Biography

Giorgio Vasari was born in 1511 in Arezzo as the son of a potter. After initial artistic instruction in his home town, Cardinal Silvio Passerini, the private tutor of the Medici family, arranged for him to come to Florence at the age of thirteen years, where he attended lessons together with the Medici sons, Alessandro and Ippolito. In addition to his humanistic education, he received education in art, which he then continued in the workshops of the painter Andrea del Sarto and the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. He spent time in Arezzo, Pisa and Bologna before entering the service of the Medici family in 1532, his first trip to Rome followed in the same year; while there, he studied the art of antiquity as well as the works of contemporary artists. In particular, Michelangelo became the object of Vasari’s lifelong admiration. In the years following the violent death of his patron, Duke Alessandro de' Medici, in 1537, Vasari worked mainly outside of Florence. It was only in 1555 that he returned to the city on the River Arno, where Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici placed him in charge of the celebration of the Medici Family in the arts, such as the reconstruction and painting of the Palazzo Vecchio or the construction of the Uffizi. With these commissions and numerous others, Vasari quickly became one of the leaders of the Florentine art scene. By the time he died in Florence in 1574, he had made himself a name not only as a painter and architect, but also as a biographer and art theoretician. His “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Artists” was published in 1550, followed by a second extended edition in 1568. This work, which is still read today, made Vasari the father of modern art historiography.