Zuccaro

Zuccaro, TADDEO (1529-66), painter, has left a number of pretentious but not valuable frescoes at Rome, and a few easel-pieces of no especial merit.—His younger brother, FEDERIGO (1543-1609), had some merit as a painter of portraits and other works in oil (he painted Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, &c. during a temporary exile), but gave most of his time to tasteless frescoes—he disfigured Florence cathedral with some 300 figures nearly 50 feet high and extravagant in attitude, which time, however, has mercifully done much to hide. Zuccaro decorated the Escorial for Philip II. of Spain, and founded at Rome in 1595 the Academy of St Luke, which suggested to Reynolds the idea of the Royal Academy.