1.
Sistine Chapel
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The Sistine Chapel is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope, in Vatican City. Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected, the fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescos that decorate the interior, and most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment by Michelangelo. In a different climate after the Sack of Rome, he returned, the fame of Michelangelos paintings has drawn multitudes of visitors to the chapel ever since they were revealed five hundred years ago. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV in the late 15th century, there were 50 occasions during the year on which it was prescribed by the Papal Calendar that the whole Papal Chapel should meet. Of these 50 occasions,35 were masses, of which 8 were held in Basilicas, in general St. Peters and these included the Christmas Day and Easter masses, at which the Pope himself was the celebrant. The other 27 masses could be held in a smaller, less public space, the Cappella Maggiore derived its name, the Greater Chapel, from the fact that there was another chapel also in use by the Pope and his retinue for daily worship. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV, this was the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, the Cappella Maggiore is recorded as existing in 1368. The proportions of the present chapel appear to follow those of the original. The first mass in the Sistine Chapel was celebrated on 15 August 1483, the Sistine Chapel has maintained its function to the present day, and continues to host the important services of the Papal Calendar, unless the Pope is travelling. There is a permanent choir, the Sistine Chapel Choir, for whom much original music has been written, one of the functions of the Sistine Chapel is as a venue for the election of each successive pope in a conclave of the College of Cardinals. On the occasion of a conclave, a chimney is installed in the roof of the chapel, if white smoke appears, created by burning the ballots of the election, a new Pope has been elected. The conclave also provided for the cardinals a space in which they can hear mass, and in which they can eat, sleep, and pass time attended by servants. From 1455, conclaves have been held in the Vatican, until the Great Schism, canopies for each cardinal-elector were once used during conclaves—a sign of equal dignity. After the new Pope accepts his election, he would give his new name, at this time, until reforms instituted by Saint Pius X, the canopies were of different colours to designate which Cardinals had been appointed by which Pope. Its exterior is unadorned by architectural or decorative details, as is common in many Italian churches of the Medieval, subsidence and cracking of masonry such as must also have affected the Cappella Maggiore has necessitated the building of very large buttresses to brace the exterior walls. The accretion of other buildings has further altered the appearance of the Chapel. The building is divided into three stories of which the lowest is a tall basement level with several utilitarian windows
2.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
3.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
4.
Lucca
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Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio, in a fertile plain near the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital of the Province of Lucca and it is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls. Lucca was founded by the Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180 BC, the rectangular grid of its historical centre preserves the Roman street plan, and the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum. Traces of the amphitheatre still may be seen in the Piazza dellAnfiteatro, at the Lucca Conference, in 56 BC, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus reaffirmed their political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Frediano, an Irish monk, was bishop of Lucca in the sixth century. At one point, Lucca was plundered by Odoacer, the first Germanic King of Italy, Lucca was an important city and fortress even in the sixth century, when Narses besieged it for several months in 553. Under the Lombards, it was the seat of a duke who minted his own coins, the Holy Face of Lucca, a major relic supposedly carved by Nicodemus, arrived in 742. During the eighth-tenth centuries Lucca was a center of Jewish life, Lucca became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the eleventh century, and came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the tenth–eleventh centuries Lucca was the capital of the margraviate of Tuscany, more or less independent. After the death of Matilda of Tuscany, the city began to constitute itself an independent commune, for almost 500 years, Lucca remained an independent republic. There were many minor provinces in the region between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany dominated by the Malaspina, Tuscany in this time was a part of feudal Europe, dante’s Divine Comedy includes many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante spent some of his exile in Lucca, in 1273 and again in 1277, Lucca was ruled by a Guelph capitano del popolo named Luchetto Gattilusio. In 1314, internal discord allowed Uguccione della Faggiuola of Pisa to make himself lord of Lucca, the Lucchesi expelled him two years later, and handed over the city to another condottiero, Castruccio Castracani, under whose rule it became a leading state in central Italy. Lucca rivalled Florence until Castracanis death in 1328, on 22 and 23 September 1325, in the battle of Altopascio, Castracani defeated Florences Guelphs. For this he was nominated by Louis IV the Bavarian to become duke of Lucca, Castracanis tomb is in the church of San Francesco. His biography is Machiavellis third famous book on political rule, in 1408, Lucca hosted the convocation intended to end the schism in the papacy. Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich Genoese, Gherardino Spinola, then seized by John, Lucca had been the second largest Italian city state with a republican constitution to remain independent over the centuries. In 1805, Lucca was conquered by Napoleon, who installed his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as Princess of Lucca, from 1815 to 1847 it was a Bourbon-Parma duchy
5.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
6.
