[4] As the first Italian art historian, Vasari initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that continues today.

Vasari's work was first published in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino in Florence,[5] and dedicated to Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

He did not research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation and the immediately preceding one.

The Vite has been translated wholly or partially into many languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Polish, Russian and Spanish.

Karel Van Mander was probably the first Vasarian author with his Painting book (Het Schilderboeck, 1604), which encompassed not only the first Dutch translation of Vasari, but also the first Dutch translation of Ovid and was accompanied by a list of Italian painters who appeared on the scene after Vasari, and the first comprehensive list of biographies of painters from the Low Countries.

[13] The Vite contains the biographies of many important Italian artists, and is also adopted as a sort of classical reference guide for their names, which are sometimes used in different ways.

The first volume starts with a renewed dedication to Cosimo I de' Medici,[14] followed by an additional one to Pope Pius V.[15] The volume contains an index of names and objects mentioned,[16] and subsequently a list of illustrations, and finally an index of places and their buildings also with references to the passages where they are mentioned in the text.

Hereafter an almost 40 pages long lettera by Florentine historian Giovanni Battista Adriani to Vasari on the history of art is printed.

[18] The principal part of the volume begins with a preface,[19] followed by an introduction into the background, the materials and techniques of architecture, sculpture, and painting.

According to professor Patricia Rubin of New York University, "her translation of Vasari brought the Lives to a wide English-language readership for the first time.