Author Bio: Though the ideas are those of Leon Battista Alberti, the article is by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari was an Italian painter, architect, and writer best known for his biographies of Italian Renaissance artists. Vasari trained in Florence and had both the friendship and patronage of the Medici family. He is known to have obvious bias towards Italian arts and when facts were scarce, to have occasionally filled in the blanks with questionable accuracy. Despite this, Vasari's work represents the first major and highly influential example of modern historiography.
Context: Vasari first shares Alberti's ideas on scholarship and art and then goes on to reflect back on how Alberti exemplified his ideas. Vasari lived from 1511-1572. Alberti lived from 1404-1472 and was a humanist, architect, and the principal initiator of Renaissance art theory. He is considered to have been the closest to being a "universal man" before Leonardo DaVinci for his deep involvement in both the arts and the sciences. In this excerpt, Vasari reflects Alberti's ideas that science and learning is essential for one to have advantages, especially for the artist. The unity and execution of science in art, he believed, was paramount to success. This makes sense, for, as an architect, he used the concepts of science in order to better his artistic endeavors.
Summary: Vasari begins by using the words of Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti says that knowledge of the sciences and education are of great advantage to everyone, but especially artists. The sciences provide the knowledge needed in order to perfect creations of the painter, the sculptor, and the architect. Furthermore, being a "learned man" or a man of science gives the artist far more credit than he would have on his own. By being educated, the scholar and the artist have much more clout in the community and when they put their knowledge to practice, they are much more likely to be believed, accepted, and accredited.
Vasari then inserts his own commentary. He says that this idea of combining science/education and art is no better personified that in Alberti. Alberti studied Latin and science as well as architecture, perspective, and painting. He wrote several books that increased his fame and reputation. Vasari says that there were most likely far more artistically talented men than Alberti, but that it was the fact that he was educated and wrote such strong, eloquent books that sets him above many others. As a result, Alberti is known for his writings and subsequently his artistic works, rather than the other way around.
Key Quotation: "But when theory and practice chance to be happily united in the same person, nothing can be more suitable to the life and vocation of artists, as because art is rendered much richer and more perfect by the aid of science..."
Another characteristic quote: "For the service, security, honor, and ornament of the public, we are exceedingly obliged to the architect; to whom, in time of leisure...in time of business...The whole of the human species, was most obliged to the architect, or rather, inventor of all conveniences."
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