playing art historian

Now we’re at my favorite part in the Philosophy and Art class– the part where I get to play art historian for a month. (We’ve done enough Dewey.) Vasari’s Lives of the Artists plus PowerPoint means a feast for the eyes for the next month. We’re starting with Byzantine art and Cimabue tomorrow.

I really enjoy reading Vasari, and always have. He’s so wonderfully blunt and clear. Here is the first sentence of his Life of Cimabue:

“The endless flood of misfortunes which swept over and drowned the wretched country of Italy had not only destroyed everything that could really be called a building but, even more importantly, had completely wiped out its population of artists, when in the year 1240, as God willed it, there was born in the city of Florence to the Cimabue, a noble family of those times, a son Giovanni, also named Cimabue, who shed first light upon the art of painting.”