Works on Paper 2019 - Jean Luc Baroni

the lantern and four of the eight compartments
containing angels, figures of the Church and the
Virtues. Federico was therefore left with the task
of completing the four remaining sections and the
entire lowest band illustrating the Seven Deadly
Sins with the eight East sections showing the
Church Triumphing over Death, Time, Nature and
the Seasons. Moving away from Vasari’s scheme
for which a small number of studies survive 2 , and
incorporating many iconographical differences,
Federico worked firsthand to complete all the designs
and drawings for these remaining sections and
employed assistants to contribute to the execution of
the fresco work. Unlike Vasari, Federico chose to use
the ‘a secco’ method for painting, which allows for
a more fluid and rapid technique and is not subject
to the significant vagaries in temperature common
to Florence, although this method is less resistant
to the effects of time and humidity. The project
began in August 1576 and was completed in less
than two years. Public reaction to the fresco scheme
was controversial and probably some were led by
anti-Medicean views including those who declared
the cupola to have been more beautiful and more
impressive when it was unpainted. Zuccaro himself
had prepared designs for further frescoes to extend
as far as the sacristy but Francesco I was unwilling
to continue financing the project.
This is a preparatory study for the lowest part of the
central south section of the cupola, illustrating one
of the seven Cardinal sins, that of Gluttony (Fig. 1).
A large horned devil restrains the woman with one
hand wrapped around her head whilst with the other,
he forces bread into her mouth. A frightened looking
man on her left, presumably her fellow-sinner,
has one finger to his mouth in a gesture of fear or
disgust. The aghast face of another sinner is sketched
behind him. A pale red wash suggests the heat
and the licking flames of Hell’s furnace. Amongst
the surviving drawings related to this work, this is
certainly one of Federico’s most lively and inventive
preparatory studies.
A drawing cut to the shape of the south-west
section of the cupola and possibly intended for use
in displaying the project in model form is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art 3 , and there are five
large, highly finished modelli for sections of Hell
in the British Museum 4 . Their large scale compares
closely in relative terms with the present work,
this preliminary sheet depicting the equivalent of
roughly a third of the modelli. Five further modelli
survive in the Albertina Graphische Sammlung,
Vienna, including one for this south section, showing
Gluttony on the right hand side 5 and other drawings
of various types, including chalk studies from life
for saints, Kings and other good souls, are in the
Ashmolean, the Louvre and the Uffizi 6 . Zuccaro
filled the lowest register of his vast work with a fully
imagined inventory of sinners eternally punished
for their hideous sins by an army of vicious demons
and other monstrous creatures. Above this are the
ranks of the noble and the blessed leading upwards
to the Heavenly Realm. Federico made recognisable
portraits of the Medici father and son, Cosimo II and
Federico I, of François I, the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V and the English king, Edward VI and
amongst the blessed he took the opportunity to
depict himself, palette in hand, his brother Taddeo
(who had died in 1566), the Humanists Vincenzo
Borghini and Benedetto Borghini, the sculptor
Giambologna and many female portraits of women
from his circle 7 .
Actual size detail
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