Giorgio Vasari's 1550 (expanded 1568) collection of biographies of Italian Renaissance artists — from Cimabue to Michelangelo — the founding text of art history and the primary source for the lives of Renaissance masters.
Creates art history as a discipline — Vasari's Lives is the founding text of the biographical approach to art history; its organization of artistic development as a progression toward Michelangelo as summit established the teleological narrative of Western art history that was standard for centuries.
No recorded contemporaries.
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