ZUCCARO, Federico

(1540/42-1609)

Federico Zuccaro, painter and draughtsman, worked throughout Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. Born in the small town of Sant' Angelo in Vado in the Marches, Zuccaro traveled to Rome while still a young boy and received artistic training in the studio of his older brother Taddeo Zuccaro. Federico's earliest work was as an assistant to his brother, and apart from Federico's work in the Grimani Chapel at Venice, virtually all of his work before the late 1560s was on projects begun by Taddeo. After Taddeo's untimely death in 1566, Federico completed Taddeo's projects in Rome and at the Farnese Villa at Caprarola. He also worked at Orvieto and at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli.

In 1574 Zuccaro began the period of almost continual travel that would last for the rest of his life. He visited the Netherlands and England, where he exe­cuted portraits, including the famous drawing of Queen Elizabeth I* (British Museum). By the end of 1574 he was in Florence and completed Giorgio Va-sari's* fresco cycle in the cupola of the Duomo, after which he won the pres­tigious commission to complete Michelangelo's* decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican. When he was criticized by Gregory XIII's Bolognese advisors, however, Zuccaro responded with the satirical Porta virtutis print, for which he was expelled from Rome. He traveled to Venice and to Loreto. Par­doned by the pope in 1583, Zuccaro returned to Rome and finished the Pauline Chapel, but in 1585 he went to Spain and worked at the Escorial. Here too, his cold academic style was criticized. Zuccaro again returned to Rome, where that style was more appreciated, especially by leading Counter-Reformation patrons. One of these patrons, Federico Borromeo, invited Zuccaro to work at Pavia and Arona during the last decade of his life. Zuccaro is also remembered as a writer and theorist whose works include the Lamento del pittura (1605) and L'idea de' pittori, scultori, ed architetti (1607).

Bibliography

E. J. Mundy, Renaissance into Baroque: Italian Master Drawings by the Zuccari, 1550­1600, 1990.

John Marciari