Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574),

• Was an Italian painter, architect, writer, and historian.
• Vasari is best known for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.
• Often called "the first art historian".
• Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects).
• It was dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, which was first published in 1550.
• He was the first to use the term "Renaissance" in print.
• Vasari was responsible for the modern use of the term Gothic art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the "barbaric" German style.
• The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts.
• The book was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural).
• He died on 27 June 1574 in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, aged 62.
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