when did vasari write lives of the artists
Giorgio Vasari Often called "the first art historian",[7] Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' piÃ¹ eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, which was first published in 1550. He was the first to use the term "Renaissance" (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing "rebirth" in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti, and he was responsible for our use of the term Gothic Art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the "barbaric" German style. The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts.[8] The book was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural).