Full Name: Landino, Cristoforo
Gender: male
Date Born: 1424
Date Died: 1498
Place Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Place Died: Borgo alla Collina, Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre), fifteenth century (dates CE), and Italian (culture or style)
Career(s): art historians
Overview
Quattrocento writer, precursor of Vasari in that he constructed a list of biographies artists. Landino was a member of Marcilio Ficino’s group of intellectuals, employing neo-platonistic philosophy in their interpretation of the arts. In 1481 he published a commentary on Dante which included an account of contemporary Florentine artists and sculptors. His evaluations of Cimabue and Giotto drew heavily on the earlier work of Filippo Villani. Landino’s terminology, which he used principally for literary criticism, seems to have been absorbed immediately into the art criticism of others. As a friend of Alberti, Landino’s writings help popularize the more intellectual treatises of his friend.
Sources
Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 11; The Dictionary of Art 18: 699; Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Pprimer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 144-51.