ZUCCARI, TADDEO and FEDERICO - Painters. TADDEO, b. at S. Angelo in Vado near Urbino on 1 Sept. 1529, d. in Rome on 1 Sept. 1566.
His first teachers were his father and Pompeo da Fano. From 1543 he worked in Rome in the workshop of Francesco da Sant'Agnolo. His most famous work is the decoration of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, which derives from the decorative schemes of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, where T. worked with Francesco Salviati. At Caprarola, notable among others is the composition depicting the Council of Trent, which has very clear references to Raphael's Disputation of the Sacrament. Raphaelesque style, in fact, dominates the artist's work in this first period.
More recent criticism, however, gives greater prominence to the decoration of the Villa of Pope Julius in Rome, for a keen sense of landscape and colour that the painter reveals here. In the last years of his life T. painted in the Vatican in the Logge and, subsequently, in the Sala Regia, scenes with the Donation of Charlemagne and the Battle of Tunis. This is the period in which his manner comes most visibly close to Michelangelo, as is also clearly demonstrated by the panel with the Dead Christ, supported by five angels, in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Taddeo painted a great deal and in his day had a good name for the ease and fluency with which he reproduced both Raphael's rhythms and the movement of Michelangelo's figures and draughtsmanship, and even the colouring of the Venetians. His painting, however, remained essentially decorative and bound to a certain taste for knowing how to blend the various tendencies that was called "alla zuccaresca".
Even more than he, his brother FEDERICO painted, b. at Sant'Angelo in Vado between 1542 and 1543, d. at Ancona in 1609. He began painting in Rome in his brother's workshop. He soon grew in fame and began to work on his own in the house of Tizio da Spoleto at S. Eustachio. After the commissions in the Vatican for the Sala Regia, he was given the task of completing the Last Judgment, begun by Vasari in the dome of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, an undertaking that he brought to completion in 1579. In Florence, in the Galleria degli Uffizi, there is a rich collection of his drawings. He also painted in Venice in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio the Barbarossa at the feet of Alexander III, considered his best work. He also went abroad, to Holland, England, France and Spain, where he received a commission for the Escorial. Having returned to Rome, he completed the works of the Cappella Paolina, but criticism, even in his own day, began to be hostile towards him. Around 1593 he devoted himself to the reorganization of the Academy of St. Luke, which he installed in his house at Trinità dei Monti, which he had already had adorned with frescoes. He was the first princeps of the Academy.
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Then, increasingly embittered, he withdrew from Rome; at Ancona he wrote: L'idea dei pittori, scultori ed architetti, La Dimora in Roma and Il passaggio per l'Italia. Federico's paintings, which are even more bound to academic forms than those of his brother, nevertheless differ from them through a broader eclecticism, a greater richness of colour and above all through a marked leaning towards Correggio's manner.
Bibliography5 works
Maria Pia Cosentino Sibilia