Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects

'Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects' has been a founding text and an enduring touchstone for historians and critics in the four centuries since its composition. Filled with vivid biographical detail, commentary on painterly technique and acute analysis of pictures. This text also provides a dramatic historical survey of the decline in Italian painting during the Middle Ages and its rebirth in what Vasari himself calls a renaissance, thereby naming not only a historical epoch but a crucial moment in the history of human consciousness. [Publisher's description].