'Lives of the Artists' by Vasari

Every great writer needs a Boswell and in Vasari's 'Lives of the Artists' the Florentine artists have one.  The stories and exploits of great artists such as Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and others, about how they got their first starts and the anecdotes behind the great works, is told with insider appreciation of Vasari, himself a painter.  And there is much to wonder at here.

From the story of one painter getting captured by pirates only to be released when he paints such a wonderful painting of the slave owner, to Giotto's 'o' and da Vinci's empathy for caged birds, it makes you feel that those times were incredibly rich and fruitful, a time of humanising development and excellence.

I say a rich time because it wasn't all painting nice pictures, there was war too and then the mathematically minded artists turned engineers creating weapons and defensives to help with the combat.

In fact these artists were very scientifically literate, especially da Vinci who used his sketches as a way of trying to understand how the human body works.  The art they made was another expression of their creative scientific imaginations showing how the divide between the 'two cultures' was not always so and in fact their science helped invigorate their art and visa versa.

Their art was only possible with the patronage of the popes who wanted religious icons in their churches to bring a bit of colour and visual flair to the proceedings.  Their scope of what they could make was, perhaps, a bit narrow but it was a very potent focal point for them to focus in and delve deep in the great biblical subjects that inspired their culture.

These stories inspire me to create short dramas about each of the twenty artists listed as they are not stories that get retold much and yet to have such devotion to master a craft really does leave you in awe.

These artists changed the world for the better.  Thankfully Vasari has wonderfully capture the spirit of those times and left a tangible, if possibly inaccurate, book on the subject that artists in the future will no doubt turn to and draw inspiration from as they make their way through the world.