Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10): Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi

How it begins

" 120, line 10, for "which tabernacle is quite round" read "which tabernacle is in the round." Vasari introduces himself sufficiently in his own prefaces and introduction; a translator need concern himself only with the system by which the Italian text can best be rendered in English. The style of that text is sometimes laboured and pompous; it is often ungrammatical. But the narrative is generally lively, full of neat phrases, and abounding in quaint expressions—many of them still recognizable in the modern Florentine vernacular—while, in such Lives as those of Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelagnolo, Vasari shows how well he can rise to a fine subject.