Giorgio Vasari: Art and Genius

            Giorgio Vasari is known today as the father of art history, many believing that he created the discipline, due to the fact that none other before his time chronicled the lives or work of artists in extensive biographies.  Vasari’s love of Roman art and architecture provides insight into his love of art as a whole – though a devout Catholic himself, he recognized the value of the art of the “pagan” peoples, describing in detail the tragedy of its destruction.  Vasari states that the destruction of Roman art actually set humanity back in time, and that the advanced styles and techniques were, though not in accordance with the Catholic Church, valid and beautiful.  He believed that artists of the time should be remembered for the ages, and lamented that there existed many artists and creations that will be forever lost to the world because of this purging of pagan gods. 

            However, Vasari seems to have great faith in humanity, going so far as to say that humans may even be similar to God in our intellect.  He states in his preface to The Lives of Artists that God made us out of imperfection, molding human beings into what He believed to be perfect beauty, and that out of that likeness we look to nature to create perfect beauty and harmony.

            Though his biographies of artists are wrought with both small and large factual errors, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists is still the only extensive biography written contemporary with artists such as Michelangelo; so in this way it provides invaluable insight which can not be found any where else in history.