Two Attitudes toward Art History: A Comparative Study of Philosophy of Art History of Qādī Ahmad Qomi and Giorgio Vasari in “Golestān-e Honar” and “Lives f the Artists”

Up to now, about the first art history as we know today, i.e "Golestān-e Honar" by Qādī Mir Ahmad Qomi and "Lives of the Artists" by Giorgio Vasari, different researches and studies from different aspects of bibliographical, historical and literary has been done. But what has been neglected is a broader and deeper view into the epistemic foundation and theoretical frame of historiography and view of the historians toward the concept of the history, art history and its direction. The main question of this research is asking of existence and quiddity of the components of the philosophy of art history of Qādī Mir Ahmad Qomi and Giorgio Vasari based on their works "Golestān-e Honar" and "Lives of the Artists." In order to answer, Comparative-Descriptive method has been used. In this regard, Interpretive and comparative Methods have been utilized. Interpretive method is a way that somehow emotionaly and inwardly, try to explore the view of author or historical agent toward the subjects. At the end, the components compares and different aspects of similarity and differences are scrutinized. The main goal of this research is reaching to the foundations and main lines of philosophy of history of those art historians named above and generalizing the results. The results show that in two worlds of Iran and Europe, at least before the modern era, there were two different attitudes toward art history: the philosophy of art history in Iran emanates from theological thought which has linear, invariant, source-oriented, retrospective nature, but in Europe based on Humanism thought and from the ancient time, the philosophy of art history has cyclical, evolutional, end-oriented and future-oriented characteristics that the individuality of creative and nature imitator artist has been emphasized.