CONDIVI, ASCANIO. – A writer and painter, born in Ripatransone in the Marches perhaps in 1525, and died in Rome in 1574. Nothing is known of his activity in the visual arts, but it is thought to have been insignificant. More notable, however, is his work as a writer. In 1553, in fact, he published in Rome the *Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti*, dedicated in the preface to Julius III and motivated by the intention of correcting the inaccuracies and falsehoods that had been presented in other biographies of the master.
The reference was clearly to Vasari, whose *Lives* had appeared three years earlier. And Vasari, in the second edition of his work, made use—as was customary at the time—of Condivi’s writing without acknowledgment. Condivi, a modest and deeply devoted individual to Michelangelo, provides detailed and almost always reliable information about the artist’s life, interspersing it with personal observations that vividly illuminate it, and offering accounts of events and spiritual attitudes that would otherwise have remained unknown. It was he who, in reference to the tomb of Julius II, used the word “tragedy,” an expression that inspired a modern biographer of distinction, Justi, in his interpretation of Michelangelo’s life. Condivi’s biography, which was extremely rare in its early editions, enjoyed great success in the 19th century and was translated into the principal European languages.
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