Pensare lo spartimento: questioni vasariane di genesi della decorazione

Among the terms that assume a particular significance in Giorgio Vasari's writings is 'spartimento', mostly linked to the conception of decorative cycles. Although it has already occasioned some acute observations by scholars who have wondered about the considerable increase in occurrences in the second edition of the Lives, this contribution intends to go further and measure how much theoretical depth the term 'spartimento' was charged with, in other words, how much Vasari conceived it not only as a descriptive tool, but as a fundamental aspect of Drawing, the "father of the arts". Vasari's almost unconditional admiration for the great decorative cycles in Rome is well known. His artistic career was very soon stimulated by the will to compete with such models, and he accumulated experience in this field until he achieved what he defined in 1568 as an “impresa grandissima, importantissima e, se non sopra l’animo, forse sopra le forze mie”, referring to the renovation and decoration of the Sala Grande in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Little did he know then that a few years later he would have to tackle a work perhaps even greater, including its spiritual implications, namely the frescoes on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, left unfinished at his death. If we retrace the artist's entire career from the outset, the challenge of the decorative cycles is a constant in which he combined multifaceted skills, but also asserted himself as an architect. We will see how the decorative projects carried out for the Compagnia della Calza and for the General of the Olivetans Gian Matteo d'Aversa constitute a double turning point towards a new and theorising interpretation of the term 'spartimento', and how much in the course of the 1940s, his concept, then recorded and shared with his public through the first editing of the Lives, had already reached maturity. Furthermore, given the theoretical extension observed in the Torrentiniana, the subtle and decisive influence of Leon Battista Alberti emerges in the structuring of an intellectualising and unifying conception of Drawing to which the idea of spartimento must have fully contributed.