The standard Italian edition of Vasari covers a host of artists, great and small, in nine massive volumes. Great Masters highlights six of the most important and luminous figures of Renaissance achievement--Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian.

In this splendid volume, Vasari's texts are thoroughly annotated and are accompanied by a historical chronology that clearly relates the artists' lives to the events of their time. The uniqueness of this book is the lavish reproductions of the art discussed in Vasari's texts--examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture by these six artists. For the first time, readers are able to see what Vasari admired in art and so eloquently wrote about.