Girogio Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany during the Renaissance in 1511. As a young man he showed a remarkable interest and talent for painting and soon became a student of the famous artist Guglielmo da Marsiglia. After his apprenticeship, he moved on to study more in Florence, which was home to many other prominent Renaissance artists before he moved on to study in Rome. It was in Rome that he was exposed to the works of his idols, Raphael and Michelangelo and it was also in Rome that he completed many of his major works while under the patronage of the Medici family back in Florence. Throughout his life he was back and forth between the two cities, and to this day all of his remaining works can be found in these locations. …show more content…
One of his most notable paintings can be found in Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio where he completed a vast ceiling painting, one of the few he ever completed.
The frescos were begun by him inside the vast cupola of the Duomo and were eventually completed by Federico Zuccari with the help of Giovanni Balducci. Although he was very well known for his paintings, he was more successful as an architect. He built the loggia of the Palazzo delgi Uffizi, which was the first such architectural structure in Italy of its kind. His own home in Arezzo was itself a magnificent structure and it is still around today as a museum to the artist, housing some of his paintings as well as parts of the original manuscripts to his biographical collections about Renaissance artists that would later form the whole of the
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In his paintings, Girogio Vasari is most closely associated with the Mannerist style, which was prominent between the years 1520 until 1600. The Mannerist style encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by and reacting to the harmonious ideals associated with artists of the High Renaissance. The High Renaissance explored harmonious ideals, however Mannerism wanted to take it a step further. This style was a counteracting response to the Renaissance’s emphasis on balance and emotional subtlety and tended instead to employ disharmony with harsher colors and tones. It is also marked by a willingness to play with typical forms from the Renaissance and put them out of balance by changing the proportions and poses to something more exaggerated. Mannerism’s influence can been seen in several of Vasari’s works, both in terms of his paintings and his architectural achievements.
The Sala del Cinquecento is a large fresco at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy completed by Vasari and his assistants in 1565. Like many other works of his, this was commissioned by his patrons, the Medici family and was meant to serve as an ornate decoration to the front room of the palace. In other words, this fresco was meant to be the centerpiece of the home, the first decoration guest’s saw when entering the home. This fresco decorates the ceiling and walls of the entryway at the Palazzo and consists of thirty-nine panels, each of which presents an epoch in Florence’s history. All of the panels have been carefully painted and are separated by very detailed gold trimming. The gold trimming between each panel define the space. These dividers further break down the allotted space; while the room itself is devoted to this fresco, each panel is in effect a small story or an individual painting in its own right. Despite the many different meanings behind each panel in terms of what it is trying to relate about Florence, all of the panels reflect the same general theme, which is conveyed by the constant use of gold, red, and brown. These factors are aligned with Vasari’s status as a painter in the Mannerist style in which many of the Renaissance conventions are being slightly exaggerated and presented more dramatically. This is one of his most famous frescos and is a great example of the Mannerist style because of the lack of harmony and balance that was such an important component of earlier Renaissance artists that he admired such as Michelangelo.
In 1559 Vasari began work on the Uffizi for the duke. This building connected to the Palazzo Vecchio, brought together into a central location all the scattered government ministries and served as the visual representation of the power concentrated under Cosimo’s rule. Inspired by Michelangelo’s architectural innovations, Vasari devised a new idiom for architecture. However, his greatest contribution to the Renaissance culture was not a building or a painting, but a book. It was first published in 1550 and later expanded in 1568, Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists was a pioneering work in the filed of art history. In this work he not only tells the stories of the lives of Italian painters, sculptors, and architects from the time of Cimabue in the thirteenth century to his day listing their major works, but he also discusses artistic style by examining how it changes and evolves over time. Despite some occasional inaccuracies and a bias towards toward Florentine artists, he laid the groundwork for modern art history. His book still to this day is essential reading. He devised a periodization for Italian Renaissance art dividing it into three periods-early, middle, and high. The fourteenth century produced artists like Giotto who Vasari described as “the first lights.” With a focus on imitating nature, the ancients were reborn in these artists. However, they lacked the rules for correct measurement and lightness of touch. However, in the fifteenth century they saw an increase in technical skills as well as gracefulness. Vasari however judged the work of fifteenth century artists such as Botticelli and Ghirlandaio to be dry, rough, and harsh. It was not until Vasari’s own century that the third phase of Italian art came into play originated by Leonardo da Vinci. He claimed that the arts reached their perfect form in the works that brought together spontaneity and judgment to then produce the quality of grace. Raphael was named by Vasari as the artist who possessed the quality of grace to the highest degree. He believed that displaying too much effort destroyed grace; according to him, “the ‘excessive study’ displayed in quattrocento art made it inferior to that which came after (Kaborycha, p. 254).”
The one artist who Vasari praised the highest was Michelangelo because he possessed all the qualities (grace, design, and judgment) reaching perfection in not just one, but in all three of the art forms. Vasari was known as a good historian because he demonstrated how each era built off the accomplishments of the last and he also attempted to show that artists of the past were not necessarily inferior because no artist could be judged separate from his age. However, his three-part periodization of Renaissance art created some difficulties such as the problem of what came after the period of birth, growth, and maturity; the decline or death of art? In his second addition of the Lives, which was published after the death of Michelangelo, Vasari included lots of contemporary artists. Some of those contemporary artists included mannerist who he praised for their innovations. The term “mannerism” derived from Vasari’s use of the word maniera and the heavy emphasis Vasari placed on maniera, which is when an artist develops an individual style. The individual style he talks about however, no longer depended on imitation of the ancients or of nature. Vasari intensified the Promethean role of the artist as a creative genius, which set the highest possible standard for art for many generations to come.
Vasari has been considered as “The First Art-historian.” His works of painting and sculptors were appraised and unlike many artists he was wealthy by his work and was renowned in his own time after his death. He gave us two very important terms in art “Renaissance” and “Gothic art.” “Renaissance” came about while he was writing Lives because he became aware that the contemporary time was very important for the arts as there was a “re-birth” happening in every form of the arts. This is why he chose the French word Renaissance meaning re-birth. The second term “gothic art” was initially used by Raphael in his letter to Pope Leo X and later on was popularized by Vasari and other contemporaries. However, he was not a fan of Gothic art and did not exactly write the terms, instead he wrote “the Goths” for the barbaric art. He was also very famous for The Vasari Corridor, which was built as a passage by the order of the Grand Duke of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Vasari Corridor joins Duke’s residence (Palazzo Vecchio) with the government building known as the Palazzo Pitti. The corridor had small windows but was eventually replaced with larger ones by Adolf Hitler to have a better view of the river.
In conclusion, Vasari is by far easily one of the most important art-historians during the Florentine High Renaissance as he had the privilege of seeing notable artists in his own lifetime and writing about them firsthand. He lived through the Renaissance and wrote about it as history giving us today a greater knowledge of this time period and the artists involved in it.
Works Cited:
“A Short History of Renaissance Italy” by Lisa Kaborycha, 2011.
“Giorgio Vasari-The First Art-Historian (1511-15740” by Nitin, 2013, http://artpaintingartist.org/giorgio-vasari-the-first-art-historian-1511-1574/.