2. Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters Sculptors and Architects 1550 revised, 1568.

Giorgio Vasari’s Vite or Lives was the first comprehensive account of art history in the Italian

peninsula since antiquity and the most influential biographical account of artists ever written.

The structure of the Lives is divided into separate biographical accounts of artists. These in turn are placed into three overarching periods of artistic development, namely what Vasari termed, a primary stage (primi lumi), a developmental stage (augumento) and finally the age of perfection (perfezione). These stages related to a conception of artistic progression that aimed to set out, a compelling teleological narrative account of the history of art.

For Vasari and his contemporaries, art had been lost with the collapse of the culture of antiquity and descended into a period of barbarism. The painter Giotto is seen as rediscovering the arts, by returning to the direct study of nature, rather than passively following prescribed medieval artistic conventions. The Lives culminate - in the first edition - ending with the sculptor and painter Michelangelo, whose climactic placement makes him the epitome of arts renewal.

From the moment they were published, the Lives were both, greatly admired and criticised. They represent a vast corpus of research and epitomised the most exhaustive account of the period we know as the Renaissance. By the same token they have a highly pro-Tuscan regional bias and Vasari is want to emphasise the influence of Tuscan and Florentine artists over other parts of the Italian peninsula.

Michelangelo Buonarotti., detail of "Damned Soul", The Last Judgment, 1535-1541,