VASARI, GIORGIO. — Painter, architect, and writer, born on 27 July 1511 in Arezzo, died on 27 June 1574 in Florence.
Having demonstrated an aptitude for drawing, during his study of the classical languages he received his first artistic instruction from the celebrated stained-glass painter Guglielmo de Marcillat, a Frenchman who had made Arezzo his adopted home, and then in Florence from Michelangelo. After his father’s death in 1527, V., driven by necessity and by the desire to support his family, undertook to produce paintings in Arezzo and its surrounding territory. But, because of his youth and artistic inexperience, failing in his purpose, he was obliged to take up the goldsmith’s art under the Florentine Vittorio Ghiberti, and then to work in the shops of other goldsmiths in Pisa and Arezzo, while continuing to execute minor paintings. Having succeeded in obtaining employment, in 1532, at the court of the splendid cardinal Ippolito dei Medici, V. painting, continuing them afterward in Florence, where he had entered the service of Duke Alessandro dei Medici. Having revealed his talent also in works of decoration and architecture and in the conception and execution of great temporary ornamental ensembles — the important one created for Charles V’s visit to Florence (1536) — after the assassination of his patron (6 January 1537), V., by then having developed a style of his own, carried out his artistic activity in Florence, Arezzo, Rome, and other Italian cities.
Summoned in 1541 by Pietro Aretino to Venice to execute the stage setting for his comedy La Talanta, he created with him an example of genuine and grand-scale scenography. After completing portraits and various works in that city, notably the decoration of the Palazzo Cornaro, V. moved to Naples, where he undertook the decoration of the great refectory and church of the convent of Monteoliveto, that of S. Giovanni in Carbonara, and numerous works for other patrons. Returning to Rome in 1546, at the commission of Cardinal Farnese, he completed in only one hundred days the entire decoration of the principal hall of the Palazzo della Cancelleria. This became the first of those cycles of paintings, executed through the use and coordination of the work of numerous pupils and assistants, in which V. specialized. It was during this period of work and residence in Rome, while taking part with the most famous humanists of the time in evening gatherings at Cardinal Farnese’s court, that the idea of composing the Vite degli arrefici arose in V.’s mind. With the help of learned friends, he was subsequently able to write the work and have it printed in 1550 at the Torrentino press in Florence—a city that was to become his place of residence, although he had periodically to leave it to carry out other works in Rimini, Ravenna, Bologna, and Arezzo, where, in 1548, he began decorating the beautiful house he had had built there, but which he inhabited only during the periods of his rare yet industrious holidays. Summoned to Rome by Julius III, V. undertook work on the chapel of the latter’s family in S. Pietro in Montorio, the designs for Villa Giulia (1550–53), and the execution of other works for Roman patrons.
In 1554 V. entered the service of the Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de’ Medici, who, recognizing in him the man capable of conceiving and executing with speed, and also with grandeur, the works of architecture, engineering, and painting with which he intended to embellish his palaces, Florence, and other places in his duchy, appointed him superintendent of all the works carried out on his orders. Having acquired a secure financial position and greater fame, V. continued to develop an ever more intense, multifaceted, and almost incredible activity (Michelangelo was said to have remarked: « Giorgio da solo opera per più di mille »), undertaking the production of paintings commissioned from him from every quarter, preparing plans for imposing buildings and works such as the Palazzo degli Uffizi, his architectural master-
piece, and for the transformation of the Palazzo Vecchio, in which he created the Medici quarters and the Salone dei cinquecento—decorated by him personally—which came to represent one of the most important and monumental interior ensembles in Italy. At the same time, he supplied designs without interruption for other constructions in Tuscany, for the fabrics of the Medici tapestry workshops, and for every other kind of artisanal activity, while also devoting himself, with the help of the learned Florentine Vincenzo Borghini, to the laborious and difficult preparation of the second edition of the Vite, subsequently published in 1568 by the Florentine Giunti press.
In 1565, on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Francesco dei Medici, he conceived, and then supervised the execution of, the sumptuous and colossal apparatus throughout the city of Florence, in which the entire body of Florentine artists collaborated; it was then, and continued afterward to be, regarded as an unparalleled work of its kind. In 1570 V. Rome, at the commission of Pius V, and in 1572 completed the decoration of the Sala Regia there. Declining to go to Spain, where Philip II had invited him to design and execute works of architecture and painting, he remained in Florence in order 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 grave illness that caused his death (27 June 1674). Driven by his temperament, but also by an excessive desire for profit, to work incessantly and with excessive haste, V. contributed through his pictorial production—among which only a few works executed for his personal satisfaction stand out—to the development and establishment of Mannerism. Ingenious, and also grandiose, in works of a decorative character, V. distinguished himself especially through his architectural creations, among which the finest and most important are the Palazzo and church of the Knights of S. Stefano 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. V. distinction, especially in his capacity and activity as architect of the Medici court, of giving Florence itself a powerful artistic direction and admirable new aesthetic and monumental aspects. But V.’s greater and immortal fame derives from his Vite degli artefici, which must be considered one of the most original and important works in the literature of all ages and the fundamental pillar of a new science: the history of art. — Vedi tav. XCV.