VASARI, Giorgio
Italian Mannerist Writer and Painter, 1511-1574
Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.
ID: 62306 Monument to 560 x 330 mm - By the mid 1660s Vald?s began to work as a decorative painter. The most spectacular of his decorative works was executed in 1671 for the celebration of the canonization of St Ferdinand of Castile (1199-1252). A monument, made of wood and decorated with paintings and sculpture, was designed and decorated by Vald?s. The structure was later dismantled, its appearance is preserved in a large print produced by Vald?s himself
