Getty Museum

Taddeo Sent on an Errand by Calabrese's Wife

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

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

Sent on an errand by the wife of the artist Calabrese, to whom he was apprenticed, Taddeo Zuccaro stops to admire a painted facade by Polidoro da Caravaggio, one of the most popular painters of his day. As in other episodes in this series, Federico Zuccaro set this incident in a recognizable setting. The Pantheon and probably the old church of the Trinità dei Monti are just visible in the distance. In the foreground, Taddeo grinds colors for his master but pauses to draw one of the figures he has just seen with a twig in the colored powder. Federico captured the joys and hardships of the life of a young artist, as well as giving a heartfelt tribute to his revered and gifted elder brother. This scene, as well as others in the series, provides a sense of the topographical and physical appearance of Renaissance Rome, with its newly decorated palaces mixed with its marvels of antiquity.

View at Getty Museum ↗

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Getty Museum

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.