Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

Lore & Background

The writer Paolo Giovio expressed a desire to compose a treatise on contemporary artists at a party in the house of Cardinal Farnese, who asked Vasari to provide Giovio with information. Giovio instead yielded the project to Vasari. As the first Italian art historian, Vasari initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies. The work has a consistent favour of Florentines and tends to attribute to them all new developments in Renaissance art, systematically ignoring Venetian art and other parts of Europe. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice, and the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art, finally including Titian, without achieving a neutral point of view. Vasari's biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, many anecdotes having the ring of truth though likely inventions. He did not research archives for exact dates, and his biographies are most dependable for painters of his own generation and the immediately preceding one. Modern criticism has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a forty-two-page sketch of his own biography at the end of his Vite, and adds details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco de' Rossi.

Reader's Guide

The Vite has been described as by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art and the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists. Its influence lies mainly in three domains: as an example for later biographers and art historians, as a defining factor in the view of the Renaissance and the role of Florence and Rome, and as a major source of information on early Renaissance Italian artists. The Vite formed a model for encyclopedias of artist biographies; 17th-century translators became artist biographers in their own countries, often called the Vasari of their country. Antonio Palomino became the Spanish Vasari. The Vite is also important as the basis for discussions about the development of style, influencing art historians' view of the Early Renaissance for a long time, placing too much emphasis on Florentine and Roman artists. For centuries, it has been the most important source of information on Early Renaissance Italian (especially Tuscan) painters and the attribution of their paintings. Despite its biases and shortcomings, it remains the basis for biographies of many artists like Leonardo da Vinci.

Did You Know?

• Vasari visited Venice between the first and second editions, leading to increased attention to Venetian art, including Titian.

The Embodiment of Renaissance Genius

While his initial reputation was built on his work as a painter, his enduring fascination stems from the vast notebooks in which he recorded observations and drawings across anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and even palaeontology. He is widely regarded as a genius whose collective contributions to European art rival only those of his younger contemporary Michelangelo. Since his passing, no era has passed without renewed fascination with his diverse interests, personal life, and empirical approach to understanding the world, making him a persistent figure in culture and a frequent namesake across disciplines.

A Limited Canon of Extraordinary Influence

Despite producing fewer than twenty-five attributed major paintings—and many of those left unfinished or now lost—Leonardo is identified among the greatest painters in Western art history and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. His small body of work includes some of the most influential images in the Western canon. The Mona Lisa holds the distinction of being regarded as the world's most famous painting, while The Last Supper remains the most reproduced religious painting ever created. His Vitruvian Man drawing has achieved the status of a cultural icon far beyond the art world. This combination of scarcity and supreme influence means that even a handful of surviving canvases have shaped centuries of artistic ambition and public imagination.

Visionary Engineering and Unpublished Science

Leonardo's technological imagination produced concepts that would not become practical for centuries: flying machines, an armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, a ratio machine applicable to adding machines, and the double hull. Few of these designs were actually built or even feasible in his lifetime, since modern metallurgy and engineering were still in their infancy during the Renaissance. Yet some smaller inventions entered manufacturing quietly and without fanfare, including an automated bobbin winder and a device for testing the tensile strength of wire. His scientific contributions extended into anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology. Crucially, he never published these findings, meaning they had little to no direct influence on subsequent scientific development. His empirical thinking—observing, sketching, and recording in his notebooks—remains a testament to a mind that sought to understand the natural world through direct engagement rather than received authority, even if the broader scientific community did not benefit from his insights during his own era.

Origins, Apprenticeship, and a Restless Career

His parents married separately the following year, and he ultimately had sixteen half-siblings, most far younger, with whom he maintained minimal contact. His education was basic and informal—reading, writing, and mathematics—likely because his artistic gifts were recognized early and his family chose to focus there. In the mid-1460s his family relocated to Florence, the centre of Christian Humanist thought, and around age fourteen he entered the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio as a studio boy, becoming a full apprentice by seventeen and remaining in training for seven years. Throughout, he attracted a large following of imitators and students.