The essay reconsiders the relationship between Federico Barocci and the brothers Taddeo and Federico Zuccari during their Roman years (1553–1563), shifting the focus from the traditional notion of Barocci’s dependence to a more complex dynamic of creative exchange. Drawing from Bellori’s Lives, which present the young Barocci as a follower of the two Vadesi painters, the text shows that his artistic identity was already formed at that time, nourished both by dialogue with his contemporaries and by a profound assimilation of the lessons of Michelangelo and Titian. The combined analysis of painted works and, above all, of drawings reveals a surprising stylistic closeness among the three artists: fluctuating attributions, technical affinities, and parallel experiments in color and compositional structure attest to a shared visual environment. Within this context, a little-known sheet from the Uffizi with sketches for a portrait of a prelate, an Assumption, and a Nativity, emerges as crucial evidence. Its inventive, multi-subject structure is unusual for Barocci but akin to Taddeo’s working practice. The sheet makes it possible to further understand the network of visual relationships among the three artists, identifying the 1560s as a decisive moment of convergence. From this shared matrix there would soon develop two distinct languages: that of Barocci, founded on natural observation and on the slow elaboration of the graphic process, and that of Federico Zuccari, directed toward a theoretical conceptualization of drawing destined to culminate in the Idea de’ pittori, scultori et architetti.
Federico Zuccari’s Dante Historiato, a cycle of 88 drawings in the Uffizi, visualizes the Divine Comedy with exceptional ambition and technical invention. Completed in Spain in 1587–1588, the series of loose sheets was later mounted on royal folios and bound in an album. Twenty-eight of these sheets are dedicated to Dante’s Inferno, one of the three cantiche that constitute the Divine Comedy. Drawn in red and black chalk, the drawings reveal Federico’s mastery of tonal drama: black defines landscape and architecture while red models figures, fire and blood. This essay on the Inferno scenes examines Federico’s innovative use of the two-chalk technique, tracing its origins in sixteenth-century practice and examining how he redefined the medium in painterly terms. It then focuses on the architectural structures in these drawings, identifying their precedents, sources and parallel developments within contemporary artistic and theoretical contexts. In so doing, the study reveals the pivotal role of paragone in shaping both Federico’s technique and his architectural invention.
This study offers a close analysis of three passages found in Federico Zuccari’s Idea de’ Pittori, Scultori et Architetti, published in Turin in 1607, in order to highlight his sustained concern for human operativity and craftsmanship – both in relation to the mental operations that govern the formation of the inner design and to the external operations that result in the sensible drawing expressed on paper. The essay examines the analogy proposed by Zuccari between disegno and the Platonic sun, previously likened by Cristoforo Landino to Dante’s sun, as a source of knowledge and life. It then focuses on the analogy between the formation of the disegno interno and the unfolding of a favilla (spark) that spreads and multiplies. Finally, it investigates the idea – attributed by Zuccari to Plato – according to which disegno is the “principle of operations”: disegno is brought into relation with the notion of “counsel” or consilium, with which Ficino had translated Platonic bouleusis, a concept that describes a process oriented toward an end. In light of this Platonic tradition and, at the same time, of the scholastic tradition, disegno in Zuccari’s thought is configured as an object of the intellect and of the will that triggers a succession of movements, internal and external, mental and material, of which the work of art constitutes only a crystallized trace.
Although Giovan Pietro Bellori adopted an almost identical title to that of Federico Zuccari’s 1607 treatise for his Idea of 1664, later published in his Lives in 1672, the two texts have only rarely been considered in relation to one another. This essay therefore investigates how Bellori engaged with Zuccari’s influential treatise. The author addresses both the strategic aspects connected to the renewal of the Accademia di San Luca and a comparison of the contents of the two writings. It emerges that, as expected, Zuccari’s Idea constitutes one of Bellori’s undisclosed sources, even though Bellori – unlike his great predecessor – restricts his Idea solely to the Renaissance concept of the Idea del Bello. One consequence of this position is particularly evident in Bellori’s attitude toward the study of nature, which he understands exclusively in terms of artistic perfection, whereas for Zuccari it still represented an open-ended exploration of nature, open to multiple outcomes.
Over the course of his career, Federico Zuccari employed a variety of graphic techniques according to the intended function of his drawings. His use of black and red chalk for portraits and scenes of everyday life, which was remarkable for its modernity, profoundly influenced an entire generation of artists. Ludovico Carracci travelled to Florence, including to the site of Santa Maria del Fiore, and may have had access to this type of production by Federico. A group of Ludovico’s early drawings, some of which bear earlier attributions to Federico Zuccari, attests to this influence. Several sheets further suggest that this interest in the technique of black and red chalk was also transmitted to Agostino and Annibale Carracci.
