A pen and ink drawing after Taddeo Zuccaro’s drawing for the Sala dei Fatti Farnesiani in Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola.

In 1561, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-89) commissioned the decoration of his Palazzo at Caprarola to Taddeo Zuccaro. On the piano nobile, Taddeo executed between 1561/62 and 1563 the decoration of the Sala dei Fatti Farnesiani with celebrative frescoes dedicated to the endeavours of the Farnese family.

This drawing is a copy after a preparatory study for the fresco, showing Cardinal Alessandro Farnese meeting Emperor Charles V and King Ferdinand at Worms in 1544. Cardinal Alessandro was the papal legate and had a fundamental role in the conflict between Catholics and Lutherans. In the painting, Cardinal Alessandro is depicted on the left wearing his cardinal robes and riding a donkey, probably as the prefiguration of Jesus entering Jerusalem. He is led by a page dressed in the gold and blue Farnese livery, identified as Giovanni Antinoro, a compatriot and assistant of the Zuccaro brothers. Alessandro faces Charles V, who stands on the opposite side of the scene, with Ferdinand and his son Maximilian II. In the middle, a page is carrying the processional cross which marks the centre of the scene and symbolically signifies the triumph of the Holy Church. In the final painting, Taddeo portrayed the real likenesses of the protagonists and arranged the figures in an engaging gaze with the viewer.

A preliminary study in Warsaw, Muzeum Narodwe (inv. 211), rapidly sketched and more energetic in character, is probably a first idea for the composition. The present pen and ink drawing, more detailed and washed, is perhaps a copy after a lost model for the same composition. In this copy, the cross is not visible as the supporting pole virtually continues beyond the edge of the sheet. The drawing is executed in a similar manner as the virtuoso technique in pen and brown wash employed by Taddeo in his most finished compositions and it has been previously considered by Popham as an autograph. Another copy was formerly in Monaco (Collection Herbert List).