23 JACOPO ZUCCHI Italian, circa 1540­1596 The Age of Gold Pen and brown ink with brown and ocher wash, heightened with white bodycolor 48 x 37.8 cm (18 x 14 in.) Cat. I, no. 57; 84.GG.22 This impressive sheet is a finished compositional study, with numerous differences of detail, for the small­scale picture on panel in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, probably painted around 1570. The Golden Age was the first of the four ages of the world in classical mythology. It followed immediately after the Creation and was an earthly paradise somewhat akin to the Christian Garden of Eden. The happiness of this golden time is implicit in the peaceful co­existence of human and animal kind, as well as in the freedom that permits, for example, the two little boys, lower left, to urinate competitively into the flowing brook, downstream from the group of bathing nude women and almost directly onto a nearby duck. The literary inspiration for Zucchi's design was a text by the scholar Vincenzo Borghini, written about 1565­67. Two Florentine painters contemporary with Zucchi, Giorgio Vasari and Francesco Morandini, called Poppi, also illustrated the text—Vasari in a drawing in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, and Poppi in a painting in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 30 ITALIAN SCHOOL