IN FOCUS: GIORGIO VASARI. The anniversary of the 2nd edition of the ‘Vite’ in 1568

Born in Arezzo, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) became architect and court painter to the Medicis, building the Uffizi in Florence and painting the frescoes in the dome of the city’s cathedral church of Santa Maria del Fiore. He became most famous, however, as the biographer of Italian artists. His work ‘Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori’ first appeared in 1550 and was republished in a second, much altered and extended edition in 1568. The ‘Vite’ contains the biographies of 108 artists, drawn from a period of over three hundred years, from Giovanni Cimabue to Michelangelo. The exhibition presents drawings by Vasari, his circle and followers, who already revered him as a writer on art (fig.). Drawings by Pollaiuolo and El Greco, now in Munich but originally in Vasari’s famous ‘Libro de’ disegni,’ will also be on show, as will a major drawing by the young Michelangelo, which illustrates in a most striking manner the early artistic promise which Vasari described.