In the 1550s and 1560s Giorgio Vasari renovated the Pieve and cathedral in his hometown of Arezzo and created several new altarpieces for the Pieve, where he established his family funerary chapel. These projects traditionally, and understandably, have been closely associated with Counter-Reformation tenets and treatises. The art and architectural history of both sites, however, suggests that Vasari was as much, if not more, invested in stressing continuity and cohesion of ritual and iconographic tradition, especially that of trecento Arezzo, over reformatory change and that his goal was to create an interdependent Aretine network of sacred history, family, and religiosity.
Sally J. Cornelison is a specialist in the history of Italian late medieval and renaissance religious art. Many of her publications concern art, devotion, ritual, and patronage as they relate to the cult of saints and relics in Renaissance Florence, including her book “Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence” (Ashgate, 2012). She currently is preparing a book-length study of Giorgio Vasari’s religious paintings and chapels.
This event will be followed by a reception in the Front Hall for our new Courtauld Books Online title Revisiting the Monument: Fifty Years After Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture. All welcome.