This is the first complete translation of the biographies of fifteen artists, including Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Poussin, written by the seventeenth-century antiquarian Giovan Pietro Bellori. Originally conceived as a continuation of Vasari's famous Lives, it is a fundamental source for seventeenth-century Italian art and artistic theory, providing detailed descriptions of extant and lost works of art, while casting light on the cultural politics of contemporary Rome and the relations between Rome and France. The importance of Bellori's Lives lies in the scrupulous documentation of artists, many of whom he knew personally; the author's detailed descriptions of their works; and his exposition of the classicist theory of art in the introductory lecture, the Idea. This volume contains the twelve Lives published in the original edition of 1672 and three Lives (Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi, and Carlo Maratti) that survive in manuscript form and that were published for the first time in 1942.

Francisco de Hollanda completed Da pintura antigua in 1548, eight years after the young Portuguese humanist, painter, and architect had spent two years in Italy. Book I is the first Portuguese treatise on the theory and practice of painting. In contrast to Italian texts on artistic theory, which define painting as the imitation of nature, Hollanda’s treatise, influenced by Neoplatonism, develops a theory of the painter as an original creator guided by divine inspiration. Book II, “Dialogues in Rome,” is a record of three conversations with Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and members of their circle and a fourth with Giulio Clovio. It is the most informative and intimate intellectual portrait of Michelangelo before the biographies by Vasari and Condivi.

Ascanio Condivi was a young pupil and assistant of Michelangelo's who gained the trust and confidence of the great artist. His biography of Michelangelo to a large extent is based on the artist's own words, tells the story of his life, his relationship with his patrons, his objectives as an artist, and his accomplishments, forming the basis of a biography that has been central to the study of Michelangelo for four centuries. The significance of Condivi's text was recognized early on. Within fifteen years of its publication in 1553, Vasari incorporated much of it to correct and revise his biography of Michelangelo in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists. But, although Vasari knew Michelangelo well, the sculptor never confided in him to the extent that he did in Condivi, making this the indispensable source for the life of Michelangelo.

First published in 1976, this translation is now available in paperback for the first time and includes a revised introduction based on new research, as well as an up-to-date bibliography and endnotes section.