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Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects

A New Translation and Critical Edition

Alice Wohl editor Hellmut Wohl editor Tommaso Montanari editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:16th Nov '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects cover

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.

'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
'Giovan Pietro Bellori's language has found its match in Wohl's translation… We shall all learn from reading this intelligent and skilful translation.' Burlington Magazine

ISBN: 9780521139540

Dimensions: 276mm x 215mm x 29mm

Weight: 1170g

516 pages