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Second edition

Paperback – 145 x 115 mm – 128 pages

Fifty-one colour illustrations

ISBN 9781843681564

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 the Florentine painter Giorgio Vasari and first published in 1550.

Vasari’s 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 and chronology Vasari describes in detail, together with the spectacular social career of the first painter to be mooted, it was claimed, as a Cardinal – but also for its unprecedented attention to theoretical issues.

This is a new version of the only stand alone edition of the Life. It is introduced by Dr Jill Burke, Research Fellow at Edinburgh University.

Vasari is the first art historian worthy of the title
Durning-Lawrence Ettlinger, Professor of Art History, University of London

Vasari’s Lives is perhaps the most important book on the history of art ever written
Peter and Linda Murray, authors of The Art of the Renaissance, and of The High Renaissance and Mannerism

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, Professor of Art and Film History, University of London