"io mi sarei potuto servire di Plinio e d'altri autori": Vasari e Plinio il Vecchio (e Paolo Giovio)

The importance of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia in Renaissance about art-historical treatises is widely acknowledged by scholars. In particular, Pliny the Elder represented a very important model in the Florentine context from Landino to Vasari. In a special way, the painter from Arezzo, author of the Vite, referred to the authority of Pliny the Elder in the Proemi, but he also recalled the role that the humanist Paolo Giovio played in the genesis of his great historiographical work. Giovio was from Como as Pliny and he built in his hometown a Musaeum of illustrious men that inspired Vasari in the arrangement of the portraits of the artists that were placed before the Vite. Vasari in particular drew from Pliny and Giovio certain elements that helped the Vite to become an indispensable model in subsequent art literature.