Giorgio Vasari [1511-1574], Renaissance Florence"Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands."
-- to Leonardo da Vinci
"I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies."
Buy here Vasari's Lives of the Artists first published in 1550; "a book which has come to be recognised as the single most important contemporary source of information on hundreds of artists of the Italian Renaissance."
