Vasari in the context of "Italian Renaissance painter"

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, as his Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are two of the most famous artworks ever created. But Leonardo is also known for his diverse skills as a scientist, inventor, engineer, theorist, sculptor, architect, descriptions and study of the human body, and more. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.

Leonardo's portrait was used, within his own lifetime, as the iconic image of Plato in Raphael's School of Athens. His biography was written in superlative terms by Vasari. He has been repeatedly acclaimed the greatest genius to have lived. His painting of the Mona Lisa has been the most imitated artwork of all time and his drawing the Vitruvian Man iconically represents the fusion of Art and Science.

Jan van Eyck (/væn ˈaɪk/ van EYEK; Dutch: [ˈjɑɱ vɑn ˈɛik]; c. before 1390 – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the supreme figures of the Early Northern Renaissance. Such was his legacy, that he has been called “the inventor of oil-painting” by Vasari, Ernst Gombrich, and others, although this claim is now considered an oversimplification.

Surviving records date his birth at around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name), Limburg, which is located in present-day Belgium. He took employment in The Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and was employed as painter and valet de chambre to John III the Pitiless, ruler of the counties of Holland and Hainaut. Some time after John's death in 1425, he was appointed as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and worked in Lille before moving to Bruges in 1429, where he lived until his death. He was highly regarded by Philip, and was dispatched on several diplomatic visits abroad, including one to Lisbon in 1428 to discuss the possibility of a marriage contract between the duke and Isabella of Portugal.

Lorenzo di Credi (1456/59 – January 12, 1537) was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor best known for his paintings of religious subjects, and portraits. With some excursions to nearby cities, his whole life was spent in Florence. He is most famous for having worked in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio at the same time as the young Leonardo da Vinci, who seems to have influenced his style considerably.

He trained with Verrocchio, and became his principal assistant, inheriting the workshop after his master's death in 1488, when Lorenzo was still in his twenties. He largely continued his master's style, working until at least the 1520s, by which time he was becoming rather old-fashioned. He does not seem to have painted frescos himself, although his workshop may have done so. Vasari says that he avoided large paintings of all sorts, preferring to create smaller works with a meticulous finish.

Portrait of a Woman is a c.1475 tempera and oil on panel painting by Antonio or Piero del Pollaiuolo. It has been in the Uffizi in Florence since 1861. Since 1861 it has been misattributed to Piero della Francesca, a young Leonardo da Vinci and Cosimo Rosselli.

It forms part of a group of profile portraits of women which also includes one in Milan, one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and another at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Berenson attributes the more accomplished works in the group to Antonio and the others (along with the weaker sections of the better works) to Piero. Other art historians attribute them all to Piero on the grounds that Vasari mentions Antonio only as an engraver and sculptor and not as a painter. A third group attributes all the profiles to Piero and other mythological, action and battle scenes among the Pollaiolo oeuvre to Antonio.

Ercole de' Roberti (c. 1451 – 1496), also known as Ercole Ferrarese or Ercole da Ferrara, was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance and the School of Ferrara. He was profiled in Vasari's Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori.

The son of the doorkeeper at the Este castle, Ercole later held the position of court artist for the Este family in Ferrara. According to Vasari:

Italo-Byzantine is a style term in art history, mostly used for medieval paintings produced in Italy under heavy influence from Byzantine art. It initially covers religious paintings copying or imitating the standard Byzantine icon types, but painted by artists without a training in Byzantine techniques. These are versions of Byzantine icons, most of the Madonna and Child, but also of other subjects; essentially they introduced the relatively small portable painting with a frame to Western Europe. Very often they are on a gold ground. It was the dominant style in Italian painting until the end of the 13th century, when Cimabue and Giotto began to take Italian, or at least Florentine, painting into new territory. But the style continued until the 15th century and beyond in some areas and contexts.

Maniera greca ("Greek style/manner") was the Italian term used at the time, and by Vasari and others; it is one of the first post-classical European terms for style in art. Vasari was no admirer, defining the Renaissance as a rejection of "that clumsy Greek style" ("quella greca goffa maniera"); other Renaissance writers were similarly critical.

Francesco Francia, whose real name was Francesco Raibolini (1447 – 5 January 1517) was an Italian painter, goldsmith, and medallist from Bologna, who was also director of the city mint.

He may have trained with Marco Zoppo and was first mentioned as a painter in 1486. His earliest known work is the Felicini Madonna, which is signed and dated 1494. He worked in partnership with Lorenzo Costa, and was influenced by Ercole de' Roberti's and Costa's style. After 1505 he was influenced more by Perugino and Raphael. He had a large workshop and trained Marcantonio Raimondi, Ludovico Marmitta, and several other artists; he produced niellos, in which Raimondi first learnt to engrave, soon excelling his master, according to Vasari. Raphael's Santa Cecilia is supposed to have produced such a feeling of inferiority in Francia that it caused him to die of depression. However, as his friendship with Raphael is now well-known, this story has been discredited.