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Lot Essay
This series of twenty drawings illustrates the early life of Taddeo Zuccaro, elder brother of the draughtsman Federico Zuccaro. In these drawings Federico describes the hardship of Taddeo's training in Rome and how he was mistreated by his first masters. The story stops with Taddeo's first success: his commission to paint the faade of the Palazzo Mattei, Rome. The early life of Taddeo is also narrated by Giorgio Vasari in his Life of Taddeo Zucchero, in The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, ed. London, 1996, pp. 598-641. Vasari's source was probably Federico himself as all events recounted by the Aretan writer are also related by Federico. The few events drawn by Federico, not in Vasari are described by Federico in his annotated copy of Vasari's Life of the Painters, Le vite...con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, Florence, 1878-85, VII, notes to pp. 74-8.
Vasari writes that Taddeo was born on 1 September 1529 in Sant'Angelo in Vado, a small town not far from Urbino. He was the son of Ottaviano Zuccaro and brother of six siblings. His father was his first master. Ottaviano was not praised by Vasari, but Federico in his copy of Vasari's book noted that 'he was not such an ordinary painter' and that he studied in Florence with Andrea del Sarto. Vasari continues the story by saying that 'perceiving that his son had a very beautiful genius and was likely to become a better master in painting than he believed himself to be, Ottaviano placed him with Pompeo da Fano, who was very much his friend, but a commonplace painter', op. cit., 1996, p. 599. At the age of fourteen Taddeo decided against his father's will to leave Sant'Angelo in Vado for Rome (drawings 2, 3 and 4). There he asked his distant cousin Francesco da Sant'Angelo to teach him painting (drawing 5). Rebuffed he went for instruction to Giovan Pietro Calabrese where he was mistreated by the artist and his wife: they put the bread in a basket hung to the ceiling along with a small bell so that Taddeo could not reach it (drawing 7), Signora Calabrese asked Taddeo to run all sorts of errands (drawings 8 and 10) while her husband refused to show him the Raphael drawings he owned (drawing 7). Federico wrote in his copy of Vasari how his brother, who was forbidden to draw by Calabrese, drew with a twig on the grindstone (drawing 8) and how he woke up at night to copy some figures (drawing 9). After some time Taddeo 'left Giovan Piero, and resolved to live by himself and to have recourse to the workshops of Rome, where he was by that time known, spending a part of the week in doing work for a livelihood, and the rest in drawing', G. Vasari, op. cit., 1996, p. 600. Like every young artist, he sought to draw after the antique (drawing 12) or modern masters (drawing 13). Vasari writes how he would find refuge for the night under Raphael's loggie in the Farnesina (drawing 13).
Having suffered too much hardships, Taddeo left Rome to return to his hometown 'in order not to finish his life in such misery as that in which he had been living'. On his journey he dreamed about a grand scheme of frescoes by Polidoro and in the morning hallucinated that the stones around him were painted with figures, and decided to bring them back to his parents (drawings 14 and 15). He recovered and returned to Rome (drawing 16), where he executed drawings after the antique and Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (drawings 17 and 18). The last drawing represents Taddeo's recognition as an artist, as at the age of only eighteen he paints the faade of the Palazzo Mattei, thus emulating his hero Polidoro (drawing 19).
This series of drawings exemplifies Federico's interest in details of of everyday life, which he introduced in many of the drawings: a self portrait, when aged only two or three, hiding behind his mother and another, a bit older, anxious about his brother's health (drawings 2 and 15); the tears of Taddeo when rebuffed by Francesco Sant'Agnolo (drawing 5); the cold nights with the cat curled up and the wife of Calabrese warming her bare foot against the fire (drawing 7); the chamberpot under the bed (drawing 9); a passer-by looking at a drawing Taddeo had just finished (drawing 12); Taddeo's exhausted look having carried a sack of stones (drawings 15); Taddeo's inkwell and penbox at his feet while copying (drawings 17 and 18); the boy caressing the dog in the foreground of the drawing with the Palazzo Mattei, or Vasari and Salviati shown in intense discussion in the same sheet (drawing 19).
Most of Federico's drawings are placed in exact locations: coming to Rome along the via Flaminia, on one occasion entering the city through the Porta San Pietro and on another through the Porta Flaminia (drawings 3, 4 and 16), local streets and squares where Taddeo lived (drawings 5, 8 or 12) or postcard-like vistas (drawings 9 or 10).
