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:
“The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
“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)