11. Jacopo Zucchi
(ca. 1541-1596)

Design for an Ornate Ceiling with Mythological Figures

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Zucchi, Design for an Ornate Ceiling

Design for an Ornate Ceiling with Mythological Figures

Pen and brown ink and wash, 363 x 298 mm. A fully finished, complex design drawn on laid paper which has since been backed. The attribution is due to Peter Fuhring, who cites comparisons with Nicholas Turner’s Florentine Drawings, British Museum, No. 152 and Monbeig-Goguel’s Vasari et Son Temps, Louvre, Nos. 368 and 400. The present sheet is quite close to Turner 152, but finished in wash rather than the watercolor of that drawing. Zucchi, who was born in Florence and died in Rome, was trained in the studio of Vasari, who was the greatest single influence on his style and with whom he traveled and worked , off and on, until 1572. Together with Stradanus and Naldini he worked on the decoration of the ceiling of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in 1563. The following year he entered the Accademia del Disegno and had a part in the decorations for the funeral of Michelangelo. He went with Vasari to Rome in 1567 and 1572 as his chief assistant for his decorations in the Vatican and that year became court painter to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici with whom he remained until his death.