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

Art as Rebirth 59egno, which covers two dense pages and begins with a warm epistolarysalutation: ‘‘My honorable and beloved craftsmen’’ (eccellenti ecarissimi artefici miei) 16 And what does this letter say? It speaks of affectionand of multiple talents (la eccellente virtù vostra). It repeats howmuch a history of art should be made to help remind men of the greatmerit (tanta virtù) of artists. It recounts the success of the first edition,‘‘not a volume of which is to be found in bookstores,’’ and the laborthat went into the second. Finally, it comes out with the essentialthing, namely a veritable hymn to ambition—‘‘to leave the worldadorned with works numerous,’’ and see oneself in return covered byit with rewards, esteem, and glory:Seeing the nobility and greatness of our art [vedendo la nobiltàe grandezza dell’arte nostra], and how much it has alwaysbeen, by all nations, and particularly by the most noble geniusesand the most powerful lords, both valued and rewarded,to spur and inflame us all to leave the worldadorned with works numerous and of most rare excellence;such that, embellished by us, it might ascribe to us that samerank [grado] as was held by those ever marvelous and mostcelebrated spirits. Accept then with a grateful spirit these mylabors, brought affectionately to completion by me, for theglory of art and the honor of artists [per gloria dell’arte e onordegli artefici]. 17A few lines later, Vasari does not neglect to point out that he himselfparticipated in this gloria of artists—a way of including himself asobject in the history that he recounted, and of shutting down to theplay of the history of art (the objective genitive encompassing for onelast time the subjective genitive sense). So Vasari placed himself ‘‘atthe end’’ of his book, at the far end of the frame, conscious of thedouble meaning, humble and vainglorious, that such a gesture mightsustain.But at the same time, and in the same lines, Vasari invoked an origin:how, in effect, could the renascent historian not place himself underthe famous ancestry of a strictly ‘‘nascent’’ history, that of Pliny re-