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284 Notesto be directly related to the collection of portraits of great men constituted by PaoloGiovio in his villa on Lake Como. See Wolfgang Prinz, Vasari Sammlung von Kunstlerbildnissen:Mit einem kritischen Verzeichnis des 144 Vitenbildnisse in der Zweiten Ausgabe des Lebensbeschreibungenvon 1568, supplement to Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 13(1966). Charles Hope, ‘‘Historical Portraits in the Lives and in the Frescoes of GiorgioVasari,’’ in Giorgio Vasari tra decorazione, 321–38.42. Obviously there are many other ‘‘totem-notions’’ in Vasari that probably conditionedthe entire subsequent development of the discipline—for example, composizione,fantasia, giudizio, grazia, invenzione, maniera, moderno, natura, regola. All of them are listedbut unfortunately not examined critically in any depth, by R. Le Mollé, Georges Vasari.43. Vite 4:7–15 (‘‘Proemio alla Parte Terza’’) [Lives 1:617–23]. See Panofsky, Renaissanceand Renascences, 31–32.44. Vite 1:369, 372 [Lives 1:96–97]. Recognizable here is the classic thesis according towhich ‘‘without the idea of One Art progressing through the centuries there would be nohistory of art’’: E. H. Gombrich, ‘‘The Renaissance Conception of Artistic Progress andIts Consequences’’ (1952), in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (Oxford:Phaidon, 1966), 1:10. See also Gombrich, Ideas of Progress and Their Impact on Art (NewYork: Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, 1971). Eugenio Garin has relativizedthis notion by demonstrating the roots of Vasari’s Rinascità in medieval culture: E. Garin,‘‘Giorgio Vasari e il tema della Rinascità,’’ in Il Vasari storiografo e artista, 259–66.45. Vite 1:372 [Lives 1:97]. See André Chastel, ‘‘Giotto coetaneo di Dante’’ (1963), inFables, formes, figures (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), 1:377–86. But above all, see E. H. Gombrich,‘‘Giotto’s Portrait of Dante?’’ Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 471–83.46. A remark of Hegel’s epitomizes this state of mind: ‘‘The advances made by painting. . . have consisted precisely in its working its way toward portraiture.’’ Hegel’s Aesthetics,trans. T. M. Knox (London: Clarendon Press, 1975), 2:865 [translation altered].47. It is much too perfunctory to view the Platonic theory of mimesis as a rejection,pure and simple, of artistic activity in general. See Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘‘Image et apparencedans la théorie plantonicienne de la Mimésis’’ (1975), in Religions, histoires, raisons(Paris: Maspero, 1979), 105–37. One also thinks of the theory of two contradictory resemblancesin Plotinus (Enneads, i.2.1–2) and of the famous theory of ‘‘dissembling imitation’’ inPseudo-Dionysius. For a contemporary critique of the concept of imitation, see esp. JacquesDerrida, ‘‘Economimèsis,’’ in Mimesis des articulations, ed. Sylviane Agacinski et al.(Paris: Flammarion, 1975), 55–93. English trans. R. Klein in Diacritics 11 (1981): 3–25. P.Lacoue-Labarthe, ‘‘Typographie,’’ in Mimesis des articulations, 165–270; Lacoue-Labarthe,L’Imitation des modernes (Typographies 2) (Paris: Galilée, 1986).48. Vite 1:222 [Lives 1:32].49. See J. von Schlosser, La Littérature artistique, 336–37, who remarks regarding Vasari’sconcept of imitation: ‘‘The ‘esthetic’ of our author is uncertain and tends towardcompromise.’’ See also Rouchette, La Renaissance que nous a léguée Vasari, 73–97. R.LeMollé, Georges Vasari, 99–152.50. See Martin Kemp, ‘‘From Mimesis to Fantasia: The Quattrocento Vocabulary ofCreation: Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts,’’ Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies7 (1977): 347–98.51. See Ferrucio Ulivi, L’imitazione nella poetica del Rinascimento (Milan: Marzorati,1959), 62–74. On the origins of this double sense of imitation, see Michael Baxandall, Giottoand the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition,1350–1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 34, 70–75, 97, 118.