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Article: Books: Turning artists into heroes Martin Gayford reassesses the achievement of Giorgio Vasari, an unremarkable painter and architect but a revolutionary biographer
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- December 15, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Lives of the Painters,
Sculptors and Architects
by Giorgio Vasari
tr by Gaston de Vere
Everyman Library, pounds 15 each,
pounds 30 two-volume boxed set
IT IS not given to many authors to found an entirely new
discipline, and to shape it decisively for over 400 years. That,
however, was the achievement of Giorgio Vasari and his book, The
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects - unquestionably
among the books that have formed the mental landscape of Western
man.
It was first published in 1550, with a much enlarged and amended
second edition in 1568. Since then Vasari's book has been a
fundamental source not just for the art of the Renaissance, but for
art in general. To a considerable ...