The Vasari Marathon
I first heard of Giorgio Vasari in art museums: every placard beside a Renaissance Italian painting, it seemed, mentioned his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects as the source for whatever interesting anecdote the museum had to tell you about the artist or his painting. "How cool it must be to read that book for oneself," I thought.
I finally got around to reading it this past fall. It's got to be the single longest work I've ever read, even if you count all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings as a single book. Hell, throw in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion -- I still don't think that would come to 2,000 pages. And so for those who chided me for reading the abridged edition of War and Peace (a mere 700 pages), I think I've done my penance now.
Although I suppose that, just as they declared that I couldn't claim to have read War and Peace since I was spared Tolstoy's endless final "John Galt" essay, they could also assert that I haven't truly read Vasari, because my edition did not include his prefatory Treatise on Design. What can I say to such critics? Perhaps I could quote the "Note on the Translation" of my edition: "There is no complete translation of Vasari's Lives into English, but Gaston de Vere's is a far fuller version than that ... used in previous Everyman editions." It's rather telling that de Vere's translation is from 1912. Clearly this book isn't one of those, like Beowulf or The Odyssey, that get three new translations a year.
It took me almost five months to read the two-volume set, finding most of the necessary time over my lunch breaks and my rides on the PATH. (If we hadn't just moved to Jersey City, who knows how much longer it would have taken.) I finished it just eight days ago, and have already finished another (totally unrelated book) since then. What a relief it is to be able to finish a book in two weeks or less again!
So, why did I read such a long book? I was hoping to get from this book some colorful anecdotes from the artists' lives, and also some glimpses into life in the Renaissance. And I did get some of those. Unfortunately, they were the rare glimmers of gold in a prospector's pan otherwise filled with the sludge of interminable lists of altar pieces by So-and-so in the Church of the Immaculate Such-and-such. I guess I can't fault Vasari for his thoroughness; he was, after all, requested by his patrons to make "a catalogue of artists and their works, listed in chronological order." But it did make for heavy going.
There was another reason, besides the hope of uncovering shiny nuggets, that kept me going at the book: I'd had it on my Amazon wishlist and been given it as a present for Christmas one year, and I feel an almost sacred obligation to read books that have been given to me as gifts, especially ones that I myself requested.
And of course there was stubbornness involved, too: it was my book, and I was going to read it, dammit, no matter how stupid or masochistic it might seem to other people. And finally, there was the pride of being able to say I'd done it. I've never quite been able to understand why someone would want to run a marathon, or go to all the trouble it takes to prepare for it; but I guess this is as close as I come to that kind of endeavor.
I may be done reading it, but my work is not over yet: now is the time to share all the shiny nuggets I gathered through 2,000 pages. Hopefully some of them will be amusing and/or interesting... Stay tuned for more, if you dare...
I finally got around to reading it this past fall. It's got to be the single longest work I've ever read, even if you count all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings as a single book. Hell, throw in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion -- I still don't think that would come to 2,000 pages. And so for those who chided me for reading the abridged edition of War and Peace (a mere 700 pages), I think I've done my penance now.
Although I suppose that, just as they declared that I couldn't claim to have read War and Peace since I was spared Tolstoy's endless final "John Galt" essay, they could also assert that I haven't truly read Vasari, because my edition did not include his prefatory Treatise on Design. What can I say to such critics? Perhaps I could quote the "Note on the Translation" of my edition: "There is no complete translation of Vasari's Lives into English, but Gaston de Vere's is a far fuller version than that ... used in previous Everyman editions." It's rather telling that de Vere's translation is from 1912. Clearly this book isn't one of those, like Beowulf or The Odyssey, that get three new translations a year.
It took me almost five months to read the two-volume set, finding most of the necessary time over my lunch breaks and my rides on the PATH. (If we hadn't just moved to Jersey City, who knows how much longer it would have taken.) I finished it just eight days ago, and have already finished another (totally unrelated book) since then. What a relief it is to be able to finish a book in two weeks or less again!
So, why did I read such a long book? I was hoping to get from this book some colorful anecdotes from the artists' lives, and also some glimpses into life in the Renaissance. And I did get some of those. Unfortunately, they were the rare glimmers of gold in a prospector's pan otherwise filled with the sludge of interminable lists of altar pieces by So-and-so in the Church of the Immaculate Such-and-such. I guess I can't fault Vasari for his thoroughness; he was, after all, requested by his patrons to make "a catalogue of artists and their works, listed in chronological order." But it did make for heavy going.
There was another reason, besides the hope of uncovering shiny nuggets, that kept me going at the book: I'd had it on my Amazon wishlist and been given it as a present for Christmas one year, and I feel an almost sacred obligation to read books that have been given to me as gifts, especially ones that I myself requested.
And of course there was stubbornness involved, too: it was my book, and I was going to read it, dammit, no matter how stupid or masochistic it might seem to other people. And finally, there was the pride of being able to say I'd done it. I've never quite been able to understand why someone would want to run a marathon, or go to all the trouble it takes to prepare for it; but I guess this is as close as I come to that kind of endeavor.
I may be done reading it, but my work is not over yet: now is the time to share all the shiny nuggets I gathered through 2,000 pages. Hopefully some of them will be amusing and/or interesting... Stay tuned for more, if you dare...