Giorgio Vasari

(1511 - 1574)

Vasari coined the term “Renaissance” (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing “rebirth” in the arts had been in the air from the time of Alberti.

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In Le Vite delle piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) — dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, Vasari’s aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. The work remains a classic, though it must be supplemented by modern critical research.

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In Vasari’s view, Florentine artists excelled because they were hungry, and they were hungry because their fierce competition for commissions each with the others kept them hungry. Competition, he said, is “one of the nourishments that maintain them.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Vasari)