A striking account of Vasari's career, friendships, and contribution to the art of Renaissance Florence Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors , first published in 1550, fixed for three hundred years general European views about the art of the Renaissance, and its influence still lingers today. There is a mass of literature on Vasari's writings but comparatively few full-length studies have dealt with the man himself...