Jacopo Zucchi

Many extant sixteenth-century drawings are for ephemeral structures, and these are in some instances quite difficult to identify with precision. That is not the case with this sheet, however, the iconography and inscriptions of which clearly indicate that it is a study for a catafalque dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, who died on 21 April 1574. Following Cosimo’s death, such catafalques were set up throughout Italy. The drawing was acquired in 1965, at which time its stylistic affinity with Vasari was recognized. Since then, it has been attributed with some authority to his pupil Jacopo Zucchi and tentatively connected with the catafalque erected at the expense of Zucchi’s patron Ferdinando de’ Medici in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome.

The drawing depicts a three-story structure surmounted by a bust of the deceased and a coffin. On the left is an alternate design for the elevation of the monument, while the three sketches on the right are the plans for each story. Inscriptions identify the various allegories and scenes to be represented. The four statues of the lower story were to represent the principal cities of Tuscany; reliefs on the second story were to depict the four major events of Cosimo’s life (the scene visible on the second story of the large elevation is Cosimo’s coronation); and allegories of the virtues of the grand duke. Two other drawings by Zucchi for the same catafalque are known, conserved in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, and the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, respectively.² The Morgan and Yale sheets were once a part of the same album, which was disassembled by P. and D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd. in the mid-1960s.³

Footnotes:

1. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, inv. 1986.117.2; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. KdZ 424.
2. Fellows Report, 1967, 106. The album is described as being formed of “mostly Tuscan and Perugian drawings put together by an Italian collector at the end of the nineteenth century.”