Traduzione in inglese delle tre introduzioni alle arti dell'architettura, scultura e pittura alle Vite di Giorgio Vasari.

“Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages.” —Wall Street Journal Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as “insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable,” The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.

"Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects" in 10 volumes is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered one of the most influential and most-read work of the older literature of art, as well as the first important book on art history. The title is often abridged to just the Vite or the Lives. As the first Italian art historian, Vasari initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that continues today. The book contains the biographies of many important Italian artists, including a sketch of Vasari's autobiography, and is also adopted as a sort of classical reference guide for their names.

Born Jacopo Comin, Tintoretto (ca. 1519–1594) was one of the great painters of the late Renaissance. This book presents the first biographies of Tintoretto, by Giorgio Vasari and Carlo Ridolfi, as well as accounts from individuals who knew the artist personally. This volume also includes a translation of the marginal notes El Greco wrote in his copy of Vasari’s Life of Tintoretto, which have never before been published. Richly illustrated, with an introduction by the scholar Carlo Corsato that reconstructs Tintoretto’s career and contextualizes the contemporary sources, Lives of Tintoretto enhances our understanding of this influential Renaissance artist, who helped establish the Mannerist style.

One of the principal resources for study of Italian Renaissance art and artists, Vasari's Lives offers colorful, detailed portraits of the era's most representative figures. This single-volume edition spotlights 8 prominent artists.

The fame and influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) were as immediate as they were unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was the only living artist Giorgio Vasari included in the first edition of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550. Revised and expanded in 1568, Vasari’s monumental work comprises more than two hundred biographies; for centuries it has been recognized as a seminal text in art history and one of the most important sources on the Italian Renaissance. Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo, the longest in his Lives, presents Michelangelo’s oeuvre as the culminating achievement of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture. He tells the grand story of the artist’s expansive career, profiling his working habits; describing the creation of countless masterpieces, from the David to the Sistine Chapel ceiling; and illuminating his relationships with popes and other illustrious patrons. A lifelong friend, Vasari also quotes generously from the correspondence between the two men; the narrative is further enhanced by an abundance of colorful anecdotes. The volume’s forty-two illustrations convey the range and richness of Michelangelo’s art. An introduction by the scholar David Hemsoll traces the textual development of Vasari’s Lives and situates his biography of Michelangelo in the broader context of Renaissance art history.