best he rivals the leading landscape painters of his time. His paintings often bear a mark representing a pumpkin, a pictorial representation of his name, which signifies “little pumpkin.”
ZUCCARO, or Zucchero,[1] the name of two Italian painters.
I. Taddeo Zuccaro (1529–1566), one of the most popular painters of the so called Roman mannerist school, was the son of Ottaviano Zuccaro, an almost unknown painter at St Angelo in Vado, where he was born in 1529. Taddeo found his way to Rome, and he succeeded at an early age in gaining a knowledge of painting and in finding patrons to employ him. When he was seventeen a pupil of Correggio, named Daniele da Parma, engaged him to assist in painting a series of frescoes in a chapel at Vitto near Sora, on the borders of the Abruzzi. Taddeo returned to Rome in 1548, and began his career as a fresco painter, by executing a series of scenes in monochrome from the life of Furius Camillus on the front of the palace of a wealthy Roman named Jacopo Mattei. From that time his success was assured, and he was largely employed by the popes Julius III. and Paul IV., by Della Rovere, duke of Urbino, and by other rich patrons. His best frescoes were a historical series painted on the walls of a new palace at Caprarola, built for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, for which Taddeo also designed a great quantity of rich decorations in stucco relief after the style of Giulio Romano and other pupils of Raphael. Nearly all his paintings were in fresco, very large in scale, and often in chiaroscuro or monochrome; they were more remarkable for rapidity of execution and a certain boldness of style than for any higher qualities. His work is mannered in style, artificial and pompous in conception, and lacks any close or accurate knowledge of the human form and its movements. He died in Rome in 1566, and was buried in the Pantheon, not far from Raphael.
Taddeo's easel pictures are less common than his decorative frescoes. A small painting on copper of the Adoration of the Shepherds, formerly in the collection of James II., is now at Hampton Court; it is a work of very small merit. The Caprarola frescoes were engraved and published by Prenner, Illustri Fatti Farnesiani Coloriti nel Real Palazzo di Caprarola (Rome, 1748—50).
II. Federigo Zuccaro (1543–1609) was in 1550 placed under his brother Taddeo's charge in Rome, and worked as his assistant; he completed the Caprarola frescoes. Federigo attained an eminence far beyond his very limited merits as a painter, and was perhaps the most popular artist of his generation. Probably no other painter has ever produced so many enormous frescoes crowded with figures on the most colossal scale, all executed under the unfortunate delusion that grandeur of effect could be attained merely by great size combined with extravagance of attitude and exaggeration of every kind. Federigo's first work of this sort was the completion of the painting of the dome of the cathedral at Florence; the work had been begun by the art-historian Vasari, who wrote in the most generous language about his more successful rival. Regardless of the injury to the apparent scale of the interior of the church, Federigo painted about 300 figures, each nearly 50 ft high, sprawling with violent contortions all over the surface. Happily age has so dimmed these pictures that their presence is now almost harmless. Federigo was recalled to Rome by Gregory XIII. to continue in the Pauline chapel of the Vatican the scheme of decoration begun by Michelangelo during his failing years, but a quarrel between the painter and members of the papal court led to his departure from Italy. He visited Brussels, and there made a series of cartoons for the tapestry-weavers. In 1574 he passed over to England, where he received commissions to paint the portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Mary, queen of Scots, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Francis Walsingham, Lord High Admiral Howard, and others. A curious full-length portrait of Elizabeth in fancy dress, now at Hampton Court, is attributed to this painter, though very doubtfully. Another picture in the same collection appears to be a replica of his painting of the “Allegory of Calumny,” as suggested by Lucian's description of a celebrated work by Apelles; the satire in the original painting, directed against some of his courtier enemies, was the immediate cause of Federigo's temporary exile from Rome. His success as a painter of portraits and other works in oil was more reasonable than the admiration expressed for his colossal frescoes. A portrait of a “Man with Two Dogs,” in the Pitti Palace at Florence, is a work of some real merit, as is also the “Dead Christ and Angels” in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Federigo was soon recalled to Rome to finish his work on the vault of the Pauline chapel. In 1585 he accepted an offer by Philip II. of Spain to decorate the new Escorial at a yearly salary of 2000 crowns, and worked at the Escorial from January 1586 to the end of 1588, when he returned to Rome. He there founded in 1595, under a charter confirmed by Sixtus V., the Academy of St Luke, of which he was the first president. Its organization suggested to Sir Joshua Reynolds his scheme for founding the English Royal Academy.
