Federico Zuccaro

Sir Peter Lely (L.2092)

Top left and both bottom corners slightly cut and made up. The drawing must have been laid down once on an old mount, now removed. The suface of the paper is slightly buckeld and at some point it must have been slightly cleaned. A tiny, barely visible tear at the bottom center and two or three tiny purple pin point stains at the top near the column to the right and at the bottom. The ink is still strong and the image impressive.
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This is an important addition to the existing corpus of studies for Federico's painting in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice (fig.1).  In 1577 a major fire had swept the room, destroying the Guariento Paradiso as well as 14th- and 15th-century works devoted to important moments in Venetian history.  In 1582 the Senate decided to restore the decoration of the room and Federico was awarded the commission to paint this subject, previously painted by Titian.  Although he seems to have begun work immediately, he did not complete the painting until a return visit to Venice in 1603.  The painted composition is an upright one, with the Pope standing under a baldacchino outside the narthex of S. Marco, his foot on the neck of the kneeling Emperor, with the Piazzetta and S. Giorgio Maggiore beyond.

The drawing which has been considered Federico's first idea for the painting is now in the Morgan Library, a vertical composition, with soldiers and a Swiss Guard and a dog in the foreground, but looking towards the Torre dell'Orologio as in the present composition.¹  The reason for the subsequent change of orientation in the painting is not clear, but James Mundy suggests that it may have been in order to balance the nearby composition by Palma Giovane.²

The three other known composition studies for the painting are all close to the finished version.  J.A. Gere published a sketchy study in an English private collection, which has a very similar arrangement of figures and includes the baldacchino but slightly differently placed.³  Another formerly in the Woodner Collection also has small variations, no baldacchino, and a pentimento of the side of the Doge's Palace, but is rather damaged and difficult to read. ⁴  The third is in the Getty Museum, again without the baldacchino and with some differences in the figures, but highly finished and perhaps a presentation drawing. ⁵  George Goldner mentions another compositional study, close to the Woodner version, in a French private collection, but does not illustrate it.⁶  There are also several individual figure studies which have been connected with the painting. 

The present drawing is unusual in the group in that it is a large horizontal composition in an elaborate architectural setting, not at all suitable for the space ultimately allotted to the painting.  It seems possible, therefore, that this is in fact Zuccaro's first idea for the commission that he submitted to the Senate in hopes of being given a larger space in the Sala to fill.  It is a totally characteristic example of Federico's draftsmanship and figure type, full of lively details.  In it he seems also to have absorbed compositional influences from the work of Venetian painters such as Veronese and Tintoretto.  And, interestingly, a drawing exists which is thought by James Mundy and John Gere to be his copy after Tintoretto's Coronation of Frederick Barbarossa, one of the paintings lost in the fire in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, which Federico would have seen on his first visit to Venice in 1563-65 and which shows similarities with his own later painting for the Sala. ⁷  Although he had to alter his plans to suit the vertical space that was assigned to him in Venice, the ideas expressed in the present drawing can also be found in his design for the fresco decoration of 1604 in the Collegio Borromeo, Pavia, representing Carlo Borromeo Created a Cardinal by Pope Pius IV.⁸

The event depicted was an important one in Venetian diplomatic history as the Doge Sebastiano Ziani was influential in arranging the submission of the Emperor, whose son had been captured by the Venetian fleet, to the Pope. The Doge can be seen at the Pope's side in the painting and very clearly in the present drawing.

1. See J. Mundy, Renaissance into Baroque..., exhib. cat., Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum and New York, National Academy of Design, 1989-90, p. 256, cat. no. 86
2. Ibid., pp. 258-59
3. J.A. Gere, 'The Lawrence-Phillipps-Rosenbach "Zuccaro Album"', in Master Drawings, vol. VIII, no. 2, 1970, p. 132, under cat. no. 21, reproduced fig. 1
4. Mundy, op. cit., p. 262, cat. no. 88
5. Ibid., p. 260, cat. no. 87
6. G. Goldner, European Drawings I, Malibu 1988, p. 132, under cat. no. 55
7. Mundy, op.cit., p. 178, cat. no. 54
8. Florence, Uffizi, inv. no.11031F.  See C. Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, Milan 1999, vol. II, p. 249, fig. 42