The series is accompanied by four drawings of pairs of Virtues, flanking the Zuccaro device, the sugar loaf (Zucchero). In addition there were originally four drawings, described in 1735 by Pierre-Jean Mariette, of Taddeo and three of the masters who most influenced him: Raphael, Michelangelo and Polidoro. Michelangelo was drawn as the Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, Raphael as the Prophet Isaiah in Sant'Agostino, and Polidoro as one of the figures on a faade. The four drawings had already disappeared at the time of the publication of the Paignon Dijonval catalogue in 1810; old copies are in the Uffizi (11016F, 11023F, 11025F and 1341S). One of these drawings might correspond with that of Raphael by Federicco Zuccaro, sold at Christie's London, 8 December 1987, lot 102. The latter drawing is complete with the surrounding scenes, omitted in the Uffizi version.
Most of the drawings are accompanied by small labels with three verses written by Federico describing the subjects. The same verses are written on the verso of the drawings, laid down in the 18th Century. Mariette, who was the first to mention the series in 1735, described the verses 'Tous ces dessins sont accompagns de vers italiens et de quelques explications pour une plus grande intelligence des sujets; dans les trois derniers que j'ay cit [i.e. the three portraits], Zucchero y adresse la parole, en trois vers italiens, chacun des dits maistres quy luy rpliquent en d'autres vers d'une manire trs flatteuse sur l'excellence de ses talents', P.-J. Mariette, op. cit., p. 164. The drawings were attributed to Taddeo but Mariette restored them to Federico partly on the strength of the poems and partly on the style of draughtsmanship: 'd'ailleurs l'on sait que Frdric toit pote, et je n'ay jamais ouy dire que Tade le ft, mais, ce qui est plus fort que tout le reste, c'est la faon dont sont faits ces desseins'.
The exact purpose of the drawings is unknown, but their shape probably indicates that they probably were studies for decorative panels and their viewpoint that they were intended for a ceiling. W. Krte suggested that the decoration was intended for the Palazzo Zuccaro, now the Hertziana, near the church of La Trinita dei Monti, W. Krte, Der Palazzo Zuccari in Rom, Leipzig, 1935, pp. 68ff.
The iconography is explained by Federico's will of 1603, six years before his death. Federico wanted to leave his house to the Accademia di San Luca so that it could be used as a hostel for young and poor artists coming to study in Rome. It would have been fitting for the students to be reminded of Taddeo's difficult beginning before attaining success, W. Krte, op. cit., p. 81, doc. 15. The first floor of the house was already decorated with the Glorification of the artist, with portraits of Federico and his family, W. Krte, op. cit., pls. 12-24. The Palazzo Zuccaro was probably never used as a hostel: on Federico's death that part of the house was still unfinished and in 1615 the palace was sold. Six pictures on leather in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, may have been part of the decoration of the palace (A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Dipinti, I, Rome, 1948, pp. 18ff). These reproduce drawings 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 and 18.
Dr. Zygmunt Wzbinski dated the series to the late 1570s, when Federico was in Florence painting the Cupola of the Duomo. According to him the compositions were to decorate the ceiling of the studio in which he housed his assistants, not far from were he lived.
Cristina Acidini Luchinat in her recent book on the Zuccari suggested how the compositions might have been arranged. She divided the series into four groups: Departure for Rome (drawings 1 to 5); The difficult apprenticeship (drawings 6-10); The return home (drawings 11-15); and The return to Rome with the first success (drawings 16-20), C. Acidini Luchinat, op. cit., p. 10. The ceiling would have been composed of eight groups: four of Taddeo's life on each of the four sides, with the portraits and the small surrounding scenes in each of the four corners.
The elongated format of the drawing 19 indicates a ceiling of a trapezoidal rather than rectangular shape. That could be explained by the configuration of the palace, built at the junction of two streets.
The first mention of the Life of Taddeo Zuccaro dates from 1735 and was in Mariette's Abcdario, only published in 1851, but quoted by Bottari in the notes of Vasari's Life of the Painters published in 1760. Mariette does not record in which collection he saw them, but the drawings could have been in Paignon Dijonval's collection as early as 1735. Paignon Dijonval was born in 1708 and began to collect drawings at the age of sixteen. On his death the drawings went to his grand-son the Vicomte de Morel de Vind, who commissioned the complete catalogue of the collection published in 1810. The Life of Taddeo was described at length in the catalogue, but under the name of Taddeo, despite Mariette's attribution. Six years later he sold the collection to the London dealer Samuel Woodburn, who very soon afterwards sold it to Thomas Dimsdale. Dimsdale died in 1823 and almost his entire collection was acquired through Woodburn by his great competitor Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence died in 1830, and again Woodburn took possession of the Paignon Dijonval drawings, as part of Lawrence's collection. Woodburn included the drawings in 1836 in London in one of his Lawrence Gallery series of exhibitions, but failed to sell them. Woodburn died in 1853, and his drawings were auctioned at Christie's in 1860.
