Great Artists: Selected Biographies

Giorgio Vasari – artist, architect, and writer – was a younger contemporary of such outstanding masters of the Italian Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian. Vasari the painter can be characterized as prolific and diligent, although rather mediocre as a mannerist – his painting pales against the bright backdrop of Italian culture in the 16th century with its plethora of great masters and masterpieces of visual art.
As a writer, Vasari presents himself to us as a powerful and original figure, as the creator of the first history of art in Europe, a master of Italian prose, a classic in the science of art and art criticism. His «Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects» have served, serve, and will always serve as a handbook for any connoisseur and researcher of Italian Renaissance art as a remarkable historical document that is not only a rich treasury of factual material but also a fully-fledged work of art, recreating a vivid and lively picture of cultural life in Italy over two centuries.
The collection of 178 artist biographies was completed in 1550 and published in an expanded form in 1568. This edition includes biographies of the most famous Renaissance artists selected from all three parts of the «Lives». The text is preceded by an article by Alexander Gabriyevsky – a Soviet historian and art critic who worked on the first translation of Vasari's work into Russian, which was published in 1933.