Nel cantiere delle Maraviglie dell’arte. Genesi, contesti e peripezie delle Vite di Carlo Ridolfi (1648)

Painter and collector native of Lonigo (Vicenza), Carlo Ridolfi is better known as an art historian. His greatest work, "Le maraviglie dell'arte", remains probably the main sources for the Venetian painters and one of the first regional histories of art in Italy. Ridolfi's biographies are very important because they document many Venetian art works gone today and locate a provenance for those still known. Unlike Vasari, however, Ridolfi avoided a stylistic development of Venice; he considered the Cinquecento the acme of its artistic production at the expense of his contemporaries. As dimostrated, the work have been supported not only by the government of the Serenissima to counter Vasari’s "Vite" of a hundred year before which was strongly biased against Venetian artists, but is also an effect of the Accademia degli Incogniti's cultural project. An examination of Ridolfi's cultural and artistic background has permitted to reconsider the birth of "Le maraviglie dell'arte", its printing work, and the real identity of the printmaker.