In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano’s startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari’s own early career. Vasari’s original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgements have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time.

Ruskin wrote the work in order to apply to the architecture of Venice the general principles enunciated in his The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He discusses architecture and its functional and ornamental aspects and presents a brief history of Venice. Then Ruskin discusses the Byzantine period and the climactic development of Venetian life, its Gothic period. Finally Ruskin puts forth his thesis that the onset of the Renaissance caused the city’s architectural decline. Ruskin contended that Gothic architecture expressed “a state of pure national faith, and…domestic virtue” while Renaissance architecture expressed “concealed national infidelity, and…domestic corruption.”

Seven hundred years of glorious painting from Duccio to Picasso, with superb colour reproductions throughout, including artists biographies, notes on contributors, and an index of collections.