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Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, Tuscany July 3, 1511 -
Florence, June 27, 1574) was an Italy|Italian
painter and architect, mainly known for his famous
biography|biographies of Italian artists.



At a very early age he became a pupil of Guglielmo
da Marsiglia, a very skilful painter of stained
glass, to whom he was recommended by his own
kinsman, the painter Luca Signorelli. At the age
of sixteen Cardinal Silvio Passerini who sent him
to study in Florence, in the circle of Andrea del
Sarto and his pupils Rosso il Fiorentino|Rosso 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
Raffaello Santi|Raphael and others of the Roman
High Renaissance of the previous generation.
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 hall of
the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and his broad,
uncompleted frescoes inside the dome of the Santa
Maria del Fiore|Florentine Duomo. 

As an architect he was perhaps more successful.
The loggia of the Uffizi|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 Basilica di Santa Croce,
Florence|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 Villia Giulia. 

Vasari enjoyed a very high repute during his
lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune. He
built himself in 1547 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 thirty-six artists
chosen for members. He 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
Leone Battista Alberti|Alberti. Vasari's great
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' piĆ¹ eccellenti pittori, scultori,
ed architettori.     

His biographies are interspersed with amusing
stories. Many of Vasari's anecdotes have the ring
of truth, athough 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 a good many of his traditional
dates and attributions. The result is a tendency
very often 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.

*http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/giorgio.vasari/vaspr
ef.htm 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 Cambio|Arnolfo di Lapo
* Nicola Pisano
* Giovanni Pisano
* Andrea Tafi (artist)|Andrea Tafi
* Giotto di Bondone|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 Bartoli

=== Part 2 ===
* Jacopo della Quercia
* Nanni di Banco
* Luca della Robbia
* Paolo Uccello
* Lorenzo Ghiberti
* Masolino da Panicale
* Tommaso Masaccio|Masaccio
* Filippo Brunelleschi
* Donatello
* Giuliano da Majano
* 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 Pisano|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
* Pinturicchio|Bernardino Pinturicchio
* Francesco Francia
* Perugino|Pietro Perugino
* Luca Signorelli

=== Part 3 ===
* Leonardo da Vinci
* Giorgione da Castelfranco
* Antonio da Correggio
* Piero di Cosimo
* Donato Bramante (Bramante da Urbino)
* Giuliano da Sangallo
* Antonio da Sangallo
* Raffaello Santi|Raphael
* Giulio Romano
* Andrea Sansovino
* Lorenzo di Credi
* Baldassare Peruzzi
* Andrea del Sarto
* Rosso (Rosso Fiorentino)
* Jacopo Palma
* Lorenzo Lotto
* Sebastiano Viniziano (Sebastiano del Piombo)
* Michelangelo Buonarroti

== External links ==
*http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gvasari.htm Brief vita

== References ==
*The 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

----
Partly derived from a 1911 encyclopedia. Please
update as needed.

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, Tuscany July 3, 1511 -
Florence, June 27, 1574) was an Italy|Italian
painter and architect, mainly known for his famous
biography|biographies of Italian artists.



At a very early age he became a pupil of Guglielmo
da Marsiglia, a very skilful painter of stained
glass, to whom he was recommended by his own
kinsman, the painter Luca Signorelli. At the age
of sixteen Cardinal Silvio Passerini who sent him
to study in Florence, in the circle of Andrea del
Sarto and his pupils Rosso il Fiorentino|Rosso 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
Raffaello Santi|Raphael and others of the Roman
High Renaissance of the previous generation.
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 hall of
the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and his broad,
uncompleted frescoes inside the dome of the Santa
Maria del Fiore|Florentine Duomo. 

As an architect he was perhaps more successful.
The loggia of the Uffizi|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 Basilica di Santa Croce,
Florence|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 Villia Giulia. 

Vasari enjoyed a very high repute during his
lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune. He
built himself in 1547 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 thirty-six artists
chosen for members. He 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
Leone Battista Alberti|Alberti. Vasari's great
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' piĆ¹ 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 a good many of his traditional
dates and attributions. The result is a tendency
very often 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.

*http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/giorgio.vasari/vaspr
ef.htm 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 Cambio|Arnolfo di Lapo
* Nicola Pisano
* Giovanni Pisano
* Andrea Tafi (artist)|Andrea Tafi
* Giotto di Bondone|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 Bartoli

=== Part 2 ===
* Jacopo della Quercia
* Nanni di Banco
* Luca della Robbia
* Paolo Uccello
* Lorenzo Ghiberti
* Masolino da Panicale
* Tommaso Masaccio|Masaccio
* Filippo Brunelleschi
* Donatello
* Giuliano da Majano
* 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 Pisano|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
* Pinturicchio|Bernardino Pinturicchio
* Francesco Francia
* Perugino|Pietro Perugino
* Luca Signorelli

=== Part 3 ===
* Leonardo da Vinci
* Giorgione da Castelfranco
* Antonio da Correggio
* Piero di Cosimo
* Donato Bramante (Bramante da Urbino)
* Giuliano da Sangallo
* Antonio da Sangallo
* Raffaello Santi|Raphael
* Giulio Romano
* Andrea Sansovino
* Lorenzo di Credi
* Baldassare Peruzzi
* Andrea del Sarto
* Rosso (Rosso Fiorentino)
* Jacopo Palma
* Lorenzo Lotto
* Sebastiano Viniziano (Sebastiano del Piombo)
* Michelangelo Buonarroti

== External links ==
*http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gvasari.htm Brief vita

== References ==
*The 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

----
Partly derived from a 1911 encyclopedia. Please
update as needed.