Libro de' disegni, page showing framing and decoration

As Vasari recounts in Part I of the Lives, the mobility of Giotto and his pupils eradicates monstrous styles, disseminating the modern manner in their stead. Presumably the reader can now witness the upward trajectory of central Italian style undisturbed. Artistic achievements, and not place with its attendant connotations of potentially harmful or salubrious aria, would seem to take center stage. It was not his intention, Vasari declares, “to discover their [artists’] numbers, their names, and …