Currently not on view
Study for a Medici Commission,
ca. 1574
Jacopo Zucchi, Italian, ca. 1540 - before 1596
x1947-151
This drawing served as a primo pensiero (first thought) for a commission for Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici’s villa in Rome. Under Ferdinando, Zucchi painted numerous panel paintings and frescoes with elaborate allegorical subjects referring to the Medici family’s power. This study is composed of three planes of space roughly sketched, first with chalk and then in pen and ink, with heavy pentimenti (or changes) throughout. In the foreground, groups of nude women bathe and recline, while in the background a mountain replete with human figures rises up into the clouds. In the middle ground, Orpheus (mentioned in the cryptic inscription), a figure from Greek mythology that successfully returns from the underworld, symbolically evokes the return of Medici rule to Florence.
Information
Title
Study for a Medici Commission
Dates
ca. 1574
Maker
Medium
Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk on beige laid paper
Dimensions
27.8 × 21.4 cm (10 15/16 × 8 7/16 in.)
frame: 53.3 × 40.6 × 3.2 cm (21 × 16 × 1 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
Object Number
x1947-151
Inscription
Inscribed recto, upper center, in brown ink: Tempio
della gloria; left center, in brown ink: cantano /
scherzano / ballano / orpheo co lungo citaro / soldati
s[i] sposano / carri cavalli /cariche fiori / conigli in
su l’erba / cantano poeti tra silve di lauri / cervi / si
trovano cesti d’oro; lower left, in brown ink: Aninoni
vandyck; inscribed verso, lower center, in black
chalk: 08
Reference Numbers
Gibbons 709
Culture
Materials
Subject
Letter from E. Billsbury in F. Gibbons files 6 Sept. 1968: old photo in Witt collection, London, attributes this to Parmigianino and notes ownership by A. L. Nicholson, London, 1927.;
- Exhibition of drawings by old masters from the private collection of Prof. Frank Jewett Mather: International Art Center of Roerich Museum: December 18th to 31st, 1930, (New York: Roerich Museum, 1930)., no. 51a
- Jacob Bean, Italian drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University; 106 selected examples, (New York: October House, 1966)., no. 19
- Catherine Monbeig-Goguel and Françoise Viatte, Inventaire général des dessins italiens, (Paris: Editions des Musées nationaux, 1972-)., Vol. 1: mentioned under cat. no. 362, p. 221
- Edmund Pillsbury, "Drawings by Jacopo Zucchi", Master drawings 12, no. 1 (Spring, 1974): p. 3-33+65-88., p. 12; p. 27, note 43; pl. 8
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)., Vol. 1: p. 108, no. 310 (illustrated in Vol. 2 under the same catalog number)
- Larry J. Feinberg, From studio to studiolo: Florentine draftsmanship under the first Medici grand dukes, (Oberlin, OH: Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; Seattle, WA: Distributed by University of Washington Press, 1991).
- Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 15, fig. 5.1
