Figure 103
Types of Vasari’s Vite: Torrentino, Florence
From a copy in Harvard College Library (facsimile), Internet Archive (scan)
1550
That famous work Giorgio Vasari’s “Lives”—Le Vite de’ più Eccellenti Architetti, Pittori, et Scultori Italiani—published at Florence in 1550, is also very well printed for this period, and its octavo volumes show a remarkably good handling, typographically, of rather a complicated text, in a manner perfectly practical and readable to-day. In this respect it is very modern in arrangement. Chiefly composed in a handsome, solid, roman old style font, each notice begins with a title in spaced roman capitals, and a seven-line decorative initial. The chapter headings of the opening discourses on Architecture, Sculpture, etc., appear in a beautiful and masculine italic, and their text begins with plain but distinguished two-line initials. Poetry is set in italic, and inscriptions in small capitals, spaced. This editio princeps was also printed by Lorenzo Torrentino though the revised and enlarged work on which subsequent editions were based, was printed by the Giunti and issued in three volumes in 1568