Reconsidering the Authorship of the "Lives". Some Observations and Methodological Questions on Vasari as a Writer

The resurgence of interest in Giorgio Vasari meritoriously prompted by the fifth centennial celebrations in 2011 has been accompanied by the resurfacing of theses that reject Vasari’s authorship of the Lives in favour of a collective (or ‘multiple’) work. My essay aims, instead, to confirm the full authorship of the Lives to Vasari. Examination of the sources cited and employed by Vasari as well as of the terminology and vocabulary he used, both in the letters and in the Lives, constitutes the only methodologically way to address with a constructive and unbiased attitude both the great work of the Torrentiniana - the edition printed by Lorenzo Torrentino in Florence in 1550 - and the Giuntina, which takes its name from the printers that brought it out in 1568, the Florentine publishing house Giunti.