Sandro Botticelli
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Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticellis posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, since then, among Botticellis best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera. Botticelli was born in the city of Florence in a house in the Via Nuova, BorgOgnissanti, Vasari reported that Botticelli was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother Antonio. By 1462 he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, many of his works have been attributed to the elder master. Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccios painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate, by 1470, Botticelli had his own workshop. The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella, contains the portraits of Cosimo de Medici, his sons Piero and Giovanni, the quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of Botticellis pinnacles. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine, the iconological program was the supremacy of the Papacy. Sandros contribution included the Temptations of Christ, the Punishment of the Rebels, thus Vasari characterized the first printed Dante with Botticellis decorations, he could not imagine that the new art of printing might occupy an artist. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise, the Primavera was painted for Lorenzos townhouse in Florence, by 1499, both had been installed at Castello. In these works, the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticellis study of the antique, but if the painterly means may be understood, the subjects themselves remain fascinating for their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these continue to receive widespread scholarly attention, mainly focusing on the poetry. The works do not illustrate particular texts, rather, each relies upon several texts for its significance, of their beauty, characterized by Vasari as exemplifying grace and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt. The pictures feature Botticellis linear style emphasized by the soft continual contours, in 1491 he served on a committee to decide upon a façade for the Cathedral of Florence. For this reason, persisting in his attachment to that party, Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinmann searched for the artists psychological development through his Madonnas. In the deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Marys physiognomy, Botticelli was already little employed in 1502. In 1504 he was a member of the appointed to decide where Michelangelos David would be placed. After his death, his reputation was eclipsed longer and more thoroughly than that of any other major European artist and his paintings remained in the churches and villas for which they had been created and his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were upstaged by those of Michelangelo. The English collector William Young Ottley, however, had brought Botticellis The Mystical Nativity to London with him in 1799 after buying it in Italy, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into their own
7.
Pietro Perugino
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Pietro Perugino, born Pietro Vannucci, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, who developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance. Raphael was his most famous pupil, Pietro Perugino was born Pietro Vannucci in Città della Pieve, Umbria, the son of Cristoforo Marie Vannucci. Pietros nickname characterizes him as from Perugia, the city of Umbria. Scholars continue to dispute the status of the Vannucci family. While certain academics maintain that Vannucci worked his way out of poverty and his exact date of birth is not known, although, based on his age at the death mentioned by Vasari and Giovanni Santi, he is suspected to be born between 1446 and 1452. Pietro most likely began studying painting in local workshops in Perugia such as those of Bartolomeo Caporali or Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, the date of this first Florentine sojourn is unknown, some make it as early as 1466/1470, others push the date to 1479. According to Vasari, he apprenticed in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Filippino Lippi, piero della Francesca is thought to have taught him perspective form. In 1472 he must have completed his apprenticeship, for he was enrolled as a master in the Confraternity of St Luke, Pietro, although very talented was not extremely enthusiastic about his work. Perugino was one of the earliest Italian practitioners of oil painting, a good specimen of his early style in tempera is the tondo in the Musée du Louvre of the Virgin and Child Enthroned between Saints. Perugino returned from Florence to Perugia, where his Florentine training showed in the Adoration of the Magi for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi of Perugia, in about 1480, he was called to Rome by Sixtus IV to paint fresco panels for the Sistine Chapel walls. The frescoes he executed there included Moses and Zipporah, the Baptism of Christ, pinturicchio accompanied Perugino to Rome, and was made his partner, receiving a third of the profits. He may have some of the Zipporah subject. The Sistine frescoes were the major high Renaissance commission in Rome, the altar wall was also painted with the Assumption, the Nativity, and Moses in the Bulrushes. He had a studio in Florence, and received a great number of commissions. His Pietà in the Uffizi is an uncharacteristically stark work that avoids Peruginos sometimes too easy sentimental piety, in 1499 the guild of the cambio of Perugia asked him to decorate their audience-hall, the Sala delle Udienze del Collegio del Cambio. The humanist Francesco Maturanzio acted as his consultant, on the mid-pilaster of the hall Perugino placed his own portrait in bust-form. It is probable that Raphael, who in boyhood, towards 1496, had been placed by his uncles under the tuition of Perugino, Perugino was made one of the priors of Perugia in 1501. On one occasion Michelangelo told Perugino to his face that he was a bungler in art, Vannucci brought an action for defamation of character, unsuccessfully
8.
