Paradise
Federico Zuccaro (Zuccari)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The present drawing is study for the fresco designed for, but never executed in, the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Doges' Palace, Venice. In this representation of Paradise, Christ is seated in judgment at the center and flanked by the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist who intercede for mankind. At the right appear a throng of Old Testament figures dominated by Adam, Eve, and Moses with the tablets of the law. At the left are ranged a host of saints of the New Dispensation: Saint Peter and Saint Paul with the other Apostles, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Lawrence, Saint Sebastian, Saint Francis, Saint Dominic, and many others. God the Father appears in glory at upper center, while the central foreground is occupied by angel musicians. Hermann Voss, who first published this drawing, suggested that it is Federico Zuccaro's project for the redecoration of the end wall of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale after the fire of 1577. However, Walter Vitzthum pointed out the testimony of Vasari in the 1568 edition of the Lives and the stylistic evidence of the drawing itself indicate that this project is earlier; it must date from Federico's first visit to Venice in the mid 1560s. This Paradise may have been intended to replace Guariento's probably damaged Coronation of the Virgin on the end wall, more than a decade before the 1577 fire. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's project, the reserves in the paper indicate the placement of the two doors that pierce the wall and of the top of the back of the central bench. The six pendentives indicated at the top margin suggest that Federico proposed a vaulted ceiling for the great room, instead of the flat wooden ceiling that at this narrow end was originally supported by eleven corbels. In the Musée du Louvre, Paris, there is another large design for the same scheme (Inv. 4546), which differs from our drawing most notably in that the central subject is the Coronation of the Virgin. Though later in his career Federico Zuccaro executed a painting for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Frederick Barharossa Submitting to Pope Alexander III), the Paradise that eventually replaced Guariento's Coronation is a late work of Jacopo Tintoretto. New information concerning the Paradise in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio has recently been supplied by Juergen Schulz.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
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