ABSTRACT
One of Giorgio Vasari’s primary goals in writing his Lives of the Artists was to create a memorial celebrating the histories and accomplishments of artists in life stories that are part biography, part monographic study, and part fiction. First published in 1550 and again in a much-expanded version in 1568, the Lives of the Artists comprise a three-part narrative that treats of art from Cimabue in the thirteenth century through to the author’s time. Vasari presents the three parts or stages chronologically, a schema that shows art’s development and accounts for the perfection of art in his day. In his work, some “Lives” focus on individual artists, while in others Vasari groups together artists under a shared theme, nationality, or media. According to Vasari the writer’s task was paramount – the writer not only brought fame to his subject, but ensured that the artist’s work would be “kept alive,” for it is the written account that will outlast the works themselves, as Vasari tells his reader in his opening Preface.1
