Lifes Of The Most Eminent Painters Sculptors And Architects

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1571) is well known for his celebrated work on the lives of the Renaissance artists. But not many people know that Vasari was a painter and architect as well as a biographer, and that he wrote one of the most valuable treatises on the technical methods of the painters, architects, and sculptors of his time. This is the first and only English translation of this important technical material (originally published in 1550 as an introduction to Vasari's Lives of the Artists). Vasari, as a practical craftsman, brings to his work as unusual understanding of the processes and materials he writes about, and conveys this knowledge to the reader in a style of the pleasantest and most readable kind. In the section on architecture, he describes the methods used in constructing rustic fountains and grottos; how Michelangelo developed new uses for architectural materials; the architectural uses of enriched plaster; the Renaissance view of Ionic, Doric, Gothic, and other types of architecture; and many similar topics. In the selection on sculpture, the reader will learn about the making of the model, completion of the statue, reliefs, bronze casting, modelled plaster work, sculpture in wood, and other processes. The final section, on painting, discusses aesthetics, perspective, foreshortening, how colors were blended, fresco painting, painting in tempera, oil painting, and much more. Scholars and historians of art have long used this book as the most detailed and valuable sourcebook of its time. But its full, readable discussions, combined with the sense of actuality and historical presence it contains, make it also perhaps the best possible description of the Renaissance artists in the heyday of their achievement.

“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.

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and 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 "the first important book on art history". The title is often abridged to just the Vite or the Lives. Contents: Cimabue Arnolfo di Lapo Nicola Pisano Giovanni Pisano Andrea Tafi Gaddo Gaddi Margaritone Giotto Agostino and Agnolo Stefano and Ugolino Pietro Lorenzetti Andrea Pisano Buonamico Buffalmacco Ambrogio Lorenzetti Pietro Cavallini Simone Martini Taddeo Gaddi Andrea Orcagna Tommaso Fiorentino Giovanni da Ponte Agnolo Gaddi Berna Sanese Duccio Antonio Viniziano Jacopo di Casentino Spinello Aretino Gherardo Starnina Lippo Lorenzo Monaco Taddeo Bartoli Lorenzo di Bicci Jacopo della Quercia Niccolo Aretino Dello Nanni di Banco Luca della Robbia Paolo Uccello Lorenzo Ghiberti Masolino da Panicale Parri Spinelli Masaccio Filippo Brunelleschi Donatello Michelozzo Michelozzi Antonio Filarete Giuliano da Maiano Piero della Francesca Fra Angelico Leon Battista Alberti Lazaro Vasari Antonello da Messina Alesso Baldovinetti Vellano da Padova Fra Filippo Lippi Gentile da Fabriano Vittore Pisanello Pesello and Francesco Pesellino Benozzo Gozzoli Francesco di Giorgio Galasso Ferrarese Desiderio da Settignano Mino da Fiesole Lorenzo Costa Ercole Ferrarese Cosimo Rosselli Il Cecca Sandro Botticelli Benedetto da Maiano Andrea Mantegna Filippino Lippi Giorgio Vasari ...