The first biography of Giorgione appears in Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. His book was first published in 1550 (this edition is called the Torrentiniana) and a revised and updated second edition was published in 1568 (called the Giuntina). The latter is regarded as more reliable and informative, and remains the more widely read. Assessing the biographical and critical value of Vasari’s Lives requires firstly an assessment of Vasari’s sources. A native of Tuscany, he first visited Venice between December 1541 and August 1542. At this time he may not have been collecting information for the Lives however. In the second edition of 1568, he writes that the book began as a project in 1546 in Rome. This contrasts with Vasari’s claim in the first edition of 1550 that the book took ten years of research. In the second edition of the Lives,…show more content… Due to this, much of what Vasari says in unverifiable, but this does not mean that his words have not had a lasting influence. They have been, and still are, consistently used and referenced to help to form an image of the artist. Vasari appears to have worked independently. He did have contemporaries - Venetian artist and writer Paolo Pino printed his “Dialogo di pittura” in 1548, with the intention of asserting the supremacy of Venetian painting. The most valuable source written on Giorgione of Vasari’s time was Marcantonio Michiel’s Notizia, of 1525, which provides no personal information on Giorgione but has served great value aiding the attribution of works to Giorgione and in helping to establish a chronology of his oeuvre. Vasari certainly was not aware of Michiel’s Notizia, as his biography of Giorgione does not mention works Michiel referenced and
