Giorgio Vasari — Dessins du Louvre — Le Louvre — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 10, 2011 → February 6, 2012

To mark the fifth centenary of his birth, the Louvre pays tribute to Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter, architect, and writer, with an exhibition of the finest of his drawings in the museum’s collection.

Giorgio Vasari was born in Tuscany in 1511. He trained in Florence, followed by Rome where he discovered classical antiquity and the great creations of Raphael and Michelangelo. Many years of roaming enriched his knowledge of Italian art. In 1554, he entered the service of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, during whose reign the old Florentine republic became an absolute monarchical state. Gradually finding himself at the hub of Florentine artistic production, he became a predominant figure through the extreme diversity of his talents, his sense of organization, and his unerring courtier’s instinct. The Uffizi Palace, designed to accommodate the new state’s administrative offices, is the most complete expression of his genius. He died in 1574.

Giorgio Vasari, L’Adoration des bergers Département des Arts graphiques, musée du Louvre © RMN / Stéphane Maréchalle

Vasari was one of the purest representatives of what he himself helped to define as the bella maniera, the modern “beautiful manner” intended to surpass nature and classical antiquity—a court art, elegant and precious, filled with grace, softness, and apparent ease, and whose sole theoretical and practical basis is drawing. It is this notion of drawing as the first principle of any creative act that is illustrated in this exhibition.