Birthday: The first art critic

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)

Artist, architect, writer, historian

Born in Arezzo, Tuscany Vasari demonstrated remarkable talent at an early age, and by 16 was sent to Florence by a cardinal of the church to study under del Sarto. He also met and was influenced by Michelangelo, who befriended him. Vasari went on to study Raphael’s works in Rome when he was 18.

Returning to Florence, he enjoyed steady patronage from the Medicis, in art and architecture. He decorated the dome of the Duomo, and designed the Vasari Passage, a nearly kilometer-long enclosed walkway connecting Florence’s city hall with the palace of the Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici, whose supplanting of the Florentine Republic left him chary of being seen too much in public. Snaking its way along and through structures already in place- including a church, allowing the Duke to enter and depart his worship unseen- the Passage was a pioneering effort to make buildings engage with their environment, rather than simply be laid upon it. It now serves as a very long art gallery, part of the Uffizi.

Vasari’s Uffizi Loggia also converted a small street into an attention-grabbing vista culminating in a triumphal arch along the River Arno.

Above: The Vasari Passage along the Arno meets, and crosses, the Ponte Vecchio

Below: The Uffizi Loggia

His paintings were in a highly formalist style that was better regarded in his life than after, though not without their high points. His Last Supper, nearly destroyed in the great flood of 1966, has recently been reassembled preparatory to several more years of restoration.

A booster of all things Florentine, Vasari published a landmark book of biographies of the great artists of his day in 1550. It set the standard for art history to follow, relying more on research and documentation than charming anecdote and mythological tales, a la Herodotus. His judgments of the works of his artists is still considered acute and insightful, though he strongly favored artists of his city-state and credited them with the creation, or invention, of almost everything good in art. His was the first book to use the term “Renaissance” to describe the heady artistic and intellectual fervor of the time, and he developed a notion of artistic “competition,” in which he argued part of what made the Florentine art scene so grand was the judicious handing-out of patronage. Keeping the artists hungry kept them on their aesthetic toes, he maintained.

A happy combination of talent, boosterism, and affability enabled Vasari to remain well-liked, never exiled, and- eventually- very wealthy.He designed a grand palazzo in his hometown, and died there at the age of 63.

Vasari also figures prominently in Henry Bemis' Book of the Day, Inferno, featured in the next post on this page at 8.45 pm.

Related sites:

The Vasari Corridor

The Restoration of Vasari’s Last Supper

Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1568)

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