Lives Of The Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors And Architects'

Description

Vasari's masterpiece is the first organic book on the history of Italian art, an essential source of biographical information on artists at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, an indispensable treatise for its objectivity, breadth of the phenomena examined, honesty of judgement and clarity of exposition. This valuable 18th-century edition (in 7 volumes) ‘augmented with notes’, has a dedication to Peter Leopold I (1747-1792), King of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), was a versatile artist and man of letters in the service of the Medici and the popes, a perfect embodiment of the figure of the cultured and versatile artist of the late Renaissance period. As a painter, with a pronounced Mannerist taste, he was at the head of important building sites for the Medici, including the decoration of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio or, for other commissions, the decoration of the Salone dei Cento Giorni in the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome and some altarpieces for the Convent of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo. He was also an important architect: his works in this field include the Palazzo della Carovana in Pisa and the Florentine Uffizi complex. He is considered the first art historian of the Modern Era and established the foundations for the birth and development of the discipline: his name, in fact, is indissolubly linked to the “Lives”.