Gian Pietro Bellori (also known as Giovanni Pietro Bellori or Giovan Pietro Bellori, 1613 - 1696) was a prominent biographer of the Italian Baroque artists of the seventeenth century. As an art historian, he was the Baroque equivalent of Giorgio Vasari.
Likely nephew of the antiquarian collector and writer Francesco Angeloni, he lived in Angeloni's home in Rome. He apparently took art lessons from Domenichino. As a young man, he became a member o...
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Gian Pietro Bellori (also known as Giovanni Pietro Bellori or Giovan Pietro Bellori, 1613 - 1696) was a prominent biographer of the Italian Baroque artists of the seventeenth century. As an art historian, he was the Baroque equivalent of Giorgio Vasari.
Likely nephew of the antiquarian collector and writer Francesco Angeloni, he lived in Angeloni's home in Rome. He apparently took art lessons from Domenichino. As a young man, he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca, but studied and wrote about classical and contemporary art. In 1664 he delivered an influential speech to the Accademia on the Ideal in Art. In 1672 he published this as a preface to his biographies of recent and contemporary artists, titled: Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (The lives of the modern painters, sculptors, and architects).
In his view, the Renaissance ideal had been rescued from the tangled post-Raphael and Michelangelo styles by the robust classicism of those following the Carracci...
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