Hommes Illustres - Giorgio VASARI

Giorgio Vasari (July 30, 1511 in Arezzo - June 27, 1574 in Florence)

is a Tuscan painter, architect and writer.

His biographical collection The Lives of the Best Painters, Sculptors and Architects, especially his second edition of 1568, is considered one of the founding publications in the history of art.

The portraits of artists are engraved on wood according to the drawings of Vasari and his pupils, in decorative frames. With his Lives of the finest painters, sculptors and architects, Giorgio Vasari, who is himself a painter and architect, composes a text of the highest importance, which accompanies, as much as he celebrates, the great momentum of the Italian Renaissance , of which he is the first to use the term (Rinascimento). Mixing critical and biographical apparatus, his comments are supported by analyzes of works that, because he is both a practitioner and a theorist, prove very relevant, demonstrating throughout his work that architecture, sculpture and painting are more intellectual than mechanical and manual arts.