Lives of the most eminent painters [2 Bd.e]. Selected edited and introduced by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin.

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - altersgem�sehr guter Zustand / very good condition for age - INTRODUCTION -- GIORGIO VASARI (1511-1574), born in the Tuscan town of Arezzo, was already a painter and architect of considerable prestige when he set out to write the first complete history of modern art. He gives credit for the idea to the scholar Paolo Giovio, who had himself planned to write such a history. One evening, after a lecture on the subject, Vasari criticized Giovio for not having �put things in their proper order.� It was then that Cardinal Alexander Farnese suggested to Vasari that he take over the project. Objecting that literature was not his field, Vasari at first refused. Only after much encouragement by the Cardinal and other intellectuals was he finally persuaded. He made it clear, however, that he felt this work would take his time away from �more important things,� meaning his painting and architecture, and to escape responsibility he planned to sign the Lives with a pseudonym. -- Yet the project could have been no new idea to Vasari, nor he so reluctant as he makes himself appear, for, as he explains in his own Life, he was able to turn immediately to �notes and memoranda, which I had prepared even from my boyhood, for my own recreation, and because of a certain affection which I preserved toward the memory of our artists, every notice respecting whom had always been most interesting to me.� This occurred in 1546; Vasari was thirty-five. Within two years, in 1547, he reports his book as �brought almost to its conclusion,� and by 1550 the first edition was published. It included the lives of more than two hundred painters, sculptors, and architects, from Cimabue to his own day. A few attempts at this subject had been made before by, among others, Ghiberti in his Commentaries, and Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, both of whom left manuscript notes on lives of artists. But nothing of the scope and magnitude of Vasari�s work had ever been conceived. Had he had assistance in collecting material or in putting it in order (a thing he does not mention), or had he devoted ten or twenty years of continuous work to it (which he did not), the Lives would still represent an incredible feat of research and writing. The publication met with deserved success; and several years later - in 1568, when the expanded second edition was unveiled - it became, as it has remained, the fundamental source for Italian Renaissance art.