Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum

Maia Wellington Gahtan is Program Director, MA Museum Studies at the Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence, Italy.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: Giorgio Vasari and the birth of the museum, Maia Wellington Gahtan; Part I Vasari's Collections: Decorations and collections in Vasari's houses in Arezzo and Florence, Alessandro Cecchi; Giorgio Vasari and the Libro de' disegni: a paper museum or portable gallery, Anna Forlani Tempesti; Giorgio Vasari, collector of epitaphs, Maia Wellington Gahtan. Part II Vasari and Illustrium Imagines: Giorgio Vasari, Paolo Giovio, portrait collections and the rhetorics of images, Nadia Cannata; Vasari, Borghini and Cristofano dell'Altissimo: the papal portraits in the Sala delle Carte Geografiche, Rick Scorza; Portrait galleries, artists' biographies and the birth of academies and museums, Tommaso Casini. Part III Vasari's Exhibitions: Vasari, exhibitor of art: Medici collections of antiquities, Andrea Galdy; Giorgio Vasari, Rome and early forms of display of Medici collections in Florence: models and afterlife, Donatella Pegazzano; The order, the itinerary, the beholder: considerations on some aspects of the Ragionamenti del Sig. Cavalier Giogio Vasari, Emilie Passignat; Virtual guided museum tours: Vasari's I Ragionamenti and Bartoli's Ragionamenti accademici, Henk Th. van Veen; Giorgio Vasari, architect: the Uffizi of the gallery, Claudia Conforti. Part IV Vasari's Museological Concepts and Their Afterlife: The Accademia del Designo and its museology, Luigi Zangheri; Paper museums and the multimedia practice of art history: the case of Stefano Mulinari's Istoria Pratica (1778-80) in the Uffizi, Ingrid R. Vermeulen; Vasari: the territory beyond, Elizabeth Pilliod; Bibliography; Index.