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 thought to have been insignificant. His activity as a writer, on the other hand, was noteworthy. In 1553 he published in Rome the Vita di M. A. Buonarroti, dedicated in the preface to Giulio III and prompted by the intention of remedying the fact that the master's biography had been set forth inaccurately and falsely by others.
This was evidently an allusion to Vasari, whose Vite had appeared three years earlier. And Vasari, in the second edition of his work, followed the custom of the time in making free use of C.'s writing without acknowledgment. A person of modest individuality and most devoted to Michelangelo, C. provides detailed and almost always reliable information on the artist's career, adding personal observations that vividly illuminate it, and reporting facts and spiritual attitudes which, without him, would have remained unknown. It was he who, with reference to the tomb of Giulio II, used the word «tragedia», which inspired the interpretation of Michelangelo's life by the distinguished modern biographer Justi. C.'s biography, extremely rare in its first editions, enjoyed great success in the nineteenth century and was translated into the principal European languages.