Unit 2: Scholarship and Art

Author Bio: The author focuses this peice on the ideas of Leon Battista Alberti, and from this peice I believe he is one of the most relevant voices of the Renaissance. The author, Giorgio Vasari, was a Da Vinci of his time- an architect, painter, and writer, focusin pg mostly on biographies of Italian renaissance artists. He studied in Florence, and actually had close ties with the Medici family. This gave him a pretty heavy bias toward Italian arts, and sometimes filled in facts with his own opinion. 

Context: Vasari is reflecting on Alberti's ideas of art and scholarship and exemplifying them in his own way. Alberti and Vasari lived in different decades, but his ideas were carried throught that gap of time and put back into the public by the author. Vasari is reflecting the idea that science is essential to have successful art, especially to the artist. This makes most sense in light of architecture. 


Summary: Not only is the knowledge of science useful to all, but especially artists.  Science provides knowledge and education needed to perfect art. This is most easily shown in architecture and sculpting. When an artist uses science in his work, he is also more likely to be accepted by the community. In Vasaris own commentary, he says that the idea of combining art and science is also personified in Alberti's work. 

"For the service, security, honor, and ornament of the public, we are exceedingly obliged to the architect; to whom, in time of leisure...in time of business...The whole of the human species, was most obliged to the architect, or rather, inventor of all conveniences.