Vasari, Giorgio (1511-1574): Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architetti. [...] In questa nuova edizione diligentemente riviste, ricorrette, accresciute d'alcuni ritratti, & arricchite di postille nel margine. 1-3:1-2. (4 parts in 3 volumes.)
 
Bologna, presso gli heredi di Evangelista Dozza, 1647. 4to. [xviii] + 432; + [iv] + 544 + [132] (Tavola); + [viii] + [xxxvi] + 76 (Proemio) + 408 pp. + engraved frontispiece by Cornelis Bloemaert after Giovanni Angelo Camino in volume one. Illustrated with 152 woodcut portraits of artists within ornate frames, faithfully copied from the 1568 edition. The first edition (1550) was without illustrations. 
 
Three volumes, contemporary limp vellum, titles in ink on spines. (The two parts of the third volume misnumbered on spines, and on half-titles, where the correct printed numbering has been replaced with deletions in ink.) Occasional finger-soiling, toning and scattered spotting, slight foxing to initial and final leaves, a few annotations in ink, loss of catchword on page 367 in volume 3:2 due to a paper flaw in lower outer corner, pastedowns renewed, a few insignificant worm-holes to paste-down of first volume, slight musty odor. Fine.
 
The most famous and influential work of art history, in the original Italian. Third (enlarged) edition: the first critical edition and the second to be illustrated with portraits. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 88 (ed. 1568).
 
Giorgio Vasari’s ”Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects” is a series of biographies of Italian artists, and one of the basic sources for information about the Renaissance in Italy. Vasari is often considered to be the first art historian, and was the first to use the term Renaissance in print (Rinascimento).
 
All the great names of Italian medieval and renaissance art from Cimabue onwards are present and ’portrayed’, among many others Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgione, Donato Bramante, Raphael, Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Mazzola (Il Parmigianino), Lorenzo Lotto, Giulio Romano, Jacopo da Pontormo, Michelangelo, Tizian (Titian), Bronzino, and Vasari himself.