11. Gian Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1672.

Bellori’s Lives, purports to cover the most important artists of the recent past. The Lives are, however, a very intentionally selective choice, numbering no more than twelve - or posthumously - fifteen biographies.

In keeping with some of the earlier biographers, Bellori has a strong theoretical conception of art that underlies the Lives. This is often termed by scholar’s classical idealism - meaning a stylistic and conceptual aesthetic that strictly favours precedence and authority in a prescribed interpretation of the antiquarian past.

Unlike former art biographers, Bellori establishes his historical bias within his narrative by choosing artists that favour, or can be used to defend, his theoretical approach – while passing over very prominent names who he perceived as being at variance. There is, for example, no account of the most famous sculptor of the period, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Bellori’s historical narrative is somewhat heroic, as it is Bolognese painters, specifically through three related artists known as the Carracci, that painting is restored to its former greatness. The painter, Annibale Carracci, equalling Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco’s with his own fresco cycle in the Galleria Farnese.  

Bellori’s Lives are thus heavily endowed with a spirit of regional campanilismo. The strengths and weaknesses of other artists are established based on their closeness or distance to the Bolognese artists working in Bologna or Rome at the time. 

'Mute Painting' paints a coat of arms, dedicatory engraving to Bellori's Vite.