Art historian, born in Arezzo, NC Italy. He studied under Andrea del Sarto, and lived mostly at Florence and Rome. He was an architect and painter, best known for his design of the Uffizi in Florence, but today his fame rests on The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550, trans title), which remains the major source of information on its subject.
Giorgio Vasari (July 30, 1511 - June 27, 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, known for his famous biographies of Italian artists.
Biography
Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. His humanist education was not ignored, and he met and knew Michelangelo, whose painting style influenced Vasari's.
In 1529 he visited Rome and studied the works of Raphael and others of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasari's own Mannerist paintings were more admired in his lifetime than afterwards.
As an architect, Vasari was perhaps more successful than as a painter. In Florence Vasari also built the long passage connecting the Uffizi with the Pitti Palace, through arcading across the Ponte Vecchio.
In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius III's Villa Giulia.
Vasari enjoyed a high repute during his lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune.
In 1563 he founded the Accademia del Disegno at Florence, with the Grand Duke and Michelangelo as capi of the institution and 36 artists chosen for members.
Vasari died at Florence on June 27, 1574.
The Vite
As the first Italian art historian, he initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that continues today. Vasari coined the term "Renaissance" (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing "rebirth" in the arts had been in the air from the time of Alberti. Vasari's work was first published in 1550, and dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.
His biographies are interspersed with amusing stories. Many of Vasari's anecdotes have the ring of truth, although some indeed are too good to be true. Vasari did not rifle archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and naturally his biographies are more dependable for the painters of his own generation and the preceding one.
The work remains a classic even today, however it may be supplemented by the more critical research of modern days.
Vasari gives a sketch of his own biography at the end of his Vite, and adds further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco Salviati.
Excerpts from the Vite combined with photos of works mentioned by Vasari.Biographies
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.
User Comments Add a comment…