In the first decades of the sixteenth century, the pictorial arts arrived at an unprecedented level of perfection. That, at least, was a widespread perception among artists and their audiences in central Italy. Imitation, according to the artistic literature of the period, was a productive means of continuing the perfections of a predecessor. In Michelangelo's Mirror reconsiders the question of Italian mannerism, focusing on the idea of imitation in the works of such artists as Perino del Vaga, Daniele da Volterra, and Pellegrino Tibaldi.
Michelangelo was praised as an...
In the first decades of the sixteenth century, the pictorial arts arrived at an unprecedented level of perfection. That, at least, was a widespread...
