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Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 7

Giorgio Vasari

Book Overview: 

The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, or Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori, as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered "perhaps the most famous, and even today the most- read work of the older literature of art", "some of the Italian Renaissance's most influential writing on art", and "one of the founding texts in art history". Vasari's work has been described as "by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art" and "the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists". Its influence is situated mainly in three domains: as an example for contemporary and later biographers and art historians, as a defining factor in the view on the Renaissance and the role of Florence and Rome in it, and as a major source of information on the lives and works of early Italian artists. (Summary by Wikipedia)

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Baccio and being pleased with them, exhorted him to persevere and to take to working in relief; and he recommended strongly to him the works of Donato, saying also that he should execute something in marble, such as a head or a low-relief. Baccio, encouraged by the comforting advice of Leonardo, set himself to copy in marble an antique head of a woman, of which he had shaped a model from one that is in the house of the Medici. This, for his first work, he executed passing well, and it was held very dear by Andrea Carnesecchi, who received it as a present from Baccio's father and placed it in his house in the Via Larga, over that door in the centre of the court which leads into the garden. Now, Baccio continuing to make other models of figures in clay in the round, his father, wishing not to fail in his duty towards the praiseworthy zeal of his son, sent for some blocks of marble from Carrara, and caused to be built for him, at the end of his house at Pinti, a room with li. . . Read More

Community Reviews

This is my first candidate for the "what if you were marooned on a desert island" list.

I love this book. It’s got everything. And I don’t just mean all those facts and figures you’d expect to get out of this kind of collection. It’s way beyond a straight encyclopedia of the great and good in Italy’s Renaissance infancy and bloom.

No mean artist himself, what Vasari delivers is full of

“The best way [to be informed about Leonardo and his contemporaries] will be to read their Lives, done by Vasari.”

“O listen to the malignant Vasari, he says that the rivals of Titian were not men of valor when these … all … were painters of great importance.”

About Vasari himself we know an extraordi

Expecting a somewhat dry book from a 16th Century Italian author, this was easier and more enjoyable to read than I expected. Rather than being formalistic and pompous, this book is full of saucy and funny anecdotes about the Renaissance artists that preceded Vasari, some of whom he knew personally.

When you hold this book on your hand (or in your Kindle!), just remember what a privilege it is to google every artist while reading the chapters and seeing the beautiful art Vasari is writing about. a privilege deprived of generations of people reading this old book in the past, who could only gues

Bible of Renaissance Art lovers. Written by Giorgio Vasari who was an artist himself and lived roughly few decades after main renaissance events (that's why a lot of evidences and judgements from "The lives of the Artists" are disputed by modern specialists). The book is structured as a collection o

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