ZUCCARI, Federico. L’idea de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti, del caualier Federico Zuccaro. Diuisa in due libri.
Torino, per Agostino Disserolio, 1607
Two volumes in one folio tome, 300x210 mm. Contemporary limp vellum binding. Pp. 10, [2], 55, [5]; Pp. 86, (7). Titlepage in the typographical frame. Woodcut initials, headpieces and endpieces. Woodcut coat of arms of the Duke of Savoy on title page. In the first volume inverted pp. 43-44, which anticipate later pp. 41-42. Foxing and slight browning. Woodhole on initial few pages and in margin of few pages of second volume. Good copy.
Rare first edition dedicated to the Duke of Savoy Charles Emmanuel I where the author devoted himself to writing a manual of theoretical pictorial art in which he expressed a complex architecture of the idea of Drawing, and from his lectures given at the Academy came the work “L'idea de'pittori, scultori, et architetti,” which, according to Sydney Joseph Freedberg, is the best exposition of the Mannerist doctrine of painting. Inspired by both the Thomistic reading of Aristotle and Florentine Neoplatonism, Zuccaro, as Panofsky writes, “consacre, pour It premiere fois, un livre entier a ('etude d'un probleme purement speculatif qui se resume a la question suivante: comment une representation artistique est-elle en general possible?”
Federico Zuccari, a talented painter, was the younger brother of Taddeo Zuccari, whose pupil he was in Rome. They worked together on several important projects. Following a dispute with the religious authorities who had commissioned him to paint the altar of the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican, he was banished from Rome in 1581. He continued to work in Mantua during the Gonzaga era, in Turin and Parma, and abroad in Holland, France, and Spain, where he was commissioned by Philip II to decorate the Escorial. After being allowed to return to Rome, he was appointed Prince of the Academy of San Luca.
Most specimens are missing the title page and the preliminary leaves of volume 2 (dedicatory letter to the Duke of Urbino and a leaf of poetic compositions).
Cfr. "Scritti d'arte di Federico Zuccaro", a cura di D. Heikamp, Firenze 1961, p. VI.
Cicognara 245 “della più grande rarita…”; Schlosser. Die Kunstliteratur p. 388 et suiv. (1924); Sergio Rossi. Idea e accademia. Studio sulle teorie artistiche di Federico Zuccaro. (1974); Giffi Elisabetta "Federico Zuccari e la professione del pittore", 2023; Carole Talon-Hugon. Les theoriciens de l’art (2017), pp. 722-23.