The book explores the rich literary character and rhetorical strategies of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which tells the story of Italian art as it unfolded from its beginnings in the trecento to its pinnacle in Michelangelo and the art of the academy in the mid-sixteenth century.<BR>The contributors of Reading Vasari propose ways to read Vasari's text in the light of recent disputes over what is fact, fiction, or biography. The essays isolate and analyse select threads from Vasari's luxurious textual tapestry: these range from architecture, cosmology and philosophy to biography, comedy, elegy and travelogue. In doing so, the authors have built upon ideas proposed in recent studies of the Lives, including important works by Paul Barolsky and Patricia Rubin, and they offer fresh points of view that stem from their varied methodologies.<BR>The contributors' diverse responses in Reading Vasari underscore the vast dimensions of Vasari's Lives and the promise that every generation of scholars has much to learn from this sixteenth-century master of the arts.