Vasarian Biography and the Canon
The oldest model of art history, founded by Giorgio Vasari, narrates art through the lives of great artists and the progressive perfection of their work — a model that also built, and has since been challenged for building, an exclusionary canon.
Definition
Vasarian biography and the canon is the tradition of writing art history through the lives and achievements of individual artists, and the resulting formation of a canon of 'great' artists, together with the historiographic critique of that model.
Scope
This topic covers the biographical tradition of art history inaugurated by Vasari's Lives of the Artists, its model of artistic progress culminating in genius, the recurring mythology of the artist analyzed by Kris and Kurz, and the feminist and critical interrogation of the canon initiated by Linda Nochlin. It examines biography as both a foundational method and an object of critique.
Core questions
- How did Vasari shape art history as a sequence of artists' lives?
- What model of artistic progress and genius does the biographical tradition assume?
- How is the canon of 'great artists' constructed and maintained?
- How have feminist and critical scholars challenged the biographical canon?
Key theories
- The Vasarian model of progress and genius
- Vasari organized art history as a biographical narrative of rebirth and progress, from Cimabue and Giotto to the perfection embodied in Michelangelo, establishing the artist's life and the idea of individual genius as the central units of art history.
- Critique of the canon
- Linda Nochlin's essay reframed the absence of 'great women artists' not as a matter of individual talent but as a consequence of institutional and social structures that denied women training and access, exposing the ideological construction of the canon and of 'greatness' itself.
History
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550, expanded 1568) founded the biographical tradition of art history. Kris and Kurz analyzed the persistent legends attached to artists' lives, and from 1971 Linda Nochlin's intervention catalyzed feminist art history and a sustained critique of the canon and of the cult of the individual genius.
Debates
- The role of genius versus structure
- Critics debate whether art history should center exceptional individuals and their biographies or the institutional and social structures that enable or exclude them, a tension dramatized by Nochlin's challenge to the canon.
Key figures
- Giorgio Vasari
- Linda Nochlin
- Ernst Kris
- Otto Kurz
Related topics
Seminal works
- vasari1991
- nochlin1971
Frequently asked questions
- Why is Vasari important to art history?
- Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) is often called the first work of art history; it established the model of writing art history through artists' biographies and the idea of progress toward perfection.