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The Zuccari Palace in Campagnano di Roma: a Mannerist Coat of Arms and the Mystery of Two Illustrious Painters
In the easternmost quarter of the historic centre of Campagnano, where the town expanded rapidly between the 15th and 16th centuries, stands this small Mannerist-style palazzo. The main doorway (probably still the original one) bears the coat of arms of the Zuccari family carved into its peperino keystone, namely three sugarloaves — the conical form in which sugar was moulded and sold during the Renaissance. The very same shape the Portuguese used in 1502 to name the rocky outcrop in the bay of Rio de Janeiro: Pão de Açúcar, Sugarloaf Mountain.
Two painter brothers and the Orsini family
The connection this local family may have had with the celebrated brothers Taddeo (1529–1566) and Federico Zuccari (1539/40–1609) remains an intriguing hypothesis, not a documented certainty. The two painters, born in Sant’Angelo in Vado in the Duchy of Urbino, were among the most active Mannerist painters of the 16th century: they worked in Venice, Florence, and above all in Rome, at the Vatican and in the courts of the Farnese and Borghese nobility. Paolo Giordano Orsini commissioned them to fresco the Castello Orsini-Odescalchi (Castle of Bracciano). A Zuccari coat of arms can also be found in the nearby Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista (Church of Saint John the Baptist), where the two brothers made documented frescoes. They may also have had a residence in Campagnano, a fief of the same Orsini family. But for the time being, it remains a fascinating unanswered question.