Domenico Ghirlandaio
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Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the third generation of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaios workshop, including the famous Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio was born Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. Tommaso had two children by his second wife, also named Antonia, whom he married in 1464. Domenicos half-sister Alessandra married the painter Bastiano Mainardi in 1494, both Ghirlandaios father and his uncle, Antonio, were setaiuolo a minuto. Giorgio Vasari reported that Domenico was at first apprenticed to his father, the nickname Il Ghirlandaio came to Domenico from his father, who was famed for creating the metallic garland-like headdresses worn by Florentine women. He was eventually apprenticed to Alesso Baldovinetti to study painting and mosaic, according to the art historian Günter Passavent, he was apprenticed in Florence to Andrea del Verrocchio. He maintained an association with other Florentine painters including Botticelli. Ghirlandaio excelled in the painting of frescos and it is for his fresco cycles that he is best known, an early commission came to him in the 1470s from the Commune of San Gimignano to decorate the Chapel of Santa Fina in the Collegiate Church of that city. The frescos, executed from 1477 to 1478, depict two miraculous events associated with the death of Saint Fina, in 1480, Ghirlandaio painted St. Jerome in His Study as a companion piece to Saint Augustine in His Study by Botticelli in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence. He also painted a life-sized Last Supper in its refectory, from 1481 to 1485, he was employed on frescoes at the Palazzo Vecchio, painting among other works an Apotheosis of St. Ghirlandaio painted the Vocation of the Apostles. He also painted the now lost Resurrection of Christ, the Crossing of the Red Sea has also been attributed to him, but is consistent with the style of Cosimo Roselli who was also part of the commission. Ghirlandaio is known to have created works in Rome, now lost. The first of these paintings contains portraits of Lorenzo de Medici, Sassetti and Lorenzos children with their tutor, the Resuscitation shows the painters own likeness. In 1483, there arrived in Florence a masterpiece of the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes, now known as the Portinari Altarpiece, it was an Adoration of the Shepherds, commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, an employee of the Medici Bank. The painting was in oil paint, not the tempera employed in Florence, the aspect of the painting that had a profound effect on Ghirlandaio was the naturalism with which the shepherds were depicted. Ghirlandaio painted the altarpiece of the Sassetti chapel, an Adoration of the Shepherds and it is in this painting that he particularly shows his indebtedness to the Portinari Altarpiece. The shepherds, among whom is a portrait of the artist himself, are portrayed with a realism that was an advance in Florentine painting at that time, the altarpiece is still in position in Santa Trinita, surrounded by the frescos of which it was the centrepiece
9.
