Giorgio Vasari

Born in Arezzo in 1511, Vasari trained as a Mannerist painter and architect, skills that won him a place at the Medici court in Florence, where he effectively served as minister of culture. In 1550 he published Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, a sprawling collection of biographies arguing for Florentine supremacy in the visual arts - a claim that stuck. The book became the foundation of Western art-historical writing, still cited in modern scholarship despite its factual errors, particularly for artists who predated him. Vasari designed the tomb of his hero Michelangelo in Santa Croce, completed in 1578, four years after his own death. His description of Giotto's work as a "rinascita" - rebirth - gave French historian Jules Michelet the term "Renaissance" in 1835, a word that has framed the era ever since.