VASARI, GIORGIO. - Painter, architect and writer, b. 27 July 1511 in Arezzo, d. 27 June 1574 in Florence.
Having shown an aptitude for drawing, he received, during his study of the classical languages, his first artistic instruction from the celebrated stained-glass painter Guglielmo de Marcillat, a Frenchman who had made himself an Aretine by adoption, and then in Florence from Michelangelo. On the death of his father in 1527, V., driven by need and by the intention of supporting his family, set about executing works of painting in Arezzo and its countryside. But, on account of his young age and his artistic inexperience, failing in his aim, he had to take up the craft of the goldsmith with the Florentine Vittorio Ghiberti, afterwards passing into the workshops of other goldsmiths of Pisa and Arezzo, while continuing to execute minor works of painting. Having succeeded in getting himself taken on, in 1532, into the court of the splendid Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, V. was able in Rome to devote himself completely to the study and practice of painting, continuing them afterwards in Florence, where he had passed into the service of Duke Alessandro de' Medici. Having revealed his talent also in works of decoration and architecture and in the devising and execution of great temporary ornamental complexes - important among them that made on the occasion of the visit of Charles V to Florence (1536) - after the assassination of his patron (6 Jan. 1537), V., by then having formed a painterly manner of his own, carried on his artistic activity in Florence, in Arezzo, in Rome and in other Italian cities.
Summoned, in 1541, by Pietro Aretino to Venice to execute there the stage setting for his comedy La Talanta, he created with it an example of true and great scenography. After having completed in that city portraits and various works, among which the decoration of the Palazzo Cornaro is notable, V. moved to Naples, attending there to the decoration of the great refectory and of the church of the convent of Monteoliveto, to that of S. Giovanni in Carbonara and to numerous works for other patrons. Having returned to Rome in 1546, on the commission of Cardinal Farnese, he executed in only a hundred days the complete decoration of the main hall of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, which came to be the first of those pictorial cycles, carried out by using and coordinating the work of numerous pupils and assistants, in which V. specialized. And it was in that period of work and of residence in Rome that, participating together with the most famous humanists of the time in the evening gatherings at the court of Cardinal Farnese, the idea was born in V. of composing the Lives of the artists, which, with the help of learned friends, he was then able to write and have printed in 1550 at the Torrentino press in Florence; a city that was to become his place of residence, though he had periodically to absent himself in order to carry out other works in Rimini, Ravenna, Bologna and Arezzo, where, in 1548, he began the decoration of the beautiful house that he had had built for himself there, but which he inhabited only during the periods of his rare yet industrious holidays. Summoned to Rome by Julius III, V. attended to the works of that pope's family chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio, to the designs of Villa Giulia (1550-53) and to the making of other works for Roman patrons.
In 1554 V. passed into the service of the Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de' Medici, who, finding in him the man who, with rapidity and also with grandeur, could devise and execute the works of architecture, engineering and painting with which he was to embellish his palaces, Florence and other places of his Duchy, appointed him overseer of all the works that were carried out by his order. Having established a solid financial position and acquired greater fame, V. continued to develop ever more intensely a manifold and almost incredible activity (Michelangelo is said to have remarked: «Giorgio alone does the work of more than a thousand»), attending to the making of pictures that were commissioned from him from every quarter, making designs for grandiose buildings and works, such as the Palazzo degli Uffizi, his architectural masterpiece, and for the transformation of the Palazzo Vecchio, in which he created the Medici apartments and the Salone dei Cinquecento - decorated by him personally - which came to represent one of the most important and most monumental interior complexes in Italy. At the same time he supplied without interruption designs for other buildings in Tuscany, for the fabrics of the Medici tapestry works and for every other kind of craft activity, also attending, with the help of the Florentine scholar Vincenzo Borghini, to the laborious and difficult preparation of the second edition of the Vite, brought out afterwards in 1568 by the Florentine press of the Giunti.
In 1565, on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Francesco de' Medici, he devised, and then supervised the execution of, the sumptuous and colossal temporary apparatus of the city of Florence, in which the whole mass of Florentine artists collaborated, and which was then, and also afterwards, considered as a work without parallel in its genre. In 1570 V. executed in Rome, on the commission of Pius V, various paintings in the Vatican Palace and, in 1572, he completed there the decoration of the Sala Regia. Renouncing the journey to Spain, whither he had been invited to go by Philip II in order to design and execute works of architecture and painting there, he remained in Florence to devote himself to the decoration of the dome of S. Maria del Fiore. But he was able to execute only the lower part, having been struck by a serious illness that caused his death (27 June 1674). Led by his temperament, but also by an excessive desire for gain, to work uninterruptedly and with excessive haste, V. contributed through his pictorial production - among which only a few works, carried out by him for his own personal satisfaction, excel - to the progress and affirmation of Mannerism. Ingenious, and also grandiose, in works of a decorative character, V. distinguished himself especially through his architectural creations, among which the best and most important are the Palazzo and the church of the Knights of St. Stephen in Pisa, the dome of the church of the Umiltà in Pistoia, the Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence and the church of the Badia and the loggias of the Piazza Grande in Arezzo. And V. had the distinction, especially in his capacity and activity as architect of the Medici court, of giving a powerful artistic direction and admirable new aesthetic and monumental aspects to Florence itself. But greater and immortal fame derives to V. from his Lives of the artists, which are to be considered one of the most original and important works of the literature of every age and the fundamental pillar of a new science: the history of art. - See pl. XCV.
Bibliography22 works
Alessandro Del Vita