Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (
July 30,
1511 -
June 27,
1574) was an
Italian painter and
architect, known for his famous
biographies of Italian artists.
Vasari was born in
Arezzo,
Tuscany. At the recommendation by his cousin
Luca Signorelli, at an early age he became a pupil of
Guglielmo da Marsiglia, a skillful painter of
stained glass. At the age of 16, Cardinal Silvio Passerini sent him to study in
Florence, in the circle of
Andrea del Sarto and his pupils
Rosso Fiorentino and
Jacopo Pontormo. 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. He was consistently employed by patrons in the
Medici family in
Florence and Rome, and he worked in
Naples, Arezzo and other places. Many of his pictures still exist, the most important being the wall and ceiling paintings in the great Sala di Cosimo I of the
Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where he and his assistants were at work from 1555, and his uncompleted
frescoes inside the vast dome of the
Duomo, completed by
Federigo Zuccaro. He also helped organize the decoration of the
Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio.
|
The Castration of Uranus: fresco by Vasari and Gherardi Christofano, c. 1560 (Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) |
As an architect he was perhaps more successful. The
loggia of the
Palazzo degli Uffizi by the
Arno opens up the vista at the far end of its long narrow courtyard, a unique piece of urbanistic planning that functions as a public piazza, and which, if one considered it as a short street, is the unique Renaissance street with a unified architectural treatment. In Florence Vasari also built the long passage connecting the Uffizi with the
Pitti Palace, through arcading across the
Ponte Vecchio. Unhappily he did much to injure the fine medieval
churches of
Santa Maria Novella and
Santa Croce, from both of which he removed the original
rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-
choir in the Mannerist taste of his time.
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
1547 he built himself a fine house in Arezzo (now a museum honoring him), and spent much labour in decorating its walls and vaults with paintings. He was elected one of the municipal council or
priori of his native town, and finally rose to the supreme office of
gonfaloniere.
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.
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. It included a valuable treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. It was partly rewritten and enlarged in
1568 and provided with woodcut
portraits of artists (some conjectural), entitled
Delle Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori.
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. Others are generic fictions, like the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting of Cimabue's, which the older master repeatedly tried to brush away, a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles. With a few exceptions Vasari's esthetic judgment is acute and unbiased. 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. Modern criticism - with all the new materials opened up by research - has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Often, the result is a tendency to underestimate Vasari's accuracy.
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. The
Lives have been translated into French, German and English.
*
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. The following list respects the order of the book, as divided into its three parts.
Part 1
*
Cimabue*
Arnolfo di Lapo*
Nicola Pisano*
Giovanni Pisano*
Andrea Tafi*
Giotto*
Pietro Lorenzetti (Pietro Laurati)
*
Andrea Pisano*
Buonamico Buffalmacco*
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Ambruogio Laurati)
*
Pietro Cavallini*
Simone Martini*
Taddeo Gaddi*
Andrea Orcagna (Andrea di Cione)
*
Agnolo Gaddi*
Duccio*
Gherardo Starnina*
Lorenzo Monaco*
Taddeo BartoliPart 2
*
Jacopo della Quercia*
Nanni di Banco*
Luca della Robbia*
Paolo Uccello*
Lorenzo Ghiberti*
Masolino da Panicale*
Masaccio*
Filippo Brunelleschi*
Donatello*
Giuliano da Maiano*
Piero della Francesca*
Fra Angelico*
Leon Battista Alberti*
Antonello da Messina*
Alessio Baldovinetti*
Fra Filippo Lippi*
Andrea del Castagno*
Domenico Veneziano*
Gentile da Fabriano*
Vittore Pisanello*
Benozzo Gozzoli*
Vecchietta (Francesco di Giorgio e di Lorenzo)
*
Antonio Rossellino*
Bernardo Rossellino*
Desiderio da Settignano*
Mino da Fiesole*
Lorenzo Costa*
Ercole Ferrarese*
Jacopo Bellini*
Giovanni Bellini*
Gentile Bellini*
Cosimo Rosselli*
Antonio Pollaiuolo*
Piero Pollaiuolo*
Sandro Botticelli*
Andrea del Verrocchio*
Andrea Mantegna*
Filippino Lippi*
Bernardino Pinturicchio*
Francesco Francia*
Pietro Perugino*
Luca SignorelliPart 3
*
Leonardo da Vinci*
Giorgione da Castelfranco*
Antonio da Correggio*
Piero di Cosimo*
Donato Bramante (Bramante da Urbino)
*
Giuliano da Sangallo*
Antonio da Sangallo*
Raphael*
Giulio Romano*
Andrea Sansovino*
Lorenzo di Credi*
Baldassare Peruzzi*
Andrea del Sarto*
Rosso Fiorentino*
Jacopo Palma*
Lorenzo Lotto*
Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Viniziano)
*
Michelangelo Buonarroti*
Brief vitaThe Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics). Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 019283410X
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volumes I and II. Everyman's Library, 1996. ISBN 0679451013
Vasari on Technique. Dover Publications, 1980. ISBN 048620717X
Life of Michelangelo. Alba House, 2003. ISBN 0818909358
