Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

旁白：请听一段艺术史的讲座片段。

Professor: I'm sure you've all heard of the Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci.

教授：你们肯定听说过蒙娜丽莎，达芬奇的著名画作。

The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a woman and it's thought to be the portrait of Lisa Gherardini but that's not certain.

蒙娜丽莎是一位妇女的画像，人们认为是Lisa Gherardini的画像，但这个也不确定。

In fact, many things about the Mona Lisa remain a mystery.

实际上，很多关于蒙娜丽莎的事情还是一个谜。

For example, we don't know exactly who commissioned the painting or how long Da Vinci worked on it and there are actually many scholars who think the mystery makes the painting more interesting.

例如，我们不能准确地知道是谁委托达芬奇画这幅画，他画了多久，实际上有很多学者认为，这些谜团使得蒙娜丽莎更加有趣了。

I think it places unfortunate limits on our analyses, makes it hard to make strong arguments about the painting.

我觉得这些谜团使得我们的研究不幸地受到了限制，让我们很难对于这幅画得出确定的结论。

Anyway, getting to the point: most people today might have never heard of the Mona Lisa, or of many other now famous works of art for that matter, if it hadn't been for Giorgio Vasari.

不论如何，想想这一点：现在的大多数人可能根本没听说过蒙娜丽莎，或者也不会知道其他的著名画作，如果不是因为Giorgio Vasari的话。

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, architect and scholar.

Vasari是一位意大利画家，建筑师和学者。

In the mid fifteen hundreds, he wrote a book called Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in which he describes, among many other things, the features of the Mona Lisa, including her famous smile.

在十六世纪中期，他写了一本叫做最出色的意大利画家、雕刻家和建筑师的书，在这本书里他描写了很多东西，包括蒙娜丽莎和她神秘的微笑。

This book drew a lot of attention to Da Vinci and significantly increased the Mona Lisa's fame.

这本书很关注达芬奇，很大地提升了蒙娜丽莎的知名度。

As the title suggests, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects includes biographies not only of Da Vinci but also of many other now famous Italian renaissance artists.

正如题目所指的那样，这本书包括了达芬奇及其他的著名意大利文艺复兴艺术家的传记。

This was the first time that a European author had made the personal lives of the artists a central component of an art history book and many a later author followed the example.

这是第一次一位欧洲的作家在艺术史的书里把艺术家的私人生活作为了中心。很多后来的作者延续了这种写作方式。

The more important the artist in Vasari's view, the longer their biography in the book.

Vasari觉得哪位艺术家更重要，在书里他们的传记就越长。

And by far, the longest of the biographies, is that of Michelangelo, the painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and sculptor of the famous statue of David, whose work Vasari adopted as his benchmark, his reference point for evaluating everyone else's artwork.

至今为止，最长的传记属于米开朗琪罗，西斯廷教堂天花板壁画的作者以及大卫雕像的作者，他的作品被Vasari当做基准，关于他的材料用于评价其他人的艺术作品。

Many of the biographies are extremely detailed with all the basic facts about where the artists were born, where they'd worked, who their teachers were and so on.

很多的传记在以下这些方面非常详细，比如说艺术家是在哪里出生的，他们在哪里工作过，老师是谁，还有其他的一些基本的信息。

But I read Vasari's book cover to cover almost every summer.

但是我每个夏天都会从头到尾地读Vasari的书。

I find it a great way to unwind during the summer break and what keeps me coming back to it are the anecdotes, fascinating anecdotes, that give you glimpses in the artist's private lives, their dreams, their fears, their virtues, their vices.

它帮助我在炎炎夏日放松下来，让我不断回读它的是它里面的奇闻异事，吸引人的奇闻异事，让我们得以一窥艺术家的私人生活，他们的梦想，他们的恐惧，他们的美德和罪恶。

In his book, Vasari also tackled, quite successfully I might add, the enormous task of sorting out which works had been done by which artists, which works belong in the same stylistic categories, which works belong in similar categories in terms of quality and so on, stuff you take for granted today.

在他的书中，Vasari也做了一件我必须说非常巨大的工作，他把艺术家的作品进行了分类，依照他们的艺术风格来分来，相同风格的艺术作品，根据质量或者别的标准来分类，这些分类标准在现代被人们认为是理所当然的。

But again, Vasari was the first European author to do that.

但是，再说一次，Vasari是第一位这样分类的欧洲作家。

A word of caution though: Vasari was not at all averse to, how should I put it, modifying the facts.

以下是一句警告之语：Vasari并不是，我该怎么说呢，并不是一点也没有修饰事实。

For example, in his book, he has a touching description of Da Vinci's death, in which Da Vinci dies in the arms of his last patron: The king of France, Francis the First.

例如，在他的书里，他对于达芬奇的去世有非常感人的描写，在他的描写里达芬奇是在他最后的赞助人法国国王Francis一世的怀里去世的。

Now, Da Vinci did spend the last years of his life working in the court of Francis the First.

达芬奇的确在生命最后的时间里为Francis一世服务的。

Vasari seemed to have overlooked a minor detail, however, the well documented fact that the king was far away when Da Vinci breathed his last breath.

然而Vasari似乎忽略了一个细节，那就是达芬奇去世的时候国王离他很远。

But why let the fact stand in the way of a great story, right?

但是这个小小事实不足以掩盖达芬奇光辉灿烂一生的光芒。对吗？

Since Vasari's tales are, as I've said, so compelling and because they have been repeated by so many subsequent authors, they're still often taken at face value.

因为就如同我所说的，Vasari的故事太吸引人了，因为他们已经被后面的作者借鉴了太多次，在表面价值上它们还常常被引用。

Even today.

即使今天也是。

No questions asked.

所以人们并没有对此提出过质疑。