Giorgio Vasari | Italian Renaissance Painter | Architect and Art Historian

The Nativity (detail) 1303-05, fresco by Giotto di Bondone, Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua

Click here  to see our gift shop.

'According to Vasari'

During his stay in Rome from 1542-46, Giorgio Vasari was commissioned by Cardinal Farnese to execute a series of paintings in the Vatican Chancellery. Although an adequate painter, he was an excellent architect, known much better for his art in his own day than today. Giorgio Vasari’s real fame, however, came not through his art but through his tremendous contribution to the world of art history with his writings. Giorgio Vasari's publication in Florence in 1550 of his ‘Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Sculptors, and Painters’ is a wealth of information about art and artists of the Italian Renaissance. Recognized as a fairly accurate resource in the world of Italian Renaissance art history, the term 'according to Vasari' has come into common usage to provide validation of the legitimacy of information for educators and art historians to this day. Giorgio Vasari died in Florence in 1574.