Raphael (1483-1520) was for centuries considered the greatest artist who ever lived. Much of what we know about him comes from this biography, written by Florentine painter Giorgio Vasari. Vasari's monumental
Lives of the Painters was the first attempt to write a systematic history of Italian art.
The Life of Raphael is a key text not only for the appreciation of Raphael's own art—whose development Vasari portrays in detail, along with the spectacular social career of the first painter to be mooted as a Cardinal—but also for its unprecedented attention to theoretical issues.
This stand-alone edition of The Life of Raphael, published to coincide with a major exhibition of the artist's paintings and drawings at England's National Gallery, illuminates the entire span of Raphael's astonishing art.
" Vasari is the first art historian worthy of the title L. D. Ettlinger Vasari's Lives is perhaps the most important book on the history of art ever written Peter and Linda Murray Vasari's Lives is the Bible of Italian Renaissance - if not all - art history... our fullest guide to how people looked at art in the Renaissance David Ekserdjian"