Life001
Florentine painter · c. 1240–1302
Cimabue
Vasari's beginning: the painter cast as the first light in the revival of Italian art.
The reading edition
The Lives
Each Life is published in two parts: Vasari's text in a readable new translation, and a companion guide to the works and scholarship that help us read it now.
One Life · two pages
The text, then the world around it.
The translation keeps Vasari's account and its editorial notes together. Further Reading & Selected Works gives the modern companion: what to look at, where Vasari misleads, and where to read on. Blog posts may be linked to a Life when they genuinely belong there, but no separate essay is required.
Published
Life by Life
Reading002
Florentine painter, sculptor and architect · c. 1267–1337
Giotto
The pupil of nature: painting restored through observation, invention and the telling gesture.
Earlier in Vasari's sequence · still to come
Niccolò and Giovanni Pisano
In preparation