Abstract
The effect of Apelles's literary image on the telling of events in an artist's life is nowhere better illustrated than in the Vite dei pittori antichi (Florence, 1667) by Carlo Roberto Dati. Specifically, in his commentary on Pliny's famous tale (Natural History, 35.81–83) about a contest between Apelles and one of his rivals, Protogenes, Dati repeats two closely related stories about Michelangelo, each of which implies his likeness to Apelles. One of those stories also demonstrates the importance of another literary tradition for shaping an artist's image, the beffe or comical stories told by Giovanni Boccaccio, Matteo Bandello and others. The combination of classical and burlesque elements in a single tale influenced subsequent authors, who also told stories that are structurally similar to both Pliny's tale of Apelles and Protogenes and Dati's comic anecdote about Michelangelo.
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