Vasari. The Theater of Virtues.

More than 100 masterpieces on display at the Gallery of Modern Contemporary Art and the former Church of St. Ignazio in Arezzo, for an exhibition event with an international scope that represents the culmination of “Arezzo. The City of Vasari”, the program of events organized to celebrate the artist in his hometown on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of his death.

Unpublished works, monumental works and loans from some of the world's most prestigious museums and private collections to recompose the figure of Vasari - a painter, architect, historiographer - who from 1554 to 1574 was the favorite court artist of Cosimo I de' Medici.

Through eight sections, the many, and sometimes unpublished, aspects of Vasari's work are presented:

• Giorgio Vasari, a giant of art
  The artist, the architect of the Uffizi and the Loggias, his family, his fame as a writer, his meeting and favor with the Medici, his friendship with Michelangelo, his loyalty to his city.
• The young Vasari: an education of excellence
  The deep humanistic education enabled young Giorgio to obtain important contacts that soon led him to tour Italy
• The Glorification of the Virtues
  The birth with him of an allegorical language for images and fantastic visual inventions.
• The Academy of Drawing
  Vasari and Cosimo founded the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1563, an evolution of the ancient guild of artists. It included many colleagues with whom Vasari shared artistic construction sites.
• Vasari and the Sacred Art
  Universal allegorical language applied to altarpieces, some of which are exhibited here for the first time.
• The Drawing, father of the Arts
  Vasari celebrates in Vite (Lives) the importance of drawing as a cognitive practice but also as the conception and design behind every work.
• The Chimera, Vasari and the Duke
  In Vasari's time the Etruscan bronze was discovered in Arezzo and triumphantly brought to Florence as an emblem of the Medici power of Cosimo.
• Monumental paintings in churches and basilicas
  In the splendid setting of Sant'Ignazio, four of the grandest altarpieces painted by Giorgio Vasari between 1545 and 1569.

The exhibition is complemented by a series of collateral exhibits hosted in museums and institutions of the city: Casa Vasari Museum, Museum of Medieval and Modern Art, Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, Fraternita Palace Museum, City of Arezzo Library, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas National Archaeological Museum, State Archives and Orodautore Museum.