Vasari, Giorgio (jôr`jō väzä`rē), 1511–74, Italian architect, writer, and painter. He is best known for his entertaining biographies of artists,
Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani (1550, rev. ed. 1568). The standard modern edition is that annotated by Gaetano Milanesi (1878), translated into English by Gaston de Vere as
Lives of the Artists (10 vol., 1912–14). Vasari is most enlightening in the discussion of his contemporaries and less trustworthy for 14th- and 15th-century artists. His work is the basic source of our knowledge of Renaissance and mannerist artists. A mannerist himself, he executed paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence and the Sala Regia in the Vatican and made portraits of the Medici. His major architectural works include the Uffizi in Florence and churches and palaces in Arezzo and in Pisa.
Bibliography
See study by E. Rud (1963).
Vasari, Giorgio
Vasari, self-portrait, oil painting; in the Uffizi, Florence
(credit: Scala/Art Resource, New York)
(born July 30, 1511, Arezzo—died June 27, 1574, Florence) Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the
Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the
Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late
Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view,
Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by
Michelangelo. The work's second edition (1568) has proved an invaluable resource for art historians.
Vasari, Giorgio Born July 30, 1511, in Arezzo; died June 27, 1574, in Florence. Italian architect, painter, and art historian. Representative of mannerism.
Vasari studied under B. Bandinelli in Florence, and his aesthetic outlook developed under the influence of Michelangelo. He founded an academy of drawing in Florence (1562). Vasari built the Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa (1562), his own home (1542) and the Logge (1573-81) in Arezzo, and others. His principal work is the Uffizi Ensemble in Florence (1560-85), with its narrow street-corridor between the Signoria Plaza and the bank of the Arno River. Vasari’s paintings include frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (from 1555), in the Sala Reggia in the Vatican in Rome (1571-73), and elsewhere. He is the author of The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550; 2nd ed., 1568), which is important for its very rich factual material as well as for its evaluation of the progressive role of art during the period of the Renaissance.
WORKS
Zhizneopisaniia naibolee znamenitykh zhivopistsev, vaiatelei i zodchikh [vols. 1-4]. Moscow, 1956-70.REFERENCES
Vseobshchaia istoriia arkhitektury, vol. 5. Moscow, 1967. Pages 238-44.
Studi Vasariani. Florence, 1952.
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