Fra Bartolomeo
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Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo OP, also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Bartolommeo di S. Marco, and his original name Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He spent all his career in Florence until his mid-forties, when he travelled to work in various cities, as far south as Rome. He trained with Cosimo Roselli and in the 1490s fell under the influence of Savonarola and he remained friends with Raphael, and they both influenced the other. His portrait of Savonarola remains the most famous image of the reformer, Fra Bartolomeo painted both in oils and fresco, and some of his drawings are pure landscape sketches that are the earliest of this type from Italy. He was born in Savignano di Prato, Tuscany and he received the nickname of Baccio della Porta for his house was near the Gate of San Pier Gattolini. Starting from 1483 or 1484, by recommendation of Benedetto da Maiano and he was one of the greatest painters of his time. In 1490 or 1491 he began a collaboration with Mariotto Albertinelli, in the late 1490s Baccio was drawn to the teachings of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced what he viewed as vain and corrupt contemporary art. Savonarola argued for art serving as a visual illustration of the Bible to educate those unable to read the book. From 1498 is his famous portrait of Savonarola, now in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence, the following year he entered the convent of San Marco. He renounced painting for several years, not resuming until 1504 when he became the head of the workshop in obedience to his superior. In that year he began a Vision of St. Bernard for Bernardo Biancos family chapel in the Badia Fiorentina, soon thereafter, Raphael visited Florence and befriended the friar. Bartolomeo learned perspective from the younger artist, while Raphael added skills in coloring and handling of drapery, with Raphael, he remained on the friendliest terms, and when he departed from Rome, left in his hands two unfinished pictures which Raphael completed. As the Dominicans did not pay for the work, he took it back to Lucca, also in Lucca, in the October 1509, he painted by Albertinelli an altarpiece with Madonna and Child with Saints for the local cathedral. On November 26,1510 Pier Soderini commissioned him an altarpiece for the Sala del Consiglio of Florence, two years later he finished another altarpiece for the cathedral of Besançon. After a promised Feast of Venus for Duke Alfonso I dEste of Ferrara, of only drawings remain. He died in Florence in 1517, initially, his works showed the influence of Rossellis assistant, Piero di Cosimo, and those of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. After his hiatus from 1500 to 1503, he seemed to change vision, taking from Raphael the representation of light, Fra Bartolomeos figures are generally small and draped. Among his pupils were Cecchino del Frate, Benedetto Ciamfanini, Gabriel Rustici, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Fra Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. Vol. III, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1911, p.124
10.
Piero di Cosimo
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Piero di Cosimo, also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was a Florentine painter of the Italian Renaissance. Vasari has many stories of his eccentricity, and the subjects have an individual. He trained under Cosimo Roselli, whose daughter he married, and he was also influenced by Early Netherlandish painting, and busy landscapes feature in many works, often forests seen close at hand. Several of his most striking secular works are in the landscape format used for paintings inset into cassone wedding chests or spalliera headboards or panelling. He was apparently famous for designing the temporary decorations for Carnival, from him, most probably, Cosimo acquired the love of landscape and the intimate knowledge of the growth of flowers and of animal life. The manner of Hugo van der Goes is especially apparent in the Adoration of the Shepherds and he journeyed to Rome in 1482 with his master, Rosselli. Inspired to the Vitruvius account of the evolution of man, Pieros mythical compositions show the presence of hybrid forms of men and animals, or the man learning to use fire. The multitudes of nudes in these shows the influence of Luca Signorelli on Pieros art. He also resisted any cleaning of his studio, or trimming of the trees of his orchard, he lived, wrote Vasari. The death of his master Roselli may also have affected Pieros morose elder years, the Immaculate Conception with Saints, at the Uffizi, and the Holy Family, at Dresden, illustrate the religious fervour to which he was stimulated by Savonarola. With the exception of the background in Rossellis fresco of the Sermon on the Mount, in the Sistine Chapel. Piero di Cosimo exercised considerable influence upon his fellow pupils Albertinelli and Bartolomeo della Porta, Vasari gave Pieros date of death as 1521, and this date is still repeated by many sources, including the Encyclopædia Britannica. However, contemporary documents reveal that he died of plague on 12 April 1522, madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Peter, John the Baptist, Dominic, and Nicholas of Bari tempera and oil on panel, St. Louis Art Museum, media related to Piero di Cosimo at Wikimedia Commons Italian Paintings, Florentine School, a collection catalog containing information about di Cosimo and his works
11.
Giorgio Vasari
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Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Rosselli, Cosimo". Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 745–746.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
