Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was born in Arezzo and trained as a painter in Florence, where he came to know Michelangelo, whom he revered above all artists. He worked chiefly for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, painting the halls of the Palazzo Vecchio, designing the Uffizi, and beginning the frescoes in the dome of Florence Cathedral. He helped found the Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1563. His Lives, first published in 1550 and greatly enlarged in 1568, made him the founder of art history as a written discipline.
Frequently Cited
“they will now be able to recognize more easily the progress of her second birth and of that very perfection whereto she has risen again in our times.”
“painted a fly on the nose of a figure that Cimabue himself had made, so true to nature that his master, returning to continue the work, set himself more than once to drive it away with his hand”
1550; 2nd ed. 1568 · Renaissance Early Modern · Biography
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects is a collection of biographies of Italian artists from the late thirteenth century to Vasari's own day, arranged to tell the story of how the arts of design, after their decline in late antiquity, were reborn in Tuscany and brought to perfection in the age of Michelangelo. The library text is the first of the ten volumes of Gaston du C. de Vere's English translation of the 1568 edition, published 1912-1915.
