Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> He who walks with difficulties along the road of virtue even if it be (as the saving goes) both rocky and full of thorns at the end of the climb finds himself at last in a broad plain with all the happiness he yearned for. And looking down. seeing the cruel path he has trodden amidst perils thanks God that he has led him to salvation and with great contentment blesses those labors that had earlier caused him so much pain. And so making up for the sufferings of the past with the delight of the present without toil though he strives to make those who watch him understand how the heat cold sweat hunger thirst and hardship he suffered to acquire virtue may free others from poverty and lead them to that safe and tranquil state. in which to his great content Benozzo took his repose”. With this lengthy introduction Giorgio Vasari com- menced the biography of Benozzo Gozzoli in his Li- ves of the Artists in the Torrentini edition of 1550. reproduced without alterations in the Giunti edition of 1568. The elaborate rhetoric of this opening in which Vasari makes use of the ancient and authoritative liter- ary motif of the attainment of virtue through the ascent of an impassable and precipitous mountain raises a number of questions owing to its lack of proportion and even relevance to the rest of the biography. This in contrast outlines an intense artistic career studded with gratifications (although short on outstanding suc- cesses) but on the whole lacking in dramatic and sur- prising events. The career of a decent person and “true Christian” as Vasari himself describes Benozzo that came to an end at a respectable age within a sound family-based professional structure: his studio which provided work for his sons Francesco and Ales- so as well. So where were the difficulties and perils the hazards and hardships which according to Vasari’s metaphor Benozzo had to overcome before reaching a serene old age? (LL)