Like his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Federigo aimed at being an art critic and historian, but with very different success. His chief book, L'Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti (Turin, 1607), is a senseless mass of the most turgid bombast. Little can be said in praise of his smaller works, consisting of two volumes printed at Bologna in 1608, describing his visit to Parma and a journey through central Italy. Federigo was raised to the rank of a cavaliere not long before his death, which took place at Ancona in 1609.
For both Taddeo and Federigo Zuocaro see Vasari, pt. iii., and Lanzi, Storia Pittorica, Roman School, epoch iii. (J. H. M.)
ZUG (Fr. Zoug), a canton of central Switzerland. It is the smallest undivided canton, both as regards area and as regards population. Its total area is but 92.3 sq. m., of which, however, no fewer than 75.1 sq. m. are reckoned as “productive,” forests covering 19.9 sq. m. Of the rest 10 sq. m. are occupied by the cantonal share of the lake of Zug (q.v.), and 234 sq. m. by the lake of Aegeri, which is wholly within the canton.
It includes the fertile strips on the eastern and western shores of the lower portion of the lake of Zug, together with the alluvial plain at its northern extremity. The lower range, culminating in the Zugerberg (3255 ft.), and Wildspitz (5194 ft.), the highest summit of the Rossberg, that rises east of the lake of Zug, separates it from the basin and lake of Aegeri, as well as from the hilly district of Menzingen. The Lorze issues from the lake of Aegeri, forces its way through moraine deposits in a deep gorge with fine stalactite caverns and falls into the lake of Zug, issuing from it very soon to flow into the Reuss. The Canton thus belongs to the hilly, not to the mountainous, Swiss cantons, but as it commands the entrance to the higher ground it has a certain strategical position. Railways connect it both with Lucerne and with Zürich, while lines running along either shore of the lake of Zug join at the Arth-Goldau station of the St Gotthard railway. On the eastern shore of the lake of Aegeri, and within the territory of the canton, is the true site of the famous battle of Morgarten (q.v.) won by the Swiss in 1315. Till 1814 Zug was in the diocese of Constance, but on the reconstruction of the diocese of Basel in 1828 it was assigned to it. In 1900 the population of the canton was 25,093, of whom 24,042 were German-speaking, 819 Italian-speaking, and 157 French-speaking, while 23,362 were Romanists, 1701 Protestants, and 19 Jews. Its capital is Zug, while the manufacturing village of Baar, 2 m. N., had 4484 inhabitants, and the village of Cham, 3 m. N.W., had 3025 inhabitants. In both cases the environs of the villages are included, and this is even more the case with the wide-spreading parishes of Unter Aegeri with 2593 inhabitants, of Menzingen with 2495 inhabitants, and the great school for girls and female teachers, founded in 1844 by Father Theodosius Florentini, and of Ober Aegeri with 1891 inhabitants
In the higher regions of the canton the population is mainly engaged in pastoral pursuits and cattle-breeding. There are 61 “alps,” or high pastures in the canton. At Cham is a well-known factory of condensed milk, now united with that of Nestlé of Vevey. At Baar there are extensive cotton spinning mills and other factories. Round the town of Zug there are great numbers of fruit trees, and “Kirschwasser” (cherry water) and cider are largely manufactured. Agriculture too flourishes greatly. A number of factories have sprung up in the new quarter of the town, but the silk-weaving industry has all but disappeared. The canton forms a single administrative district, which comprises eleven communes. The legislature, or Kantonsrat, has one member to every 350 inhabitants, and the seven members of the executive, or Regierungsrat, are elected directly by popular vote, proportional representation obtaining in both cases if more than two members are to be elected in the same electoral district to posts in the same
- ↑ So spelt by Vasari.
