The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art, Rowland, Ingrid; Charney, Noah. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2017. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½” tall., 420pp. with colour illustrations, maps, family tree, notes, index. In fine condition and housed in a fine dustjacket.
Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift.
