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The Submission of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to Pope Alexander III

Creator

Italian Artist · 1541–1609

After Titian's death in 1576, Federico Zuccaro may have been the most famous painter in Europe as well as the most influential, traveling widely and creating a huge number of works, largely of religious subjects. The son of a painter in Urbino, he absorbed Mannerism in Rome under his brother Taddeo, who was a dozen years his senior. When Taddeo died in 1566, Federico took over his flourishing prac

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Date: about 1585
Medium: Pen and brown ink, brown wash and black chalk, on two joined sheets of paper
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

A crowd of Venetians gathers to observe the dramatic submission of the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to Pope Alexander III. Soldiers and clerics mingle with children and dogs. Federico Zuccaro filled the scene with small details, noting everything from the delicate carving in the arches of the cathedral to the boats in the harbor and the men peering around the columns to better view the scene below. Zuccaro made this drawing in preparation for a painting for the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, which was to replace Tintoretto's version destroyed by fire. Zuccaro drew an event that took place in 1177, more than four hundred years earlier. Emperor Frederick I, nicknamed "Barbarossa" or "Red Beard" by the Italians, had tried to invade Italy and set up his own pope, which led Pope Alexander to excommunicate him. Frederick withdrew temporarily but then returned, captured Rome, and was in the midst of preparing further attacks when his army was destroyed by disease. After his defeat, he agreed to recognize Alexander and was triumphantly accepted back into the Catholic Church.

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