Getty Museum
Taddeo Employed on Menial Tasks at Calabrese's House
Creator
Federico ZuccaroItalian Artist · 1541–1609
All works by this person →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
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1595
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, brush with brown wash, over black chalk
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Here Taddeo Zuccaro performs the numerous menial tasks his master's wife ordered him to do. Under the watchful eye of his mistress, he makes the Calabreses' bed, which is raised on a low platform on the left. He brings wood from the cellar, balancing a jug on his head, and crouches on the floor to start the fire for cooking. In the background, Federico Zuccaro enlarged the window so that he could show the view of the Castel Sant'Angelo, with the bridge and the old and new Saint Peter's basilica in the distance. In Florence or Venice, Taddeo would have found a place in a well-organized studio of some established artist. But in Rome, where more haphazard conditions existed, he drifted from one minor painter to another, supporting himself by doing odd jobs about their studios and working as a servant in their homes.
The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.