Michelangelo letters up for grabs as Renaissance archive goes up for sale

Self-Portrait by Giorgio Vasari, 1566-1568. Photograph: Summerfield Press/Corbis
The Guardian: "An artistic and literary enigma involving a mysterious death and a €150m deal reportedly struck in a Moscow hotel is expected to be resolved this week at an auction in the Tuscan city of Arezzo.

On sale will be the archive of the man credited with being the father of Western art history: Giorgio Vasari, whose Lives of the Artists chronicled the lives of the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. The documents include 17 letters from Vasari's friend, Michelangelo, together with correspondence from five Renaissance popes and the 16th-century ruler of Florence, Cosimo I de' Medici.

The archive is subject to an Italian government order that it should never be removed from Vasari's house in Arezzo. But last October, Giuseppe Fanfani, the mayor of the city, was told by an official it had been bought by a Russian gas magnate for €150m. Agreement was said to have been reached on 23 September, just days before the death of Count Giovanni Festari, the archive's owner."