Taddeo Zuccaro (1529 – 1566) was an Italian artist who was taught by his father. However, Rome’s flourishing artistic culture lured him from his home near Urbino in Sant' Angelo in Vado when he was just 14. Zuccaro was born in an artistic family. His father was a painter and his brother was also a painter and architect. He moved to Rome by age 14, and was very successful at an early age, gaining knowledge of painting and in finding patrons to employ him. Zuccaro borrowed elements from both Mannerism and the High Renaissance style, combining figures of idealized form and natural proportion with intense emotion. He became one of the most successful painters of the day, despite his early struggles as an artist. He was praised by his peers and flooded with commissions.
In 1548, after he had completed the facade decorations for the Palazzo Mattei, Giorgio Vasari (the artist biographer) praised them and his reputation was secure. Zuccaro began the decoration of Cardinal Alessandro’s villa at Caprarola in 1559. This work brought him life-long economic security, further artistic prestige, and a reputation as an able administrator of a busy and large studio. He also designed festival decorations, trophies, and maiolica, with his brother. After his death, his brother took over the studio, running it successfully until 1609. After his death, his younger brother Federico Zuccaro recorded his early career in Rome in a series of 20 drawings: from the rejection from the study of the High Renaissance masters to his painter cousin's studio.
