CONTAGION. ART AND VASARI’S MAL’ARIA De l'air de Rome. Vasari, la mal’aria et "the place to be" En Fr

Résumé En

My paper reconsiders the meaning of both contagion and aria in the symbolic and material economy of Vasari’s Vite. Since the fundamental Chastel’s essay on aria (1973), art historians have considered this vasarian criterion rethinking it almost exclusively in term of stylish ‘influence’. Now, this perspective underlines only a side of the coin: in Vasari’s complex thought aria has also a “dark side”, as it is an environmental agent producing contagion, and possibly pathological and moral effects. The two editions of Vite pinpointed that air is an environmental factor affecting artists’ mano and maniera, and their capacity of creation but also their physical and psychic health. Vasari express the question in terms of air quality and pollution – both considered by Renaissance physicians as Cagnato’s De Romani aeris salubritate –, of insalubrious emanations (miasmi) and of contagion. On the basis of Avicenna’s medical theories, contagion is theorized by Marsilio Ficino (Consiglio contro la pestilentia), Paracelsus and also Girolamo Fracastoro. Vasari attempts then to ‘grafts’ this early modern conceptions of contamination and of pollution, in order to give air (as atmospheric agent) a pathological power, providing then a “physical” and “medical” foundation of his discourse on art.