The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (523 page)

Zuccaro , Taddeo
(1529–66) and
Zuccaro , Federico

(
c.
1540–1609).
Italian
Mannerist
, painters, brothers, from the neighbourhood of Urbino. Taddeo worked mainly in Rome and although he was only 37 when he died he had made a great name for himself as a fresco decorator, working most notably for the
Farnese
family in their palace at Caprarola. His style was based on
Michelangelo
and
Raphael
and tended to be rather dry and wooden. Federico took over his brother's flourishing studio, continuing the work at Caprarola and also the decoration of the Sala Regia in the Vatican (begun by Taddeo in 1561). His talent was no more exceptional than Taddeo's, but he became even more successful and won himself a European reputation—indeed for a time he was probably the most famous living painter. In 1573/4 he travelled via Lorraine and the Netherlands to England, where he is said to have painted portraits of the Queen and many courtiers, although only two drawings in the British Museum portraying Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley , the Earl of Leicester, can safely be attributed to him. (Many anonymous portraits of the period are improbably attributed to him.) After working in Florence, Rome, and Venice, he was invited to the
Escorial
by Philip II of Spain, where he painted a number of altarpieces (1585–8). Back in Rome he was elected the first President of the new Accademia di S. Luca, founded in 1593 (see
ACADEMY
), to which he later gave his house as headquarters. Like many of his contemporaries he believed that correct theory would produce good works of art and himself wrote
L'Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, et Architetti
(1607). Zuccaro also worked as an architect, designing a doorway in the form of a grotesque face (one enters through the open mouth) for his own house in Rome (the Palazzo Zuccaro, now the Biblioteca Hertziana). The two flanking windows are treated in similar bizarre fashion.

 
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Zucchi , Antonio
.

See
KAUFFMANN
.

 
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(1870–1945).
Spanish painter, the son of
Placido Zuloaga
, a well-known metalworker and ceramicist. He spent much of his career in Paris, where he was on friendly terms with
Rodin
,
Gauguin
, and
Degas
, but his art is strongly national in style and subject-matter. Bull-fighters, gypsies, and brigands were among his subjects, and he also painted religious scenes and portraits. His inspiration came from the great Spanish masters of the past, notably
Velázquez
and
Goya
, and he is credited with being one of the first to ‘rediscover’ El
Greco
. He was highly popular during his lifetime (he had a resoundingly successful one-man show in New York in 1925), but his work now often looks rather stagy.

 
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(1598–1664).
Spanish painter, born at Fuente de Cantos and active mainly in Seville. He trained there 1614–17 and after a period at Llerena near his birthplace returned in 1629 as town painter. In 1634–5 he was in Madrid working for Philip IV on a series of ten pictures on
The Labours of Hercules
and a large historical scene,
The Defence of Cadiz
(all now in the Prado, Madrid), but apart from these pictures, a few portraits, and some masterly still lifes, he devoted himself almost entirely to religious works. He worked for churches and monasteries over a wide area of southern Spain and his paintings were also exported to South America. His compositionally simple and emotionally direct altarpieces, combining austere
naturalism
with mystical intensity, made him an ideal Counter-Reformation painter. His most characteristic works are single figures of monks and saints in meditation or prayer, most of which seem to have been executed in the 1630s. The figures are usually depicted against a plain background, standing out with massive physical presence. Many of these monumentally solemn figures are conceived in great series, such as
The Members of the Mercedarian Order
(Academy, Madrid), or
The Carthusian Saints
(Cadiz Mus.). But there are single pictures of the same kind. He painted numerous pictures of
St Francis
, for example (two in the NG, London), and a number of virgin saints. Towards the end of his career Zurbarán's work lost something of its power and simplicity as he tried to come to terms with the less ascetic style of
Murillo
, who in the 1640s overtook him as the most popular painter in Seville. In 1658 he moved to Madrid, where he spent his final years. His son
Juan
(1620–49) is known from a few still-life paintings.

 
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