Benedetto Varchi

Benedetto Varchi (* 1502, † 1565) was a Florentine poet and historian.

Benedetto Varchi was the son of a notary, and studied law in Pisa. From republican conviction he fought during the siege by the Medici and the imperial troops in 1530 in defense of Florence. After the surrender of the city he was banished. In 1536 he took Piero Strozzi's unsuccessful campaign against the Medici rule in part. Due to its desperate economic situation, he asked seven years later to be able to Cosimo I de ' Medici to return to Florence. Cosimo gave him a pension and commissioned him to write a history of the city. The work covers the period 1527-1538.

He was a friend to me Pietro Bembo, whose prose works he edited and corresponded with Annibale Caro and Lodovico Castelvetro. At the Questione della lingua ( Italian languages ​​), he took part with his extensive dialogue L' Ercolano ( 1560-1565 ). Varchi also wrote a number of plays, poems, dialogues in Italian and in Latin as well as translations of classical works (such as Boethius and Seneca ). In 1565, the year he died, he was ordained a priest. His history of Florence in sixteen volumes, was first published in 1721 in Florence.

Art historically significant are his lectures to the Florentine Academy on the dispute over the primacy of the Arts ( Paragons ) in 1547. First, it reflects the fact about the relative value and the rank order of Sciences and Arts. Then he turns to the virulent dispute between painting and sculpture, to which genus can claim priority, and summarizes the main arguments on both sides. Finally, he treats the employed in antiquity comparison between painting and poetry. At the same time he initiated a survey of well-known artists - Michelangelo, Bronzino, Cellini, Vasari and others - on this subject, whose feedback he published with his own lectures in 1549 in Florence.

Works

• L' Ercolano. Dialogo di M. Benedetto Varchi nel quale si delle lingue ragiona, ed in particolare della Toscana e della Fiorentina. Colla correzione ad esso fatta as Lodovico Castelvetro knife; e colla Varchina di Messer Girolamo Muzio. Impressione accuratissima, come si può vedere nella seguente Prefazione, Giuseppe Comino, 1744-2 vol.
• Paragons. Rank between the arts. Italian and German. Translated and annotated by Oskar Bätschmann and Tristan Weddigen, WBG, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-21637-6.