Portrait of Giorgio Vasari

The man here is Giorgio Vasari, the painter, architect and writer who ran the grandest decorating projects in Florence and whose Lives of the artists more or less founded art history. Around his neck hangs a medal, the honour Pope Pius V gave him in 1571, which helps date the portrait to Vasari's last years before his death in 1574. Who actually painted it is an old question. It was once given to Vasari himself, then to someone in his circle, and today it is usually assigned to Jacopo Zucchi, the young assistant who had worked under Vasari on the great halls of the Palazzo Vecchio before leaving for Rome. If that is right, this is a pupil's portrait of his master, made just as their years together were ending. It now hangs in the Vasari Corridor, the raised passage above Florence that Vasari himself designed.