Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari, ; }} (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideological foundation of Western art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.

Vasari was a Mannerist painter who was highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the ''Lives'' promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts.

Vasari designed the ''Tomb of Michelangelo'', his hero, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, that was completed in 1578. Based on Vasari's text in print about Giotto's new manner of painting as a ''rinascita'' (rebirth), author Jules Michelet, in his ''Histoire de France'' (1835), suggested the adoption of Vasari's concept, using the term ''Renaissance'' (from French) to distinguish the cultural change. The term was adopted thereafter in historiography and is still in use today. Provided by Wikipedia