Competition and "Competition"
According to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the word "competition" (or "concorrenza" in Italian) in its economic sense. He used it repeatedly, but perhaps most notably in the introduction to his life of Pietro Perugino, while explaining the reasons for Florentine artistic preeminence.
In Vasari's view, Florentine artists excelled because they were hungry, and they were hungry because their fierce competition amongst themselves for commissions kept them hungry. Competition, he said, is "one of the nourishments that maintain them".
Read more about this topic: Giorgio Vasari
Famous quotes containing the words competition and and/or competition:
“Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition and cooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)