Vasari on Technique presents the introductory treatises that the Renaissance painter, architect, and biographer Giorgio Vasari placed before his famous Lives of the Artists. In them he explains the practical methods of architecture, sculpture, and painting, from the working of stone and the orders of architecture to fresco, oil painting, and the casting of bronze.
This translation makes accessible Vasari’s first-hand knowledge as a practising artist of the sixteenth century, offering a rare technical window into the workshops of the Italian Renaissance. He describes materials, tools, and procedures with the authority of experience. For students of art and architecture, the book is an invaluable companion to the history of how the great works of the period were actually made.