Vasari

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was an Italian painter, architect, and writer who helped found the discipline of art history. Born in Arezzo, he moved to Florence to study with Domenico Ghirlandaio and established himself as a painter before turning to architectural design and court patronage for the Medici.

In architecture he contributed to Florentine projects for the Medici, most notably the design of the Uffizi building and the Vasari Corridor, a passage extending from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti that spans the Arno. His architectural work reflects late Renaissance and early Mannerist aesthetics.

Vasari is best known for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Le Vite), first published in 1550 and expanded in 1568. The Lives offered a continuous narrative of artists from Cimabue to Michelangelo and Titian, framed as a history of artistic progress and genius. The work popularized a canon of great artists and established the model of biographical criticism, but it also reflected Vasari’s patronage and bias and contains errors and anecdotal legend.

He died in Florence in 1574. Vasari’s contributions—early art-historical methodology, integrated architecture for Medici patronage, and his biographical corpus—made a lasting impact on how art and architects are studied, and he is widely regarded as the founder of art history.