FEDERICO ZUCCARO (Sant’Angelo in Vado 1539-1609 Ancona)

The present study cannot be connected to any work by Federico Zuccaro, although a similar group of female saints occurs in the North-West section of the cupola of the Duomo in Florence, but the group occupies only half of the width of the section and the figures are not grouped symmetrically as they are here. The vertical division at the center and the shape at top indicate that the two halves of the composition were intended to decorate the outside of the wings of a reliquary altar, which when opened would have revealed shelves containing relics. Zuccaro decorated two altars of this type at the Escorial in 1586-1588 (C. Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, Fratelli pittori del Cinquecento, Milan, 1999, II, pp. 155-159, figs. 2-9). The drawing was once part of an album, now dismembered, consisting of 74 drawings by Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro, formerly owned by Thomas Lawrence and bought by Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), collector of books, manuscripts and drawings. The album was dismantled by his heir T. Fitzroy Fenwick.