Federico Zuccaro documented the troubled early life, apprenticeships, and rise to fame of his older brother, Taddeo, in a series of twenty drawings acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1999 from Christie’s New York. An exhibition of these drawings, created in the 1590s, coincided with the publication of this book in which the drawings and accompanying poems are illustrated and placed in the historical and artistic context of sixteenth-century Rome. Two major themes recur throughout the volume. One is the prominence of not only Taddeo (1529–1566) as a central player among Raphael, Michelangelo, and Polidoro da Caravaggio in sixteenth-century Roman life, but the presentation of Federico (ca. 1541–1609) as an equal. The second is the training of young artists in the sixteenth-century through the central role of disegno and the copying of masterworks from classical antiquity and Renaissance masters.

The volume is organized into four major parts that follow a useful foreword by Getty director Michael Brand and an informative introduction to the project by associate curator of drawings, Julian Brooks. The first three parts are written by Brooks while the fourth, “The Historical Context,” consists of essays by Robert Williams, Peter M. Lukehart, and Christina Strunck. In the first section, “The Early Life of Taddeo Series,” Brooks gives a brief synopsis of the twenty drawings, with each drawing individually illustrated on the 9 3/4″ × 10” page. The dumbbell shape (vertical and horizontal) of the drawings strikes the reader immediately. Although there is no contemporary evidence as to why these drawings were made, they were clearly intended for a complex decorative scheme. They may have been proposed to decorate the Palazzo Zuccari, built by Federico in the 1590s to serve as a hostel for struggling artists in Rome; the palazzo now houses the Biblioteca Hertziana and is undergoing restoration. The suggestion that the drawings might decorate the palazzo is highly plausible given that Taddeo’s personal struggle is recorded by Federico in the drawings. The brief poetic verses that are associated with many of the drawings are translated and placed in the context of Taddeo’s life.

The drawings of Taddeo as a youth reveal the hardships suffered by the artist and illustrate personal experiences that allow students of art and culture to achieve a fuller picture of the period. Coming to Rome at age fourteen, Taddeo endured difficulties at the hands of relatives: making a bed in a home, carrying firewood and a vase on his head at the same time, cleaning a floor on his hands and knees. At the same time, the viewer senses his relentless determination as, for example, when he falls asleep while copying Raphael’s frescoes in the loggia of the Villa Farnesina. The drawings portray events and experiences in the life of a real person, and even five hundred years later young artists can empathize as they endure adversity and hold menial jobs while pursuing their lives as artists. Federico, who is often considered the more dry and academic of the two brothers, must be credited with having a keen and sometimes humorous ability to recall the events of his brother’s life based on stories that he probably heard repeatedly. Federico, twelve years younger than Taddeo, was brought to Rome with his parents to celebrate the Jubilee in 1550, when he was only eight or nine years old, and was subsequently left there. Taddeo, at twenty, had to serve as both parent and teacher to the young Federico. One goal that Taddeo and Federico shared was a concern for the training and welfare of young artists. Federico was involved in the formation of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and proposed reforms for the Accademia del Disegno in Florence.

Brooks observes that in creating the drawings Federico may have been inspired by an earlier cycle celebrating an artist’s life, for Federico had been in Florence in 1565 and certainly would have heard of the Florentine Academy’s funeral drawings and paintings executed for the events associated with the funeral of Michelangelo. The ceremonies featured sixteen of these paintings, the same number of principal scenes found in the Zuccaro series. Federico’s relationship with Giorgio Vasari is another area of interest that requires further study and expansion. Vasari included Taddeo in the second, 1568 edition of Le vite, providing the earliest biography of the artist. Federico’s copy of Le vite, known since 1906, has handwritten postille (annotations) that have been interpreted as having a corrective tone. Scholars have suggested that the drawings of Taddeo’s life may have been created in response to Vasari’s account, but the alternative, i.e., the fictionalization and exaggeration of the stories told by Taddeo to Federico, may not be any more accurate.

Taddeo’s fifty years of artistic success in Rome and his ability to run a studio that was involved in many civic and religious projects are represented in the four drawn portraits that were originally part of the series. Alongside Michelangelo, Raphael, and Polidoro, Taddeo’s prominence in allegorical and iconographic significance is evident. One of the most critical contributions of the exhibition and the volume to an understanding of the Zuccaro drawings is the comparison to the seven recently conserved paintings of identical scenes from the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica/Palazzo Barberini. This ties in well with the theme that draughtsmanship was at the center of both artists’ professional lives.

The second section, “The Career of Taddeo Zuccaro,” discusses his mature works (beginning at age eighteen) and illustrates the relevant drawings. Works discussed included the façade of the Palazzo Mattei, the Mattei Chapel at Santa Maria della Consolazione, the Frangiapani Chapel at San Marcello al Corso, the principal room in the Vatican Belvedere, and the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. They demonstrate both Taddeo’s eclectic style and his skilled competence in drawing and design. Taddeo died at the age of thirty-seven in 1566, and Federico arranged for his brother to be buried in the Pantheon, near Raphael. During the 1560s, Federico’s own career was being established, and he worked successfully in Venice. By 1576–1600, he was one of the most famous artists in Europe, receiving commissions from Queen Elizabeth I of England, King Phillip II of Spain, and the princely Italian courts.

Part 3, “Copying in Rome in the Sixteenth Century,” focuses on the importance of learning to draw by copying masterworks during this period. Artists involved with the Zuccaro workshop were encouraged to make drawn copies to supplement their practical workshop experience. The subjects that the young artists used to “practice” disegno encompassed the many splendors of Rome and the works of such contemporary masters as Michelangelo, Raphael, and Polidoro da Caravaggio. This section attempts to convince the reader, through words and comparative drawings, that Federico learned by studying these artists and became their equal. This is probably the least documented and substantiated section of the volume.

The historical context of section four is established through three focused essays that further expand an awareness of what these drawings can contribute to the “bigger picture” of the sixteenth century. The first two, by Williams and Lukehart, offer insight into the emergence of the roles of artist and patron in relation to the newly established academies available to artists for study in the sixteenth century and probe the place of the art-literary world as it relates to the series of drawings. The final essay, by Strunck, discusses a well-substantiated pictorial program for the Palazzo Zuccari based on the twenty drawings now in the Getty collection. This also serves as a conclusion to the volume by reaffirming the importance of this series to scholarly knowledge of the Zuccaro brothers while at the same time functioning as a reminder that much is left to learn and interpret regarding what Brooks calls the “jigsaw puzzle” of the their work.

Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro: Artist-Brothers in Renaissance Rome will be useful to those who wish to study the sixteenth century beyond the lives of the major “known” masters. Like many other artists throughout Italy, the Zuccaro brothers were involved with the training (and care) of the next generation of artists within the workshop tradition and the production of major commissions using the contemporary style desired by the patron. The importance of disegno and the precise method used to copy masterworks in that training allow for a more intricate understanding of not only the drawings that survive but also the lives of Cinquecento artists, in this case, that of artist-brothers Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro.