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Francesco Zucco
Francesco Zucco (Bergamo, c. 1570 - Bergamo, May 3, 1627), Crucifixion

About the Item

Francesco Zucco (Bergamo, c. 1570 - Bergamo, May 3, 1627) Crucifixion with saints Oil on canvas, 76 x 60 cm With frame 95 x 79 cm Critical Record Professor Giuseppe Sava The crucifixion described here belongs to the Lombard school of the 17th century. Against a background marked by cold tones and a dark, stormy landscape, the buildings of a city that is to be identified with Jerusalem can be glimpsed. On the right, a bare, earthy-toned mountain backdrop covers the rest of the urban view, thus drawing the eye to the foreground where at the foot of the cross Magdalene and a warrior saint, in 17th-century armor and robes, are kneeling. If the former looks at Jesus weeping and pining, the latter shows the ultimate sacrifice with his hand and turns his gaze to the viewer. The latter, wielding the palm of martyrdom and wearing a broad crimson cloak, typical of warrior saints, reveals his identity by the iron club resting on the rock to his right. The iconographic detail allows us to recognize St. Defendant, a Roman soldier who lived in Thebes in the 3rd century and was martyred under Emperor Maximian. The name to be given for the small Crucifixion is that of Francesco Zucco, a painter for whom Count Francesco Maria Tassi (1793) reserved an entire biography. Born in Bergamo around 1570 (the exact year is not yet supported by documents), early inclined "to the study of painting," he was "sent by Father to Cremona to the celebrated school of the Fields." The authorship of the work can be inferred from the habit of immortalizing figures kneeling on a block of stone, as in this case and as in the altarpiece in San Pancrazio in Carobbio degli Angeli, dated 1608, in which the Virgin and Child is venerated by St. Bernard and St. Catherine of Siena. The quick touches of light also hit some spots in the landscape behind and allow the outline of the buildings to be better distinguished. The tangencies with Giovan Battista Moroni and the Bergamasque school are clearly evident, although the naturalistic reading gives way to an almost heraldic figure of painting, so that the figures, rather unleavened and lifeless, touch an almost unreal consistency: it is the result of the interweaving of the post-Tridentine, purged and rigorist image culture with the instances of the last season of Mannerism, that of the Cremonese matrix. In this sense, Zucco's early masters can be mentioned: the Campi brothers, especially Julius, in whose Crucifixion in Santa Maria della Passione we find Magdalene embracing the cross and strong chiaroscuro contrasts. Francesco Zucco himself made a larger version for the church of San Lorenzo in Bergamo. The same approach is found in Giovan Paolo Cavagna's canvas of the same subject, preserved at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia. For periodization we must place the work between the second and third decades of the seventeenth century, at the time of full maturity for the Bergamasque artist.
  • Creator:
    Francesco Zucco (1570 - 1627, Italian)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 29.93 in (76 cm)Width: 23.63 in (60 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    76x60Price: $7,291
  • Medium:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Milan, IT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU2639215496102

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