Allegory of the Creation

Zucchi Jacopo

Florence 1540-41 - Rome 1595-96)

The painting, recognised by critics as the work of Jacopo Zucchi, was probably painted around 1585 for the Roman study of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. To decorate his new Villa Pinciana, he commissioned the painter to create a series of allegorical subjects on wooden panel and copper, including Fishing for Coral (inv. 292).

Documented in the Borghese collection since 1693, this work on copper represents an unusual allegory of creation, whose inspiring source has been identified in the psalms of the Bible. The subject is a sort of hymn to the wealth and perfection of the human race, created by God, the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of everything. His image is represented in contrast to man’s, portrayed at the bottom left next to a base bearing the words “Omnia in sapientia fecisti et subiecisti sub pedibus eius”.

Zucchi shows considerable skill in the way a number of animal and plant details are accentuated, painted with an analytical and scientific eye according to the tastes of the time.

Object details

Commentary

According to scholars, this small painting on copper was made by Jacopo Zucchi for Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who commissioned the artist to make a few works for his new studiolo in Rome. Giovanni Baglione reported that the artist, after his debut and first works in Florence, moved to Rome in 1572, entering into contact with the Medici prince, who commissioned him to paint a series of works, including Coral Fishing (inv. 292) and, probably, this sophisticated allegory.

It is unknown when the work entered the Borghese Collection, in which it is documented for the first time in the inventory of 1693 as a work by Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavalier d’Arpino, and described as ‘[un quadro in rame alto al sud.o con Christallo avanti] with God the Father and a seated figure holding up a globe in a landscape with animals, marked no. 362 on the back, by Cav. Giuseppe d'Arpino’. This attribution, rejected in 1790 in favour of Jean Brueghel the Elder, was again rejected by Roberto Longhi who argued instead for Zucchi.

The subject is a kind of hymn to creation, the source for which has been identified as the Psalms. The painting depicts creation, desired by God, who is portrayed as an old man with a beard, holding a book inscribed with the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the alpha and the omega, in a reference to Eternity, the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of all things. At lower left, in a play of opposites, we see a male figure, identifiable as the human genius, seated next to a base inscribed with the words ‘Omnia in sapientia fecisti et subiecisti sub pedibus eius’. This figure, who is holding up an armillary sphere, is surrounded by a Flemish-style landscape, the lenticular rendering of which is one of the most appealing aspects of the Florentine painter’s work, offering a vast catalogue of details drawn from the animal and plant worlds.

Scholars have dated the painting to about 1585 based on similarities with the altarpiece depicting the Birth of John the Baptist in the church of San Giovanni Decollato, Rome.

Antonio Iommelli