Before the series was first reproduced as whole as recently as 1990, the set was known through old copies and a few autograph replicas by Federico. Copies or versions are in the Albertina, the Uffizi, The J.F. Willumsen Museum in Frederickssund, the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris, the Muse Grobet Labardie, Marseilles, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the British Museum, the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, Saltram House, Plymouth and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich.
Vasari writes that Taddeo was born on 1 September 1529 in Sant'Angelo in Vado, a small town not far from Urbino. He was the son of Ottaviano Zuccaro and brother of six siblings. His father was his first master. Ottaviano was not praised by Vasari, but Federico in his copy of Vasari's book noted that 'he was not such an ordinary painter' and that he studied in Florence with Andrea del Sarto. Vasari continues the story by saying that 'perceiving that his son had a very beautiful genius and was likely to become a better master in painting than he believed himself to be, Ottaviano placed him with Pompeo da Fano, who was very much his friend, but a commonplace painter', op. cit., 1996, p. 599. At the age of fourteen Taddeo decided against his father's will to leave Sant'Angelo in Vado for Rome (drawings 2, 3 and 4). There he asked his distant cousin Francesco da Sant'Angelo to teach him painting (drawing 5). Rebuffed he went for instruction to Giovan Pietro Calabrese where he was mistreated by the artist and his wife: they put the bread in a basket hung to the ceiling along with a small bell so that Taddeo could not reach it (drawing 7), Signora Calabrese asked Taddeo to run all sorts of errands (drawings 8 and 10) while her husband refused to show him the Raphael drawings he owned (drawing 7). Federico wrote in his copy of Vasari how his brother, who was forbidden to draw by Calabrese, drew with a twig on the grindstone (drawing 8) and how he woke up at night to copy some figures (drawing 9). After some time Taddeo 'left Giovan Piero, and resolved to live by himself and to have recourse to the workshops of Rome, where he was by that time known, spending a part of the week in doing work for a livelihood, and the rest in drawing', G. Vasari, op. cit., 1996, p. 600. Like every young artist, he sought to draw after the antique (drawing 12) or modern masters (drawing 13). Vasari writes how he would find refuge for the night under Raphael's loggie in the Farnesina (drawing 13).
Having suffered too much hardships, Taddeo left Rome to return to his hometown 'in order not to finish his life in such misery as that in which he had been living'. On his journey he dreamed about a grand scheme of frescoes by Polidoro and in the morning hallucinated that the stones around him were painted with figures, and decided to bring them back to his parents (drawings 14 and 15). He recovered and returned to Rome (drawing 16), where he executed drawings after the antique and Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (drawings 17 and 18). The last drawing represents Taddeo's recognition as an artist, as at the age of only eighteen he paints the faade of the Palazzo Mattei, thus emulating his hero Polidoro (drawing 19).
This series of drawings exemplifies Federico's interest in details of of everyday life, which he introduced in many of the drawings: a self portrait, when aged only two or three, hiding behind his mother and another, a bit older, anxious about his brother's health (drawings 2 and 15); the tears of Taddeo when rebuffed by Francesco Sant'Agnolo (drawing 5); the cold nights with the cat curled up and the wife of Calabrese warming her bare foot against the fire (drawing 7); the chamberpot under the bed (drawing 9); a passer-by looking at a drawing Taddeo had just finished (drawing 12); Taddeo's exhausted look having carried a sack of stones (drawings 15); Taddeo's inkwell and penbox at his feet while copying (drawings 17 and 18); the boy caressing the dog in the foreground of the drawing with the Palazzo Mattei, or Vasari and Salviati shown in intense discussion in the same sheet (drawing 19).
Most of Federico's drawings are placed in exact locations: coming to Rome along the via Flaminia, on one occasion entering the city through the Porta San Pietro and on another through the Porta Flaminia (drawings 3, 4 and 16), local streets and squares where Taddeo lived (drawings 5, 8 or 12) or postcard-like vistas (drawings 9 or 10).
The series is accompanied by four drawings of pairs of Virtues, flanking the Zuccaro device, the sugar loaf (Zucchero). In addition there were originally four drawings, described in 1735 by Pierre-Jean Mariette, of Taddeo and three of the masters who most influenced him: Raphael, Michelangelo and Polidoro. Michelangelo was drawn as the Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, Raphael as the Prophet Isaiah in Sant'Agostino, and Polidoro as one of the figures on a faade. The four drawings had already disappeared at the time of the publication of the Paignon Dijonval catalogue in 1810; old copies are in the Uffizi (11016F, 11023F, 11025F and 1341S). One of these drawings might correspond with that of Raphael by Federicco Zuccaro, sold at Christie's London, 8 December 1987, lot 102. The latter drawing is complete with the surrounding scenes, omitted in the Uffizi version.
