The painter and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) was a pupil of Michelangelo, who worked mainly in Florence and Rome. Today he is famous as the author of LIVES OF THE PAINTERS, SCULPTORS AND ARCHITECTS, the work that essentially laid the foundation for the study of art history and remains one of its greatest monuments. Vasari's distinctive blend of biography and criticism has exerted a profound influence on all subsequent historians, but its value for contemporary readers lies as much in the vividness and bitterness of the stories contained in his book as in the lively light it sheds on the great masters of early Italian painting.