In this tiny volume Paul Barolsky seeks to demonstrate the “powerful influence of fiction in the history of art and the history of the artist” (ix). Although modern art-historical scholarship has, since its inception in the nineteenth century, emulated the scientific method (in order to establish its legitimacy as an academic practice), Barolsky finds fault with the consistent use of this approach when dealing with many of the primary sources that serve as the basis for evidence. He contends that, in the past, imaginative literature contributed greatly to the history of art and that scholars have often taken it at face value. As is often the case in Barolsky’s books, Giorgio Vasari (whose essays on Renaissance artists have recently been seen as imaginative literature) serves as a springboard for his thesis. Barolsky’s enterprise is lighthearted and often tongue-in-cheek. This is evident, for instance, when he declares on page one that he “aspires to superficiality.” His project is not meant to resemble a modern all-encompassing survey text or a carefully annotated monograph. On the contrary, in the course of eleven pithy chapters, he concentrates on favorite themes such as Vasari, Michelangelo, and Leonardo, giving evidence of his predilection for and expertise in Renaissance art. Although some of the chapters are succinct—only a few pages long—their points are elegantly argued and give the reader much to ponder.

Chapter 1, “The Art of God from the Beginning of the World till the End of Time,” comprises a mere seven pages and gives evidence of Barolsky’s wit and imagination in stretching the parameters of the roles of the artist and art historian. He takes as his starting point the rich tradition of God as the first artist (due to his creation of the “first sculpture,” Adam). He proposes that Michelangelo should be seen as an art historian due to his depiction of this creation on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Barolsky examines aspects of Michelangelo’s fresco and its inherent notions of divine perfection as a basis for his assertion. He finishes by considering the opposite side of the coin: Boccaccio’s humorous tale in The Decameron, which recounts God’s previous lack of success as an artist. According to this story, God created the men of the Baronci family, who were of such great antiquity that they were older than anyone on earth. The Baronci were terribly ugly individuals because God was then only learning how to draw; having practiced on this family, he made later men much handsomer.

The second and third chapters examine the portrayal of art and artists in the poetry of Homer and Ovid, respectively. Barolsky seeks to demonstrate that the real world of Greek and Roman history is reflected in these writings. He finds that ancient Greek armor, jewelry, funerary urns, and household goods are contextualized in Homer, achieving a major goal of modern art history. He also argues that history and historical fiction are deeply intertwined, each enriching the other; therefore, when Homer sings of ancient Greek palaces filled with beautiful furnishings, glittering spaces, and lavish banquets, he provides a rich anthropology of the art and architecture of the period. Barolsky also considers the artists and artisans responsible for these objects; some are anonymous, but others are named, including the mythological Hephaistos, who created the shield of Achilles and, later, learning of his wife Aphrodite’s indiscretions with Ares, wove a net too subtle to be noticed to entrap them. “We might well include this artful and deceptive invention in the catalogue of [Hephaistos’s] art” (25). Although there is no denying Homer’s importance as a contextual source for art history, this argument seems weak, primarily because the premise is self-evident to this reader. More successful is the chapter on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Barolsky argues that it is an epic in which artists, rather than warriors, are the principal heroes. Focusing on the many forms of artifice presented by Ovid (whom he designates “a sculptor in words” (37)), he describes how Prometheus, Pygmalion, Medusa, Arachne, and many other image-makers in the poem transform flesh into inanimate matter and vice versa.

The fourth essay in the volume takes on Dante and the modern cult of the artist. Here, Barolsky examines the elevated status of the artist, a principal distinguishing feature of the modern world. He proposes that Dante’s poetry is one of the origins of the notion of the individual who demonstrates skill and imagination, and he persuasively argues that Dante, in making himself the protagonist of the Divine Comedy, influenced the heroic concept of the modern artist and reflected the artistic ambitions of his contemporaries.

