rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_da969f2d-8ebc-5632-94e1-0850c3d92364">[188] He entered on this work at the instigation of Cardinal Farnese, as well as of Monsig. Giovio; and he was encouraged in it by Caro, Molza, Tolomei, and other literary men belonging to that court. His first intention was to collect anecdotes of artists, to be extended by Giovio. They wished him to commence with Cimabue; with which, perhaps, he ought not to have complied; but this circumstance diminishes the fault of Vasari in passing over the older masters in silence, and raises the glory of Cimabue far above all his contemporaries. When it was discovered that Vasari could write well,[189] and was capable of extending the anecdotes in even more appropriate language than Giovio himself, the whole task devolved on him; but in order to render the work more worthy of the public, he had the assistance afforded him of men of letters. In 1547, on finishing the book, he went to Rimino; and whilst he was employed in painting for the fraternity of Olivets, Father D. Gio. Matteo Faetani, abbot of the monastery, corrected his work and caused it to be wholly transcribed; about the end of that year it was sent to Caro for perusal. He signified his approbation of it, "as written in a fine style, and with great care;"[190] except that in some passages a less artificial style was desirable. After being corrected in this respect, it was printed in two volumes by Torrentino, at Florence, in the year 1550; in this edition he received considerable aid from Father D. Miniato Pitti, then an Olivetine friar.[191] Vasari complained that "many things were there inserted he knew not how, and were altered without his knowledge or consent;"[192] but I cannot agree with Bottari,[193] that these alterations were made by Pitti or any other monk. If Vasari could not discover their author, we are much less likely to find him out; and there is some ground for believing that Vasari had offended many persons by certain invidious anecdotes, and thus endeavoured to excuse himself as well as he could. Who can believe that the many things cancelled in the second edition, which seems almost a new work, were all liberties taken by other persons, "he did not know how" and not mistakes, at least for the most part, made by himself?
In whatever way it happened, he had an opportunity of correcting his lives, of augmenting them, and again printing them, accompanied by portraits of the artists. After publication of the first edition he had availed himself of the manuscripts of Ghiberti, of Domenico Ghirlandaio, of Raffaello d'Urbino; and had himself collected a number of anecdotes in his different journeys through Italy. He undertook a new tour in 1566, to prepare for the new edition, as he informs us in the life of Benvenuto Garofolo; he again examined the works of different masters, and obtained new information from his friends, some of whom he mentions by name, when treating of the artists of Forli and Verona. He would have been still more full of anecdote in his Lives, had his success corresponded with his diligence. On this account, in the beginning and at the end of the Life of Carpaccio, he laments that "he was not able to obtain every particular of many artists;" nor to possess their portraits; and he "entreats us to accept what he is able to offer, although he cannot give all he might desire." He republished his Lives in 1568, and affirmed in the Dedication to Cosmo I. that "as for himself he wished for nothing more in them." The new edition issued from the press of the Giunti; of the additions, consisting of fine observations upon philosophy and Christian morality, which cannot be ascribed to Giorgio, part was supplied by Borghini, and still more by Father D. Silvano Razzi, a Camalduline monk, as Bottari conjectures in his Preface,[194] but it does not follow that they assisted in correcting the work. It is full of errors; sometimes in the grammatical construction, often in the names, and frequently in the dates; and though it was reprinted at Bologna, in 1648; at Rome, with the notes and corrections of Bottari, in 1759; in Leghorn and Florence, in 1767, with fresh notes and additions by the same; and lastly, in Siena, with those of P. della Valle; it still remains not so much a judicious selection of facts, as a mass of chronological emendations, some of which shall be noticed in the sequel.[195]
This, if I am not deceived, is the objection that can be most frequently, and almost continually urged against the work. The other strictures to be met with in authors are, for the most part, exaggerations of writers, offended at Vasari for his silence or his criticisms, on the works of the artists of their country. There is nothing so flattering to the vanity of an author, as defending the character of his native place, and of those citizens who have rendered her illustrious. In whatever manner he writes, all his countrymen, who are all the world to him, think him in the right; and in the coffeehouses he frequents, in the shops of the booksellers, and in all public places, they hail him as the public advocate. Hence we need not be surprised that such an author writes as if his country had appointed him her champion, assumes a spirit of hostility, and then the transition is easy from a just defence to an injurious attack. From such causes some writers appear to me actuated by unbecoming enmity to Vasari. The passages of the first edition, cancelled in the second, have been quoted against him; he has incurred odium for some deformed portraits, as if he was accountable for the defects of nature; his most innocent expressions have been tortured into a sinister meaning; his enemies would have us believe that, intending to exalt his darling Florentines, he neglected the other Italian artists, as if, in order to do justice to these, he had not travelled and sought for information, although often in vain, as I before mentioned. The historians of all the other schools have used him as the commentators of Virgil treated Servius; all have abused him, and all have availed themselves of his labours. For if all the information collected by Vasari concerning the old masters of the Venetian, Bolognese, and Lombard schools be taken away, how imperfect does their history remain? In my opinion, therefore, he deserves our best thanks for what he has done, and much forbearance for what he has omitted.
If his judgment appears less accurate on some artists of a different school, he ought not, on that account, to be taxed with malignity and envy, as is well observed by Lomazzo. He has protested that he has done his best to adhere to truth, or to what he believed to be true,[196] and it is sufficient to read him without prejudice to give him credit for such justification. He seems a man who writes as he thinks. Thus, he bestows commendations upon Baldinelli and upon Zuccaro, his enemies,[197] as well as upon his friends: he distributes censure and praise with an equal hand to Tuscan and other artists. If he discovers painters of little merit in other schools, he finds them also in that of Florence; if he relates the jealousies of foreign artists, he does not conceal those of the Florentines, of which he speaks with a playful freedom in the Life of Donatello, in his own, and more especially in that of Pietro Perugino. His partial criticisms therefore on certain artists arose less from his nationality, than from other causes. It is certain that he saw but little of some masters; his opinion of others was formed upon incorrect information; and he could not attain the same certainty that we now boast, on what related to a number of artists then living, who, as usually happens, were then more censured than admired. Some allowance too should be made for his other avocations; by the multiplicity of which he doubtless wrote as he painted, with the expedition of his mode of practice. A proof of this is afforded by the repetitions that occur, as we have before observed, in successive passages, and the contradictory characters he sometimes gives of the same picture, pronouncing it good in one sentence, and in another allowing it scarcely the praise of mediocrity. This was particularly the case in regard to Razzi, towards whom he seems to have entertained ill will; arising, however, more from the bad reputation of the man than from prejudice against the school of the artist. For the incorrectness of such censures, in which he, however, was sincere, I blame his maxims of art, and the age in which he lived. He reckoned Bonarruoti the greatest painter that had ever existed;[198] and exalted him above the ancient Greeks,[199] and, from his practice, held a bold and vigorous design as the summit of perfection in painting; compared to which, beauty and colouring were nothing.
