Giorgio Vasari

Summary Vasari was a 16th century biographer of the artistic greats including Leonardo. His popular book (1st edition 1550, 2nd edition 1568) about their lives remains a fundamental work with sound qualitative judgements as well as greatly influencing artistic biography from the time of its publication. Vasari is mentioned briefly by Janeway in [79 Concerning Flight].

Vasari self-portrait

Vasari lived 1511-1574. Italian painter, architect and biographer. Born in Arezzo, trained in Florence. He was a better impresario than a painter, and perhaps because of his gifts in this direction his work as an architect ranks higher than his painting. As a painter, Vasari was one of the most prolific decorators of his period. He has a higher reputation as an architect. Vasari was the first important collector of drawings, using them partly as research material for his biographies, for the insight they gave into the creative process. Vasari's activities as painter and architect have been overshadowed by his role as the most important of all artistic biographers.

Vasari's great book, first published in 1550, generally referred to as "Lives of the Artists", remains a fundamental source of information on Italian Renaissance art but it has also been a key document in shaping attitudes about the period for centuries afterwards. (The book was first published in 1550 as "Le Vite de' pił eccelenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani - The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors. In 1568 he published a second, much enlarged edition, in which the painters are mentioned first in the title.)

self-portrait of Vasari from "Lives"

cover of "Lives", 2nd edition

Vasari believed that art is in the first instance imitation of nature, and that progress in painting consists of the perfecting of the means of representation. He accepted the belief of Italian humanism that these had been taken to a high level of perfection in Classical Antiquity, that art had passed through a period of decline in the Middle Ages, and that it was revived and set once more on its true path by Giotto.

The main theme of the "Lives" was to set forth the revival of arts in Tuscany by Giotto and Cimabue, its steady progress at the hands of such artists as Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Donatello, and its culmination with Leonardo, Raphael, and above all Michelangelo whom Vasari idolised. Michelangelo's biography was the only one of a living artist to appear in the first edition of his book.

[79 Concerning Flight]

In [79 Concerning Flight], Janeway tells Tuvok of Leonardo: "Vasari thought he was an angel."

Vasari's facts have been impugned on particular points, but he nevertheless gathered together an enormous amount of invaluable information and his qualitative judgments have generally stood the test of time. His book became the model for artistic biographers in other countries, in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany.

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