This Day in Renaissance History (Giorgio Vasari, Father of Art History, Born)

July 30, 1511—Giorgio Vasari, who embodied the term “Renaissance man” with his painting, architecture, and biographical profiles of prior influential artists of the age, was born in Arezzo in Tuscany.

A child prodigy, Vasari paid heed to a relative who urged him, “Study well, little kinsman.” As he grew into adulthood and became the breadwinner for his family (his father, an ornamental potter, had died in a plague), Vasari became a busy, if not trend-setting, painter (his teacher was Michelangelo) and architect. (Two weeks ago, The International Herald Tribune, marking the 500th anniversary of Vasari’s birth, published an article by Roderick Conway Morris that highlighted the artist’s extraordinary commissions from his patron, Cosimo de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence.)

But Vasari’s great fame rests on Vite de' più eccell, pitori, scultori et archit (On the Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects). It had its faults, to be sure (notably, Vasari’s bias in favor of Tuscans and occasional inaccuracies).

But, at a time when the art of biography was not very well advanced, Vasari created a blueprint for how it could be done, offering a practitioner’s insight into the problems faced by his subjects, as well as willingness in later editions to correct prior inaccuracies. He not only created an indispensable record of the Renaissance in Italy, but, when translated, also influenced historical portraits of this period elsewhere, too.

In his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, for instance, Jacob Burckhardt, the influential 19th century historian, wrote: “Without Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo and his all-important work, we should perhaps to this day have no history of modern art, or of the art of modern Europe, at all.”

In addition to illuminating the lives of the great Italian Renaissance artists (he’s one of the principal sources for our knowledge that Leonardo and Michelangelo, Vasari’s teacher and friend, were not-so-friendly rivals), Vasari also framed subsequent understanding of the Renaissance. It was a rebirth of the great art of antiquity, which, he argued, had been left in mere shards by a Roman Catholic hierarchy intent on destroying any pagan art that could adversely affect the morals of Christians.

In recent years, modern historians, while valuing Vasari’s writing for its insight and verve, have also learned to regard some of it with a critical eye. In discussing medieval architecture, for instance, he coined the term “Gothic” to express his extreme displeasure with a form he regarded as Germanic and barbarian. The artist-biographer's disdain not only reeks of prejudice but, as one looks around examples of such architecture, is hardly evidence of a reversion of civilization, but an advance on it.