Lodovico Dolce and a critic to Giorgio Vasari’s Vite

Abstract

This paper considers some aspects that link the Dialogo della pittura intitolato l’Aretino (1557), of the Venetian man of letters Lodovico Dolce, to the work Le Vite de’ più eccellente architetti, pittori et scultori italiani, da Cimabue, insino a’ tempi nostri (1550), of the Florentine historian Giorgio Vasari. It seeks to demonstrate along its lines that Dolce’s work was based on theoretical concepts exposed in the Vite, while reverting them to his own arguments in order to exalt the Venetian Cinquecento painting as cultural heritage, by matching it with the Tosco-Roman art, and stressing the importance of Titian’s painting, which was absent in the first edition of Vasari’s work.