Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari.

Paul Barolsky. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 144 pp. $22.50.

The title and chapter headings outline a kind of biographical thematics, which sets this book on grounds where literature, art, and ideas meet. And so do history and imagination. That territory, which once was homeground to Walter Pater, Erwin Panofsky, and Jose Ortega y Gasset, was then parceled out among specialists who often have traced rather narrow-minded boundaries.

To counter the shortcomings of specialization, cultural anthropologists and new historicists have put forth critical methodologies of inquiry and evaluation that have drawn from the socio-cultural flow in which artworks were produced. Ideological biases notwithstanding, scholarship has responded to that call by emphasizing interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness. That need has been paramount in Barolsky's scholarship, which has taken up the literary and cultural dimension of the thematics of wit and humor ( Infinite Jest: Wit and Humour in Italian Renaissance Art), as well as the socioliterary context of complex and influential figures such as Michelangelo (Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker) and Walter Pater (Walter Pater's Renaissance).

To date, Giorgio Vasari has been Barolsky's gravitational center of interest, since the Mona Lisa manuscript follows Giotto's Father and the Family of Vasari's Lives. Published back to back (1991 and 1992), both volumes assert Barolsky's leading competence in, and mastery of, such a crucial figure in the history of Renaissance art and criticism. And Barolsky understands criticism in rather broad terms, which is the way it was understood throughout the sixteenth century. Barolsky's approach makes it clear that Vasari's narrative range and literary talent are more than ancillary to his reputation as art historian. Chapters such as "Words in Pictures," "Frozen Words," or "The Fable of Castagno," in fact, set the reader's expectations at the edge between verbal and literary discourse. Against the grain of standing paragoni, such an interactive contextuality is dialogic rather than hierarchical. Accepting that premise, therefore, the literary validity of Vasari's lives of Renaissance artists could stand on a par with Boccaccio's treatment of the earlier "lives" of merchants and scoundrels, as well as, say, Pietro Aretino's spotlight on courtiers, parasites, and opportunists of higher rank. With them, the Lives share an intriguing mix of fact and fiction, which adds to the literary quality of the text.

To unearth the literary character of Vasari's Lives, Barolsky has taken on the task of "de-constructing" a text whose documentary validity has withstood the test of time in spite of criticisms leveled against preferential treatments of Florentine artists. And Barolsky has amassed a wealth of materials to support the fictionality and expressiveness of Vasari's narratives, which constantly traded biographical information for the make-believe of myth-making, culminating in "The Life of Morto da Montefeltro." He never existed, and it was Vasari's creative virtuosity that brought him to life for posterity.

Particularly successful is the parallel which Barolsky draws between Boccaccio and Vasari. Just as the first "painted" lively and cunning portraits of the emergent culture of arte della mercatura, so did the second "paint" the equally brewing and restless world of arte della pittura. Unlike Boccaccio, however, Vasari's enterprise, as Barolsky's insightful analysis points out, was informed by a hidden agenda meant to celebrate the role of the artist as creator. In that context, the chapter on Pygmalion and Medusa takes on a symbolic value that fulfills the God-like role which Cristoforo Landino and Marsilio Ficino had claimed for the artist on philosophical grounds, and to which Benvenuto Cellini gave autobiographical form.

It is to Barolsky's credit that he has explored the sub-textual layerings of a book whose canonical status in the field of art history has somewhat overshadowed--if not discouraged--more probing analyses. Because of Barolsky's provocative lead, it need only be mentioned that the recent editions of Bronzino's voluminous Rime and Pontormo's physio-pathological autobiography no longer can be approached as "secondary materials" that might shed light on the artist's pictorial oeuvre. Whatever their absolute merits, texts of that sort, Barolsky has been teaching us, command equal attention from literary critics, art historians, and cultural historians.

Although the range of Barolsky's analysis is broad diachronically as well as synchronically, the book is neither superficial nor fragmentary in spite of its many chapters. Control is not lost, since Barolsky focuses on a cluster of thematic concerns. From the grotesque to onomastics, the text covers an amazing amount of material. In that sense, Barolsky's book is a source of details and insights that will help scholars of Renaissance culture at large. It encourages specialists to confront interdisciplinary approaches to texts, whether literary, pictorial, or philosophical. And we ought to hope that such approaches will be understood to be a necessity rather than an extravagance.