He was self-opinionated, biased and at times, vindictive, yet his book 'Lives of the Artists' is still central to any study of Italian Renaissance Art. To contemporaries, however, his fame was not as a writer but as an artist and architect, employed by some of the greatest patrons in 16th Century Italy, most notably Duke Cosimo 1 de' Medici, for whom he designed arguably the greatest art gallery in the world, the Uffizi, although its original purpose was not to display art. This lecture will look at the various talents of this man and how they reflected the spirit of the times.