Dominicus Lampsonius, Giorgio Vasari, and the Print as Work of Art

Abstract

TODAY, THE NETHERLANDISH HUMANIST Dominicus Lampsonius (fig. 1) is generally known for his two published texts on art: the biography of his friend and teacher Lambert Lombard, printed in Bruges in 1565, and the verse inscriptions he composed to accompany twenty-three engraved portraits of Netherlandish painters, which appeared in 1572 under the title Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies. During his lifetime, however, Lampsoniuswas celebrated as a polymath who studied classical languages at the University of Leuven, trained as a painter, and distinguished himself as Latin secretary to the English cardinal Reginald Pole as well as three successive prince-bishops of Liège. He also became a central figure in a community of artists, poets, and publishers who began to address the history of Netherlandish art following the publication of Giorgio Vasari’s seminal Lives of the Artists, first printed in Florence in 1550, which almost completely excluded northern artists from its history. On October 30, 1564, Lampsonius wrote a letter to Vasari, initiating an epistolary exchange that lasted approximately half a year. None of Vasari’s responses to