This article proposes that the judgment made on Paolo Ucello, a quattrocento painter, by Giorgio Vasari, the author of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, gravitated as a charge that condemned him as an exponent of a failed life. Throughout the text, the painter and his work are presented, and the coherence of Vasari's position with the fortune of his figure until the 20th century is reviewed.