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VASARI, GIORGIO. VITE DE' PIÙ ECCELLENTI ARCHITETTI, PITTORI, ET SCULTORI ITALIANI, DA CIMABUE INSINO A' TEMPI NOSTRI. FLORENCE: (LORENZO TORRENTINO, MARCH) 1550 3 volumes in 2, 4to, title-pages within architectural woodcut border including a view of the city of Florence, woodcut illustration, nineteenth-century vellum gilt, hinge of volume 1 cracked
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Provenance: Ida Agassiz Higginson (daughter of the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz), bought in Florence in 1884, and given by her to Edward Waldo Forbes (founder of the Fogg Art Museum in Harvard) in 1925
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Literature: Censimento 16 CNCE 34580
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Notes: first edition of vasari's seminal work of artistic biography concentrated on the three major arts, architecture, painting and sculpture. His emphasis on the artists of Florence and his coining of the term "Renaissance" ("rinascità") had a great influence upon later art historians and the concept of the artistic Florentine Renaissance.
As a biographer Vasari resorted to using gossip and scandal as sources for his work but he produced an invaluable mine of information about artists who would otherwise have been unknown and ignored, as well as about the giants of Italian Renaissance art.