The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian 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", [1] "some of the Italian Renaissance's most influential writing on art", [2] and "the first important book on art history". [3] The title is often abridged to the Vite or the Lives.