Sixteen-century Paduan Annotations to the First Edition of Vasari's Vite (1550)

The discovery of annotations to a copy of Vasari’s Vite (1550) in the Beinecke Library at Yale University gives us a rare insight into how the book and contemporary art literature were read and how the information they provided circulated in the Veneto. This article traces the origin of the annotations to the circle of artists and amateurs around the painter Domenico Campagnola in Padua. In polemical reaction to the Florentinism of the Vite, the annotations repeat the major anti-Vasarian arguments elaborated by art writers, but also offer new information about Veneto art. There is also a biographical note on Titian, which precedes the publication of the artist’s biography in the second edition of the Vite (1568).