Carlo Ridolfi became known as the ‘Venetian Vasari’, after his publication of the lives of over one hundred and fifty painters from the Venetian Republic.
To counters Vasari’s claim towards Florence rediscovering the arts lost in antiquity, Ridolfi was at pains to argue that Venice was superior to the Tuscans, in having never forfeited such a connection, due to its trade and proximity with Byzantium/Constantinople.
Ridolfi’s exhaustive biographies of Venetian artists, ignored the prominent painter Sebastiano del Piombo - that artist having spent much of his career in Rome under the influence of Michelangelo, contradicted the Venetian campanilismo Ridolfi sought to promote.
Ridolfi began by publishing two separate biographies on two of the most famous Venetian painters, Tintoretto in 1642 and Veronese in 1646. In 1648 The Marvels of Art in their entirety were published. His life of Tintoretto includes an account of the Masters prodigiously talented daughter Marietta. Ridolfi’s description of Marietta and the cultural situation of contemporary women are uncharacteristically “progressive” for the period.
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