Federico Zuccaro

When Federico was exiled from Rome on 24 November 1581 for the Porta Virtutis affair (for which see 1974.25), he traveled to Florence and Venice in search of new commissions. In Venice the redecoration of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Ducal Palace, which had been destroyed by fire in 1577, was getting under way, and the Venetian senate entrusted Federico with the large and important painting Frederick Barbarossa Submitting to Pope Alexander III as a replacement for a work by Titian lost in the fire.¹

The present drawing is probably the earliest of a series of vertical studies for this commission, which occupied the artist for most of 1582, though he did briefly return to it in 1603 on a later visit to Venice. It depicts the event that took place on 24 July 1177 outside of San Marco, in which the pope, supported by the doge, placed his foot upon the emperor, who kissed his other foot, thus signaling the reconciliation between the Holy Roman Emperor and the papacy mediated by the Venetian republic. The event is seen from the Piazzetta with the Torre dell’Orologio surmounted by the figures of two Moors sounding the bell in the background, a point of view inverse to that of the finished painting and of the other surviving vertical compositional drawings, in which we look towards the Canal Grande and the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore. Mundy plausibly suggests that Federico reversed the viewpoint once it was determined that the painting was to occupy the left half of a wall whose right side was to bear a painting by Palma Giovane. The Morgan drawing was probably preceded by a large horizontal drawing held in a private collection that seems to have been created before the exact size and location of the painting was determined and also shows San Marco on the right and the Torre dell’Orologio in the background.²

The final composition is represented in a modello-like drawing belonging to the J. Paul Getty Museum,³ of which there is a workshop copy at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford,⁴ and also in a working drawing with numerous pentimenti that probably directly preceded it.⁵ A drawing in Copenhagen of a group of spectators, in pen and ink and squared in red chalk, is for the left part of the composition.⁶ Whereas the grand, detailed compositional designs were precisely drawn in pen and ink, with light brown wash, Federico preferred chalk—often a combination of red and black—for individual figures such as the one of a boy kneeling in prayer before a crucifix that was used for a figure in the center foreground. The recto of that same sheet appears to be connected with the repoussoir figure shown seated at the base of the column at the far left of the Morgan drawing.⁷ The figure of the boy’s mother was prepared in a chalk drawing now at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford.⁸

With a total of twelve securely attributed drawings by Federico Zuccaro and ten by Taddeo spanning the full range of techniques and periods, the Morgan possesses an enviably rich and unique collection of works by these masters of late Roman and Florentine Mannerism.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. For further details on the painting, see Acidini Luchinat 1998–99, 1:133.
2. The private collection drawing was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2010, lot 17; see Gere 1970, 132, under no. 21, fig. 1; New York and Chicago 1994, 403.
3. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 83. gg.196. See Milwaukee and New York 1989–90, no. 87.
4. Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, inv. 1830. See Byam Shaw 1976, no. 553, pl. 301.
5. Formerly Woodner Family Collection, inv. wd–135. See Milwaukee and New York 1989–90, no. 88.
6. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, inv. gb 5628. See Fischer Pace 2014, no. 25.
7. Milwaukee and New York 1989–90, no. 89, as Woodner Family Collection, inv. wd–785; Woodner sale, Christie’s, London, 2 July 1991, lot 97.
8. Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, inv. 0216. See Byam Shaw 1976, no. 545, pl. 299.