The Silver Age

This is the companion to Zucchi's Golden Age, and it shows what the old poets said came next. When that first age ended, the endless spring was gone. The year broke into seasons, people had to sow crops and build shelter against the cold, and the easy life was over. Zucchi tells that decline through a single family group. A young girl plays with two small putti, a bearded old man sits nearby, and a veiled woman stands among them, together standing for the four ages of a human life from childhood to old age. He painted the pair around 1576 for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, jewel-like cabinet panels of the kind Florentines called quadretti, meant to be held and studied up close rather than seen across a room.