Chapters 5 and 6 deal with two Italian Renaissance artists: Paolo Uccello and Leonardo da Vinci, or more correctly, Vasari’s version of their Vite, which is at least partly imaginative. Although Uccello was a painter in real life, his biography is deeply fictional—a fact that many literal-minded art historians have overlooked, since they ignore the role of fiction in shaping history. The real Uccello, Barolsky concedes, is a shadowy figure for whom few authentic documents survive who comes across as a simpleton in Vasari’s Vita. In Italian, uccello, “bird,” can mean a dullard or a birdbrain. In the Vita, the artist eats so much cheese that he wonders if he will turn into the dairy product; he also neglects his wife’s calls to bed because he is enamored by his study of “sweet perspective.” The chapter on Leonardo examines the tale in which the artist painted a Medusa-like monster on a wooden shield. Barolsky sees this story as an allegory that foretells Leonardo’s rise to fame, and mirrors the Vita of Giotto’s origins.

Perhaps Barolsky’s best chapter is the seventh, which is entitled “Vasari and the Autobiography of Michelangelo.” Here, he treads familiar ground, having pondered these two figures frequently elsewhere. Although Michelangelo did not write an autobiography, scholars have argued that he responded to Vasari’s Vita of himself through Ascanio Condivi’s biography of 1553 by guiding this author’s words, although to what extent is unclear. Barolsky compares the descriptions of events discussed in the two sources to demonstrate that poetical imagination and artistic liberty are present in both. For example, Vasari’s tale of the tondo Michelangelo painted for Agnolo Doni is lengthy and elaborate. According to Vasari, Doni tried to pay Michelangelo less than the agreed-upon amount of seventy ducats, which led the artist to double the price for such a breach. In contrast, Condivi simply relates that payment for the painting was seventy ducats. Barolsky weighs the significance of this disparity in the historical record, believing that Vasari’s account is a fable rather than a fact, and inferring that historians have wrongly taken his words at face value. Similarly, he finds imaginative invention in Vasari’s anecdote of Michelangelo’s depiction of Minos in his Last Judgment. Supposedly, Michelangelo used the features of the papal master of ceremonies in depicting this figure as retribution for his statement that the nudes in the painting were more appropriate in a tavern than in the Sistine Chapel. Barolsky examines the ingenuity evident in this tale of judgment (briefly stated here): in Dante’s Inferno, Minos is the judge of the dead at the entrance to hell, who is the opposite of the Divine Judge, and, if representative of the papal official, he is a bad judge of art.

Chapter 8 examines the recurring theme of the failed artist in modern literature. The author cites Balzac’s “The Unknown Masterpiece” as a central fable in this premise. Balzac relates the tale of Frenhofer, a fictional painter who labored for ten years on a portrait that merely engendered a confused mass of color and lines despite his having sought to realize the most perfect artistic creation. Barolsky follows the breadcrumbs of this initial story and discovers an important master narrative in subsequent literature. He notes that Zola rewrote the story into a novel in which the failed artist hangs himself upon viewing his worthless painting; the tale inspired self-doubt and anxiety in Cézanne. Henry James then adapted the theme to reflect the failed artist who achieves only an empty canvas. Barolsky relates other variations of the story, noting its pervasiveness in modernist thought.

Chapter 10, “Towards a Mock-Heroic History of the Artist,” examines the recurring theme of the artist as a “ludicrous figure,” a topic rarely explored because artists are often seen as figures of grandeur and magnificence. According to Barolsky, this “history” would include an extensive amount of comic and satirical anecdotes about the subject. One of its biographies would be that of the painter Douanier Rousseau. Although the literature portrays him as a naïve simpleton, Barolsky notes instead that the “primitive Rousseau is a forgery” (125). The artist helped shape his own legend by encouraging this image. This chapter exemplifies the sense of play (Latin: ludus) present in the stories of artists, which hold our attention because they often contain comic or charming anecdotes.

The final chapter is a meditation on Picasso’s place in the history of art; in particular, as the embodiment of the recurring themes addressed in the text. Barolsky ponders the dichotomy of this artist, who saw himself as the pinnacle of art history, yet suffered from Frenhoferian self-doubt. He apparently embellished his own biographical data, fashioning himself into a child prodigy who could paint like Raphael, and yet worried that his work could never transcend the masterpieces that inspired him. In this chapter and throughout the text, Barolsky reveals the ubiquity of fictive and imaginative writing present in the history of art. His elegant narratives serve to remind us of the admonishment we only think we heed: Don’t believe everything you read!