Getty Museum
Taddeo Rebuffed by Francesco Il Sant'Angelo
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
In a continuous narrative that moves from right to left, Taddeo Zuccaro brings a letter of introduction to his cousin, the painter Francesco il Sant'Angelo, who worked in the studio of painter Perino del Vaga. Brusquely dismissed by his relation, Taddeo leaves in tears but soon catches sight of a large frescoed facade by one of the most admired painters of the day, Polidoro da Caravaggio. At the back of the drawing, the small figure of Taddeo crouches down in the middle of the piazza to sketch the facade. The building that he sketches has now been destroyed, but scholars have identified the palazzo. Giorgio Vasari, the Renaissance author and painter, included this story in his *Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects* , noting that: "In Rome he had a hard time at first, being friendless and lonely. The one person he did know treated him more unkindly than anyone else, for when he humbly approached Francesco il Sant'Angelo, a journeyman artist employed by Perino del Vaga for grotesque decoration, who was a relation, Francesco, behaving as relations often do, gave him neither practical help nor even advice, but turned him harshly away."
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