Federico Zuccari en ses demeures: économie domestique et économie picturale

This article proposes to examine the iconographic programs – whether they remained on paper or were actually executed – of Federico Zuccari’s two residences in Florence and Rome in light of treatises on economy, and in particular Alessandro Piccolomini’s Della Institution morale (1560). Zuccari indeed draws upon the themes characteristic of this body of literature intended for gentlemen, while at the same time subverting them. Although he presents himself in his houses as a distinguished head of the household, he questions and challenges the place he occupies in society through the themes of servitù and agricultural labor, which allow him to valorize the profession of painter. More than this, in his graphic and pictorial production as well as in his writings – most notably in the Idea de’ scultori, pittori e architetti (1607) – he takes up and redirects certain notions proper to the Economica in favor of the artist: as the mother of the moral truths that constitute ethics, economy, and politics, disegno stands at the origin of these three principles that order and regulate the world.