Luce, vita e operatività: una riflessione su tre testi di Federico Zuccari

This study offers a close analysis of three passages found in Federico Zuccari’s Idea de’ Pittori, Scultori et Architetti, published in Turin in 1607, in order to highlight his sustained concern for human operativity and craftsmanship – both in relation to the mental operations that govern the formation of the inner design and to the external operations that result in the sensible drawing expressed on paper. The essay examines the analogy proposed by Zuccari between disegno and the Platonic sun, previously likened by Cristoforo Landino to Dante’s sun, as a source of knowledge and life. It then focuses on the analogy between the formation of the disegno interno and the unfolding of a favilla (spark) that spreads and multiplies. Finally, it investigates the idea – attributed by Zuccari to Plato – according to which disegno is the “principle of operations”: disegno is brought into relation with the notion of “counsel” or consilium, with which Ficino had translated Platonic bouleusis, a concept that describes a process oriented toward an end. In light of this Platonic tradition and, at the same time, of the scholastic tradition, disegno in Zuccari’s thought is configured as an object of the intellect and of the will that triggers a succession of movements, internal and external, mental and material, of which the work of art constitutes only a crystallized trace.