Reprint of the original, first published in 1865.

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Often called "the first art historian", Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, which was first published in 1550. He was the first to use the term "Renaissance" (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing "rebirth" in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti, and he was responsible for our use of the term Gothic Art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the "barbaric" German style. The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural). The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art — for example, the invention of engraving. Venetian art in particular (along with arts from other parts of Europe), is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art (finally including Titian) it did so without achieving a neutral point of view. Vasari's biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip. Many of his anecdotes have the ring of truth, while others are inventions or generic fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that the older master repeatedly tried to brush away, a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles. With a few exceptions, however, Vasari's aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation and those of the immediate past. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, and adds further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco Salviati. According to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term "competition" (or "concorrenza" in Italian) in its economic sense. He used it repeatedly, and stressed the concept in his introduction to the life of Pietro Perugino, in 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 so. Competition, he said, is "one of the nourishments that maintain them."

In Giorgio Vasari's monumental work, 'Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects', the author provides a comprehensive biographical and critical analysis of prominent artists from the Italian Renaissance. Vasari's writing style is both informative and engaging, offering detailed accounts of the lives and works of legendary figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. His literary context is situated within the humanist movement of the 16th century, highlighting the importance of art in the cultural landscape of the time. Each volume of this work is filled with anecdotes, insights, and art historical knowledge that makes it a valuable resource for scholars and art enthusiasts alike. Vasari's meticulous research and expert commentary make this series a cornerstone of art history scholarship. Giorgio Vasari, a renowned painter and architect himself, was uniquely positioned to offer insights into the lives of his fellow artists. Having lived and worked among the artistic elite of his time, Vasari's personal experiences and connections provided him with valuable perspectives on the Renaissance art world. His passion for art and dedication to preserving the legacies of his peers are evident in the detailed narratives he presents in each volume. I highly recommend 'Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects' to anyone interested in delving deep into the lives and works of the artistic geniuses of the Italian Renaissance. Vasari's expertise and unparalleled access to insider knowledge make this series an indispensable resource for understanding the cultural and artistic richness of this transformative period in history.

First published in 1998, this volume explores the reinvention of Michelangelo in the Victorian era. At the opening of the nineteenth century, Michelangelo’s reputation rested on the evidence of contemporary adulation recorded by Vasari and Condivi. Travel, photography, the shift of his drawings into public collections, and, in particular, the publication of his poems in their original form, transformed this situation. The complexity of his work commanded new attention and several biographies were published. As public curiosity and knowledge of the artist increased, so various groups began to ally themselves to aspects of Michelangelo’s persona. His Renaissance reputation as a towering genius, a man of great spiritual courage, who had journeyed through and for his art to the depths of despair, was important to the Pre-Raphaelites and other artists. His love for his own ‘Dark Lady’, Vittoria Colonna, aroused excited speculation among High Church advocates, who celebrated his friendship with the deeply religious woman-poet; and the emerging awareness that some half of his love poetry was dedicated to a younger man, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, was of intense interest to the aestheticists, among them Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater and J.A. Symonds, who sought heroic figures from societies where masculinity was less rigorously defined. In this original and beautifully illustrated study, Lene Østermark-Johansen shows how the critical discussion of the artist’s genius and work became irretrievably bound up in contemporary debates about art, religion and gender and how the Romantic view of art and criticism as self-expression turned the focus from the work of art to the artist himself such that the two could never again be viewed in isolation.