Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects A New Translation and Critical Edition

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.

Foreword; Introduction; Note on the illustrations; 1. Dedication; 2. To the reader; 3. Philostratus the Younger; 4. The idea of the painter, the sculptor and the architect; 5. Life of Annibale Carracci; 6. Life of Agostino Carracci; 7. Life of Domenico Fontana; 8. Life of Federico Barocci; 9. Life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; 10. Life of Peter Paul Rubens; 11. Life of Anthony van Dyck; 12. Life of Francois Du Quesnoy; 13. Life of Domenico Zampieri, il Domenichino; 14. Life of Giovanni Lanfranco; 15. Life of Alessandro Algardi; 16. Life of Nicolas Poussin; 17. Life of Guido Reni; 18. Life of Andrea Sacchi; 19. Life of Carlo Maratti.

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. 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.

Alice Sedgwick Wohl is an independent scholar and translator. She has translated Antonio Condivi, Life of Michelangelo.
Hellmut Wohl is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Boston University. He is the author of The Paintings of Domenico Veneziano and The Aesthetics of Italian Renaissance Art.
Tomaso Montanari is Professore associato di Storia dell'arte moderna at the Università di Roma Tor Vergata. He is the author of numerous publications on aspects of Italian Baroque art.

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.