist of this reading, writingthat ‘‘the patriarch of art history created in his mother tongue not a new science, buta new literary genre . . . Vasari wrote not the history of art but the novel of the history ofart’’ (Bazin, Histoire de l’histoire de l’art, 45–46). André Chastel attempted a salvage operation,using language that fudges the distinction between science and literature: ‘‘ThusVasari invented a new literary discipline: the history of art’’ (intro., French ed. of the Lives,1:16). On Vasari’s style, see also M. Capucci, ‘‘Forme della biografia nel Vasari,’’ in Il Vasaristoriografo et artista, 299–320.36. Vincenzio Borghini, cited by Zygmunt Wazbinski, ‘‘L’Idée de l’histoire,’’ 8. Seealso William Nelson, Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma of the Renaissance Storyteller (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 38–55.37. See Karl Frey, Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, 2 vols. (Munich: F. Müller,1923–30). Wazbinski, ‘‘L’Idée de l’histoire,’’ 10–21. See also Svetlana Alpers, ‘‘Ekphrasis andAesthetic Attitudes in Vasari’s Lives,’’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23(1960):190–215.38. See Licia Collobi Ragghianti, Il Libro de’ Disegni del Vasari, 2 vols. (Florence: Vallecchi,1974).39. See Paola Barocchi, ‘‘Storiografia e collezionismo dal Vasari al Lanzi,’’ in Storiadell’arte italiana, vol. 2: L’artista e il pubblico (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), 3–82. Unfortunately, theRome-Florence axis does not figure in the fine book by Krystof Pomian, Collectors andCuriosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1990).40. It is worth recalling here Panofsky’s admirable analysis of the framing of the initialpage of Vasari’s Libro, which closes with his assertion that it ‘‘marks the beginning of astrictly art-historical approach.’’ Panofsky, ‘‘The First Page of Vasari’s ‘Libro,’ ’’ 224.41. The Lives and the Libro are also linked by the set of framed artists’ portraits thatserve as frontispieces to each biography in the 1568 ed. This ‘‘museum of faces’’ is known