Christ in Judgment

If Vasari’s legacy is his fashioning of a history for the visual arts, then it seems reasonable to begin an analysis of artistic mobility where that history begins, namely the Proemio delle Vite. This is not to say that the preceding sections—the dedication to Duke Cosimo I, the initial Proemio, and the technical treatise—do not raise the issue of mobility. Nevertheless, it is in the Proemio delle Vite, henceforth referred to as the preface, where the reader first encounters sustained attention …

Looking at The Resurrection of Christ (figs 11–17) one soon meets a series of pictorial events, as I shall heavily call them sometimes – ‘pictorial’ in that they are proper not just to seeing but to seeing a depiction on a plane surface; and ‘events’ in the sense that one may be led to consider them as outcomes from conditions. These events must be part of a sense that the picture has a character beyond the sum of objects represented. …