Che si conoscono al suo già detto segno: Vasari’s connoisseurship in the field of engravings

Abstract

In order to identify the paternity of Cinquecento engravings Vasari did not have sufficient critical tools in the absence of monograms or inscriptions. It was the “sign” (segno), the only element that allowed him to recognize the hand of an engraver. However, when those “signs” did not help him sufficiently, Vasari also sometimes suggested attributions based on the authorship of the inventions. In some of these cases he succeeded, probably only thanks to his eye and his knowledge of style, to identify the author of the inventions but, in other cases, he was misled by what his knowledge, without being able to judge those prints only by their style. The article intends to analyse this dynamic and to understand the operations at the origins of attribution’s mistakes.

Keywords

• Giorgio Vasari
• connoisseurship
• engravings
• cinquecento
• art historiography