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Casa Vasari Museum in Arezzo

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Museums

The building is a rare example of an artist’s house from the late Renaissance

The Casa Vasari Museum is dedicated to the painter, architect and sculptor Giorgio Vasari, who was born in Arezzo itself in 1511. Vasari bought this building and personally oversaw its renovation and decoration with the help of pupils from 1542 to 1548. After marrying Niccolosa Bacci, a member of a wealthy family of merchants in the city who was also responsible for the construction of the main chapel of the Basilica di San Francesco, the artist lived in the house for a few months (1550) until new work commitments forced him to move to Rome and later to Florence.

The visit provides an insight into one of the few preserved examples of a late Renaissance artist's house, arranged on three floors and equipped with a roof garden. On the main floor is the apartment with the Camera della Fama e delle Arti, the Camera delle Muse, the Camera di Abramo and the Salone del Camino decorated in fresco and tempera by Vasari and some of his pupils with allegorical and celebratory subjects.

Also arranged in the rooms are more than fifty paintings from the storerooms of the Florentine Galleries, documenting the work of some of the artists trained in Vasari's school and the environment in which the painter lived and worked. Particularly noteworthy, in addition to Giorgio Vasari's frescoes and paintings, are those of other mannerist painters such as Mirabello Cavalori, Maso da San Friano, Francesco Morandini known as Poppi, Giovanni Stradano, Santi di Tito, Alessandro Allori, and Jacopo Zucchi.

Throughout the historical center of Arezzo, it is possible to glimpse works of extraordinary artistic value that testify to the link between the city and Vasari: from the Loggia in Piazza Grande to the paintings in the Sala dei Matrimoni of Palazzo Priori.

For those who intend to admire his masterpieces in the city and the surrounding area, we recommend further reading through the itinerary on the traces of Giorgio Vasari in the Terre di Arezzo.

Accessibility information: polomusealetoscana.it