Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Critical, 11/16/2009
EAN 9780521139540, ISBN10: 0521139546

Paperback, 516 pages, 27.9 x 21.6 x 2.6 cm
Language: English

This is the first complete translation of the biographies of fifteen artists, including Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Poussin, written by the seventeenth-century antiquarian Giovan Pietro Bellori. Originally conceived as a continuation of Vasari's famous Lives, it is a fundamental source for seventeenth-century Italian art and artistic theory, providing detailed descriptions of extant and lost works of art, while casting light on the cultural politics of contemporary Rome and the relations between Rome and France. The importance of Bellori's Lives lies in the scrupulous documentation of artists, many of whom he knew personally; the author's detailed descriptions of their works; and his exposition of the classicist theory of art in the introductory lecture, the Idea. This volume contains the twelve Lives published in the original edition of 1672 and three Lives (Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi, and Carlo Maratti) that survive in manuscript form and that were published for the first time in 1942.

Foreword
Introduction
Note on the illustrations
1. Dedication
2. To the reader
3. Philostratus the Younger
4. The idea of the painter, the sculptor and the architect
5. Life of Annibale Carracci
6. Life of Agostino Carracci
7. Life of Domenico Fontana
8. Life of Federico Barocci
9. Life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
10. Life of Peter Paul Rubens
11. Life of Anthony van Dyck
12. Life of Francois Du Quesnoy
13. Life of Domenico Zampieri, il Domenichino
14. Life of Giovanni Lanfranco
15. Life of Alessandro Algardi
16. Life of Nicolas Poussin
17. Life of Guido Reni
18. Life of Andrea Sacchi
19. Life of Carlo Maratti.

'The translation of this very important book is accompanied by a superb introduction by Montanari, engrossing reading for all students of the Baroque. The combination of the synthetic essay and the primary source newly edited yields a work that is absolutely essential for all libraries that collect art history.' Choice