San Marino · 500th birthday of Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari came from Arezzo in Tuscany (Toskana) and worked primarily in Florence. There he served the Medici Duke Cosimo I. His professional self-conception corresponded to the Renaissance ideal of the versatile artist: painting, architecture, court festivities and scholarly engagement with art were closely connected.

Vasari’s best-known literary work is the biographies of Italian painters, sculptors and architects, first published in 1550 and republished in an expanded edition in 1568. In it, he organized the development of Italian art as a historical process. The narrative leads from the artists of the late Middle Ages through the Florentine Early Renaissance to Michelangelo, whom Vasari particularly emphasized. Although his accounts contain anecdotes, biased judgments and factual errors, they permanently shaped the image of many Renaissance artists. At the same time, they helped to ensure that artists were no longer regarded merely as craftsmen, but as individual creators with biographies of their own.

As an architect, Vasari directed the construction of the Uffizi in Florence, which were initially intended to house the duchy’s administrative and judicial authorities. The covered connecting passage between Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti is also associated with his name. This so-called Vasari Corridor (Vasari-Korridor) runs, among other places, over the Ponte Vecchio and enabled the ducal court to travel between its seat of government and residence along a route separate from the streets.

The subject depicted on the coin comes from the Old Testament Book of Judith (Buch Judit). The widow Judith enters the camp of the enemy commander Holofernes, kills him and thereby saves her beleaguered city. In Renaissance art, the scene was depicted as an example of courage, cunning and victory over an overpowering opponent. The beheading in particular gave painters an opportunity for a dramatic composition of figures.

The round anniversary gave San Marino the occasion to honour Vasari as a representative of Italian Renaissance culture. The small state regularly chooses subjects from the shared Italian and European cultural heritage for its commemorative coins.