Casa Vasari, Palazzo museum and religious museum in Santa Croce, Florence, Italy.
Casa Vasari is a palazzo museum near the church of Santa Croce in Florence, open to visitors as part of the city's national heritage. The building preserves the original frescoes that Giorgio Vasari painted directly on its walls and ceilings for his own private use.
Duke Cosimo I de' Medici gave this house to Vasari in 1561 as a reward for his work on behalf of art and architecture in Florence. Vasari then decorated it himself, turning a private home into a statement about what painting and intellectual life meant to him.
The rooms Vasari decorated for himself tell a lot about how Renaissance artists saw their own profession. Painting and poetry are treated as equals on the walls, showing a world where art was considered a serious intellectual pursuit.
The house sits in the historic center of Florence, close to Santa Croce, and is easy to reach on foot from many parts of the city. Once inside, moving slowly through the rooms allows you to take in the painted details on the walls and ceilings properly.
Among the figures Vasari painted in his rooms are ancient writers like Herodotus and Pliny the Elder, placed alongside painters as though all belonged to the same world. This choice shows that Vasari saw no real boundary between the art of writing and the art of painting.
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