Taddeo Zuccaro (Sant'Angelo in Vado 1529-1566 Rome)

This impressive double-sided drawing can be placed among Taddeo's early works, drawn in Rome and strongly influenced by the drawings and façade decorations of Polidoro da Caravaggio. The appealingly free handling of wash, contained only by indications in pen and brown ink, coupled with slightly schematic heads and elegantly tapering limbs delineated by a busy and rather wiry line, is also found in several drawings of about 1550, inspired by Polidoro and indeed probably related to designs for Taddeo's own façade decorations, for example the Studies of a man brandishing a cutlass in the Uffizi, Florence (J.A. Gere, Taddeo Zuccaro. His development studied in his drawings, London, 1969, no. 72, pl. 15).
This relationship with Polidoro was noticed by the dealer and collector William Gibson, who attributed the drawing to that master. More recently, while the drawing was in the collection of Alfred Normand (1910-1993), Philip Pouncey and François Viatte suggested an attribution to Perino del Vaga.