Italian Art & Architecture - Italy - page 1807

The 1980s saw a return to painting and sculpture in a traditional (primarily figurative)
sense. Dubbed 'Transavanguardia', this movement broke with the prevailing international
focus on conceptual art and was thought by some critics to signal the death of avant-
garde. The artists who were part of this movement include Sandro Chia (b 1946), Mimmo
Paladino (b 1948), Enzo Cucchi (b 1949) and Francesco Clemente (b 1952).
Current Italian contemporary artists of note include Paolo Canevari (b 1963), Rä di
Martino (b 1975), Paola Pivi (b 1971), Pietro Roccasalva (b 1970) and Francesco Vezzoli
(b 1971).
ITALIAN ARTISTS: THE EXCLUSIVE SCOOP
Painter, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) was one of those figures rightfully described as
a 'Renaissance Man'. Born in Arezzo, he trained as a painter in Florence, working with artists includ-
ing Andrea del Sarto and Michelangelo (he idolised the latter). As a painter, he is best remembered for
his floor-to-ceiling frescoes in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. As an archi-
tect, his most accomplished work was the elegant loggia of the Uffizi (he also designed the enclosed,
elevated corridor that connected the Palazzo Vecchio with the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti, which was
dubbed the 'Corridoio Vasariano' in his honour). But posterity remembers him predominantly for his
work as an art historian. His Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects,from Cim-
abue to Our Time, an encyclopedia of artistic biographies published in 1550 and dedicated to Cosimo
I de' Medici, is still in print (as The Lives of the Artists ) and is full of wonderful anecdotes and - dare
we say it - gossip about his artistic contemporaries in 16th-century Florence. Memorable passages in-
clude his recollection of visiting Donatello's studio one day only to find the great sculptor staring at
his extremely lifelike statue of the Prophet Habakkuk and imploring it to talk (we can only assume
that Donatello had been working too hard). Vasari also writes about a young Giotto (the painter whom
he credits with ushering in the Renaissance) painting a fly on the surface of a work by Cimabue that
the older master then tried to brush away. The topic makes wonderful pre-departure reading for any-
one planning to visit Florence and its museums.