21 TADDEO ZUCCARO Italian, 1529­1566 Design for a Circular Dish with Marine Deities Pen and brown ink and brown wash over stylus underdrawing 35.3 x 26.3 cm (13 x 10 in.) Cat. Ill, no. 55; 91.GG.58 The sea monsters in the border are shown both fighting and embracing each other, while, as if from the ocean's deep, a large bearded head (Neptune?) gazes up from part of the bowl's recess; as the contents of the vessel emptied, his presence would have become gradually more apparent. The design was almost certainly made for a circular dish or salver, to be carried out in metalwork. It was not uncommon in sixteenth­ century Italy for important artists to be employed in the design of such applied­art objects. Taddeo Zuccaro made other similar designs not only for metal salvers but also for majolica (earthenware with colorful painted decoration, wholly or partly coated with a glaze containing tin, which makes it white and opaque), including a service with scenes from the life of Julius Caesar intended as a present from the Duke of Urbino to the King of Spain. The sheet may be dated 1553—56 because of the studies on the reverse for Zuccaro's frescoes in the Mattei Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Consolazione, Rome, where he worked at that time. Taddeo Zuccaro worked in an extravagant late Mannerist style. His figures often strike impossibly contorted poses; at the same time, there is an element of humor to his inventions. 28 ITALIAN SCHOOL