ABSTRACT
In the Life that opens his discussion of his third and final stage in the development of the arts, Giorgio Vasari introduces a new type of artist: the artist as beauty. Mind and body were perfectly coordinated, a divine spirit infusing both agent and actions, passing from artist to art. Leonardo da Vinci’s incandescent genius may have been unique, but other Lives, especially those of Angelo Colucci Raphael and Francesco Parmigianino, repeat this theme of the artist manifesting a divine grace in his person and in his artistic creations. The Life of Parmigianino can introduce the question of how far Vasari’s presentations of different types of artist-beauty were shaped not only by literary or philosophical interests, but by artists’ own attempts at self-fashioning, self-representation and even at self-reproduction. As none of these quite promoted the ‘artist-as-beauty’ ideal, more important would have been personal contacts, notably with Castiglione.
