Giorgio Vasari
Renaissance painter, architect and biographer
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter and architect who wrote biographies of Renaissance artists, work that helped lay the ground for art history as a field.
1 summary 25 min of listening
Born 1511 in Arezzo Died 1574
About Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, architect and art historian, born in Arezzo. He worked for the Medici court in Florence and designed the Uffizi Gallery. He also designed the Tomb of Michelangelo in the Basilica of Santa Croce. The Lives of the Artists gathers his accounts of Renaissance artists, among them Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Later scholars have found many factual errors in it, especially about artists who lived before his time. His writing described Giotto's new manner of painting as a rebirth, an idea that later led to the term Renaissance.