Lives of the Artists

First issued in 1550 and enlarged in 1568, this is Vasari's series of biographies of Italian painters, sculptors, and architects from Cimabue and Giotto through Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. Each life mixes training, patrons, famous works, workshop gossip, and judgments about design, drawing, and the progress Vasari calls rebirth. Florence, Rome, and Venice are the main stages. The book argues for a rising art that culminates in Michelangelo. It is a foundational collection of artists' lives, not a modern catalogue of attributions and not a single artist's memoir.

Bound in brown cloth. Brown endleaves. Brown three-volume slipcase. Vol 1. 32 pages of colour plates. Vol 2. 36 pages of colour and monochrome plates. Vol 3/ 28 pages of colour and monochrome plates.