Spending time in Vasari's romantic renaissance universe is at times very satisfying and at times just tedious. If you want to know what is true and what has been debunked, you have to read the footnotes as well. But in 1524, when he was 13 years old, Vasari was taken to Florence by Cardinal Silvio Passerini, if not a quite notorious character, where he continued his formal education under Pierio Valeriano, tutor to the two young members of the Medici family, Alessandro and Ippolito; he studied also in the workshops of Andrea del Sarto and Baccio Bandinelli.

At the time, his friend and teacher Michelangelo was the only living artist included in the encyclopaedia. Andrea dal Castagno of Mugello (Andrea degl' Impiccati) and Domenico Viniziano (Domenico da Venezia)About Vasari himself we know an extraordinary amount, not only from his own writings—in the edition of 1568 he included an explanation of his own life and works—but also from surviving materials that document his life at the court of Cosimo I and his eventful exchanges with so many of the patrons and literati of the period. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was an artist, architect, and friend to Michelangelo, so his ‘sketches’ of the lives of Italian artists from the 13th to the 16th centuries is of special interest - it’s art history by a guy who was essentially ‘right there’. Art-historical writing traditions and narrative tools have influenced the artist’s biography comic genre since its first appearance in the 1940s. This chapter identifies and traces the history of three main elements of the traditional artist’s biography, namely, the canon of Art History as well as the anecdote and the life-and-work model as narrative devices. The most recent new English translation is by Peter and Julia Conaway Bondanella, published in the Oxford World's Classics series in 1991. [25] Versions online [ edit ] Vasari's Vite has been described as "by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art" [8] and "the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists". [1] Its influence is situated mainly in three domains: as an example for contemporary and later biographers and art historians, as a defining factor in the view on the Renaissance and the role of Florence and Rome in it, and as a major source of information on the lives and works of early Renaissance artists from Italy.

Vasari, Giorgio" (US) and "Vasari, Giorgio". Oxford Dictionaries UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021. He was born in Arezzo, on 30 July 1511, the first of six children of Antonio di Giorgio Vasari and Maddelena Tacci. From world-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects offers a unique opportunity to learn about the lives and creativity of the world's leading artists This version, extensively translated, remains the stencil for biographical encyclopedias to this day.Giorgione becoming afflicted with the plague from his lover, and dying at 33. Similarly, Raphael’s lifelong love of mistress Margarita Luti, who he painted a couple of times, as well as his “great fondness for women” and practice of “always indulging his sexual appetites”; upon returning from one such session of excess with a violent fever, being bled to no avail, and dying tragically at 37.