Landino, Cristoforo

Date born:  1424

Place Born:  Florence, Italy

Date died: 1498

Place died:  Borgo alla Collina (near Pratovecchio), Italy

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 Villani (q.v.).  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.

Home Country: Italy

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.

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