Italy, (1529-1566)
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Circe seated, the bewitched sailors transmogrified
- (C16th), brown ink, brown wash, black chalk, and lead white heightening on paper
- 16.6 x 11.3 in. (42.2 x 28.7 cm.)
- Private collection
About the Artist:
Taddeo Zuccari, Italy (1529-1566), fresco painter and draftsman,and designer of the Roman mannerist school.
His family sent him to Rome by age 14 as an art apprentice. By age seventeen he began a career as a fresco painter. Zuccari was regularly employed by the popes Julius III and Paul IV, by the della Rovere duke of Urbino, and by other wealthy Roman patrons and created frescoes for palace interiors, house facades, chapels, and pleasure villas in and near Rome.
Zuccari worked alongside Prospero Fontana in decorating the Villa Giulia. He painted the fresco scenes of the Passion in the “Cappella Mattei” of Santa Maria della Consolazione. His best frescoes were a historical series in quadro reportati painted on the walls and ceiling of Villa Farnese at Caprarola. [DES-11/14]