Giorgio Vasari was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of Western art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is since regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born. August 9, 1511 – July 7, 1574; died at 62. Alive at the same time as William Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Francis Bacon. Wiki link