Per la genesi delle Vite: il quaderno di Yale

This essay presents an unknown document contained in the Vasari papers at the Beinecke Library (Yale University): a seventeenth-century list of artworks located in Florence ordered alphabetically by artist. The paper argues that this 28-page booklet is a rewriting of a lost sixteenth-century document which contained information extracted from the earliest and since lost manuscript of the Vite, which Vasari had completed by the summer of 1547. If this reconstruction is correct, the document suggests that when writing the first version of the Vite Vasari placed less emphasis on sculpture and architecture. It also intimates that at this early stage of the editorial work Vasari had not yet used Albertini’s Memoriale and the Libro di Antonio Billi, his most important written sources.