25 Facts About Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the Lives promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts.

Giorgio Vasari designed the Tomb of Michelangelo, his hero, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, that was completed in 1578.

Giorgio Vasari was befriended by Michelangelo, whose painting style would influence his own.

Giorgio Vasari enjoyed high repute during his lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune.

Giorgio Vasari married Niccolosa Bacci, a member of one of the richest and most prominent families of Arezzo.

Giorgio Vasari was made Knight of the Golden Spur by the Pope.

Giorgio Vasari was elected to the municipal council of his native town and finally, rose to the supreme office of gonfaloniere.

Giorgio Vasari built a fine house in Arezzo in 1547 and decorated its walls and vaults with paintings.

Giorgio Vasari was regularly employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome.

Giorgio Vasari worked in Naples, Arezzo, and other places.

Giorgio Vasari helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Giorgio Vasari's last major commission was a vast The Last Judgement fresco on the ceiling of the cupola of the Florence Cathedral that he began in 1572 with the assistance of the Bolognese painter Lorenzo Sabatini.

The view of the Loggia from the Arno reveals that the Giorgio Vasari Corridor is one of the very few structures lining the river that is open to the river and appears to embrace the riverside environment.

In Florence, Giorgio Vasari designed the long passage, now called Giorgio Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river.

Giorgio Vasari renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce.

In 1562, Giorgio Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of High Renaissance architecture.

In Rome, Giorgio Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammannati at Pope Julius III's Villa Giulia.

Giorgio Vasari's term, applied to the change in artistic styles with the work of Giotto, eventually would become the French term Renaissance widely applied to the era that followed.

Giorgio Vasari was responsible for the modern use of the term Gothic art, as well, although he only used the word Goth in association with the German style that preceded the rebirth, which he identified as "barbaric".

Between his first and second editions, Giorgio Vasari visited Venice and while the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art, it did so without achieving a neutral point of view.

For example, Giorgio Vasari writes that Andrea del Castagno killed Domenico Veneziano, which is incorrect; Andrea died several years before Domenico.

Giorgio Vasari dismisses Bazzi's work as lazy and offensive, despite the artist's having been named a Cavalier of the Supreme Order of Christ by Pope Leo X and having received important commissions for the Villa Farnese and other sites.

Giorgio Vasari did carry out research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and his biographies are considered more reliable in the case of his contemporary painters and those of the preceding generation.

Giorgio Vasari included a short autobiography at the end of the Lives, and added further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Giorgio Vasari and Francesco Salviati.

Giorgio Vasari used it repeatedly, and stressed the concept in his introduction to the life of Pietro Perugino, in explaining the reasons for Florentine artistic preeminence.