His patron was the Florentine Medici family.
Italian painter, builder and art writer Giorgio Vasari was born on July 30, 1511 in Arezzo. He acquired a humanistic education, and taught painting in the workshops of Florentine masters. He was a permanent employee of his patrons from the Medici family in Florence, but he also worked in other cities throughout Italy (Rome, Naples, Arezzo…).
As a versatile artist, he worked on wall paintings, biblical and allegorical compositions, portraits and decorations for festive occasions and theaters. Many of his paintings still exist, and the most important are exhibited on the wall and ceiling of the Grand Palace of Vecchio in Florence, where he and his assistants worked. Yet he is best known as an architect and builder. His main work is the Uffizi Palace in Florence, which, in the Renaissance style with elements of Mannerism, he built for Cosimo I Medici (between 1560 and 1574, and was completed by Bontalenti, around 1580). In Florence, he also built the famous corridor on the Ponte Vecchio bridge (Vasari’s corridor), the Pitti Palace and the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella.
Also famous is his biographical work The Lives of the Most Famous Italian Architects, Painters, Sculptors from Cimabue to the Present Day, which is today the most important source for knowledge of Italian art from the 13th to the 14th century.
Girgio Vasari died in Florence in 1574.
