Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, and art historian. Working under the patronage of the Medici family, he designed the Uffizi complex in Florence and the elevated passage now known as the Vasari Corridor. His major work, “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,” records the careers and works of artists from Cimabue to Michelangelo and presents Italian art as a history of progressive development. Although its judgments are strongly centered on Tuscany and some of its anecdotes are unreliable, the book remains a major source on Renaissance artists and the conditions in which they worked.
