Visualising the Correlation between Vasari´s Accounts of Giotto´s Travels and Contemporary Research to Better Understand their Reliability

Giorgio Vasari (1511 - 1574) was perhaps the first art-historian to earnestly record the life and times of the great artists of the Italian Renaissance. Of the many he recorded, Giotto di Bond one (1267 - 1337) is heralded as the ´father´ of the Renaissance perspective style. However, contemporary research suggests much of Vasari´s accounts of Giotto´s life and travels are fictional. This paper attempts to explore how reliable Vasari´s accounts are by correlating his chronological narrative of Giotto´s life with contemporary research and Giotto´s chronicled works. Using interactive integrated timeline and mapping visualisation tools it was possible to identify greater accuracy in Vasari´s accounts than that suggested by the literature.