In 1550, Michelangelo's younger friend and colleague Giorgio Vasari published the first edition
of his Lives
of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (usually shortened to Lives
of the Artists), a magisterial collective
biography of the
greatest Italian masters
of the last three centuries.
More than thirty years after her death, the oeuvre
of American
painter Alice Neel attracts ever
greater interest, and seems only ever more relevant: the substantial and moving exhibition
of her paintings currently at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague is the latest indication
of this groundswell
of attention, including various shows and catalogs in addition to a fine
biography by Phoebe Hoban and a biographical film directed by Neel's grandson, Andrew Neel.