Per la genesi delle Vite: il quaderno di Yale

This essay presents an unknown document contained in the Vasari papers at the Beinecke Library (Yale University): a Seventeenth century list of artworks visible in Florence ordered alphabetically by artist. As I argue, this 28-page booklet contains information possibly extracted from the earliest and since lost manuscript of the Vite, which Vasari completed by the summer of 1547. The document—if indeed it bears traces of this earlier version of the book—suggests that when Vasari was in the initial stages of redacting the Vite he gave less importance to sculpture and architecture. It also leads to believe that at this early stage of the writing Vasari did not yet use Albertini’s Memoriale and the Libro di Antonio Billi, his most influential written sources