Portrait of Federico Zuccaro

In 1604 a young woman in Milan painted the portrait of one of the most powerful men in Italian art. Fede Galizia was in her mid-twenties and already in demand, though she is remembered today mainly as a pioneer of still life, among the first Europeans to treat a plate of fruit as a subject worth serious painting. Her sitter here is Federico Zuccaro, a celebrated painter and architect who had helped found the artists' academy in Rome, the Accademia di San Luca, and who moved easily through the courts of Europe. For a woman to hold a professional painting career at all in this period was uncommon, and here she sets down a fellow professional at the height of his standing. Zuccaro was travelling through northern Italy in these years. He died in 1609, a few years after sitting for her.