Condivi, Ascanio

CONDIVI, ASCANIO. - Writer and painter, b. at Ripatransone in the Marche perhaps in 1525, and d. at Rome in 1574. Nothing is known of his activity in the figurative arts, but it is held to have been insignificant. His activity as a writer, on the other hand, is noteworthy. In 1553 he in fact published, in Rome, the Vita di M. A. Buonarroti, dedicated in the preface to Julius III and motivated by the intention of remedying the fact that the biography of the master had been set forth with inaccuracy and falsehood by others.

The allusion was evidently to Vasari, whose Vite had appeared three years earlier. And Vasari, in the second edition of his work, made use, according to the custom of the time, without scruple of the C.'s writing. The latter, a person of modest individuality, most devoted to Michelangelo, gives circumstantial and almost always reliable information about the artist's vicissitudes, venturing personal observations that vividly illuminate them, and providing notice of facts and spiritual attitudes that, without him, would have been ignored. It was he who used, with regard to the tomb of Julius II, the word "tragedy," which inspired an illustrious modern biographer, Justi, with the interpretation of Michelangelo's life. The C.'s biography, very rare in the first editions, enjoyed great fortune in the nineteenth century and has been translated into the principal European languages.