The
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, or
Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri, as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-century
Italian painter and
architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered "perhaps the most famous, and even today the most-read work of the older literature of art", "some of the Italian Renaissance's most influential writing on art", and "the first important book on
art history". The title is often abridged to the
Vite or the
Lives.