Most of the drawings are accompanied by small labels with three verses written by Federico describing the subjects. The same verses are written on the verso of the drawings, laid down in the 18th Century. Mariette, who was the first to mention the series in 1735, described the verses 'Tous ces dessins sont accompagns de vers italiens et de quelques explications pour une plus grande intelligence des sujets; dans les trois derniers que j'ay cit [i.e. the three portraits], Zucchero y adresse la parole, en trois vers italiens, chacun des dits maistres quy luy rpliquent en d'autres vers d'une manire trs flatteuse sur l'excellence de ses talents', P.-J. Mariette, op. cit., p. 164. The drawings were attributed to Taddeo but Mariette restored them to Federico partly on the strength of the poems and partly on the style of draughtsmanship: 'd'ailleurs l'on sait que Frdric toit pote, et je n'ay jamais ouy dire que Tade le ft, mais, ce qui est plus fort que tout le reste, c'est la faon dont sont faits ces desseins'.
The exact purpose of the drawings is unknown, but their shape probably indicates that they probably were studies for decorative panels and their viewpoint that they were intended for a ceiling. W. Krte suggested that the decoration was intended for the Palazzo Zuccaro, now the Hertziana, near the church of La Trinita dei Monti, W. Krte, Der Palazzo Zuccari in Rom, Leipzig, 1935, pp. 68ff.
The iconography is explained by Federico's will of 1603, six years before his death. Federico wanted to leave his house to the Accademia di San Luca so that it could be used as a hostel for young and poor artists coming to study in Rome. It would have been fitting for the students to be reminded of Taddeo's difficult beginning before attaining success, W. Krte, op. cit., p. 81, doc. 15. The first floor of the house was already decorated with the Glorification of the artist, with portraits of Federico and his family, W. Krte, op. cit., pls. 12-24. The Palazzo Zuccaro was probably never used as a hostel: on Federico's death that part of the house was still unfinished and in 1615 the palace was sold. Six pictures on leather in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, may have been part of the decoration of the palace (A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Dipinti, I, Rome, 1948, pp. 18ff). These reproduce drawings 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 and 18.
Dr. Zygmunt Wzbinski dated the series to the late 1570s, when Federico was in Florence painting the Cupola of the Duomo. According to him the compositions were to decorate the ceiling of the studio in which he housed his assistants, not far from were he lived.
Cristina Acidini Luchinat in her recent book on the Zuccari suggested how the compositions might have been arranged. She divided the series into four groups: Departure for Rome (drawings 1 to 5); The difficult apprenticeship (drawings 6-10); The return home (drawings 11-15); and The return to Rome with the first success (drawings 16-20), C. Acidini Luchinat, op. cit., p. 10. The ceiling would have been composed of eight groups: four of Taddeo's life on each of the four sides, with the portraits and the small surrounding scenes in each of the four corners.
The elongated format of the drawing 19 indicates a ceiling of a trapezoidal rather than rectangular shape. That could be explained by the configuration of the palace, built at the junction of two streets.
The first mention of the Life of Taddeo Zuccaro dates from 1735 and was in Mariette's Abcdario, only published in 1851, but quoted by Bottari in the notes of Vasari's Life of the Painters published in 1760. Mariette does not record in which collection he saw them, but the drawings could have been in Paignon Dijonval's collection as early as 1735. Paignon Dijonval was born in 1708 and began to collect drawings at the age of sixteen. On his death the drawings went to his grand-son the Vicomte de Morel de Vind, who commissioned the complete catalogue of the collection published in 1810. The Life of Taddeo was described at length in the catalogue, but under the name of Taddeo, despite Mariette's attribution. Six years later he sold the collection to the London dealer Samuel Woodburn, who very soon afterwards sold it to Thomas Dimsdale. Dimsdale died in 1823 and almost his entire collection was acquired through Woodburn by his great competitor Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence died in 1830, and again Woodburn took possession of the Paignon Dijonval drawings, as part of Lawrence's collection. Woodburn included the drawings in 1836 in London in one of his Lawrence Gallery series of exhibitions, but failed to sell them. Woodburn died in 1853, and his drawings were auctioned at Christie's in 1860.
Before the series was first reproduced as whole as recently as 1990, the set was known through old copies and a few autograph replicas by Federico. Copies or versions are in the Albertina, the Uffizi, The J.F. Willumsen Museum in Frederickssund, the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris, the Muse Grobet Labardie, Marseilles, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the British Museum, the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, Saltram House, Plymouth and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich.