The Renaissance’s original art insider

Illuminating, comprehensive, and delightfully gossipy, Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists is widely considered the birth of art criticism as we know it — published in 1550, it set the blueprint for art history as a creative, intellectual act — and it established the very idea of a “canon” of great artists whose art would transcend their own lifetimes, including da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Botticelli, Donatello, Raphael and many others. In the new Roundtable course Learning from Vasari: Renaissance Masters, four expert art historians and scholars — Joseph Luzzi, Ross King, Jessica Maier, and Aneta Georgievska-Shine — take you on a journey to the heart of the Renaissance through the eyes of its original chronicler and four masters who made the age.

“When I read The Lives of the Artists for the first time, I felt as if I had been taken through a door into a distant past that all of a sudden felt so much more familiar,” says Georgievska-Shine. Meticulously detailing the recent artistic innovations of the Italian Renaissance as he was witnessing them firsthand, Vasari was a born storyteller. Weaving together biographies of artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and others, Vasari illuminated the artists’ creative processes and, through allegory and the occasional gossipy aside, established art history as a literary form every bit as captivating a great novel. This quality continues to pull readers into Vasari’s world, lending the Lives an enduring relevance and energy. “Vasari’s narrative was one of the first to argue that art history itself is a story worth telling.” says King, “My goal in this course is to help participants see Vasari not just as a chronicler of Renaissance greatness but as a powerful storyteller.”

But Vasari was more than a storyteller: whenever we look up in wonder at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, whenever we try to puzzle out the meaning of the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile, we are looking through his meticulously crafted lens. He was the first writer to see Michaelangelo and da Vinci’s works as acts of genius, a progression from the Middle Ages to a new standard of subtlety and grace that we still hold today. Vasari’s Lives “was the first systematic attempt to document the lives and achievements of Italian artists, creating a narrative that elevated visual art to a new intellectual level,” continues King. “Vasari’s work established the notion of a ‘canon’ of great artists, celebrating figures like Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. His emphasis on artistic progression — from ‘primitive’ medieval styles to the idealized forms of the Renaissance — shaped our understanding of art as an evolving discipline. Vasari’s narrative has been remarkably enduring as one of the first to argue that art history itself is a story worth telling.”

And beyond establishing a standard for art itself, Vasari altered the very idea of the artist. “Vasari inherited the notion of artists as skilled craftsmen, people with a particular skill, and helped elevate them to these almost mythological figures,” says Luzzi. One of his central innovations was to distinguish the artist as a creator — perhaps even divinely inspired — rather than a talented technician. Today, we take for granted the notion that artists work from a combination of skill, personal vision, and inspiration precisely because Vasari established it so convincingly in The Lives of the Artists. “He manages to communicate something essential about the artwork and the artist,” Luzzi continues, “helping to establish a multi-dimensional sense of the importance of the individual creator.”

Just in time for the eagerly-awaited reopening of the Vasari Corridor in Florence — designed by Vasari in 1565 and now open to the general public for the first time — don’t miss the opportunity to discover Vasari’s world as he witnessed it, and the creation of art history as we know it.

Learning from Vasari: Renaissance Masters  begins Friday, February 14. 

Sign up today