An accomplished painter, architect and diplomat, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) is best known for Lives of the Artists, his classic account of the great masters—an extraordinary book that invented the genre of artistic biography, single-handedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art and founded the cults of Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo that persist to this day. Vasari positioned art as an intellectual pursuit instead of just a technical skill, teaching us to view artists as geniuses and visionaries rather than as simple craftsmen.

Immersing readers in the world of the Medici and the popes, Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney show the great works of Western culture taking shape amid the thrilling culture of Renaissance Italy.