# The Golden Age [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ZUCCHI, Jacopo]() - Date: 1551-1600 - Technique: Oil on panel, 50 x 39 cm ## Commentary This small painting, together with its pendant depicting the Silver Age, comes from Villa Medici in Rome, which was home to Ferdinando I during the period when he was cardinal. Based on the available documentary evidence, it appears very likely that both panels were destined to be used as portrait covers. Having studied under Vasari, Jacopo Zucchi became his master's main collaborator, participating in the decoration of the Salone del Cinquecento and the Studiolo of Francesco I in Palazzo Vecchio. In 1572 he settled in Rome, becoming the favourite artist of Ferdinando de' Medici, who appointed him to decorate his villa on the Pincian Hill. In this painting, Zucchi takes inspiration from the kind of composition typically used by Vasari, portraying small groups of figures dancing or embracing one another on the banks of a stream. However, as a whole, his subject displays a closer similarity to Ovid's Metamorphoses, a work of which the painter is likely to have had first-hand knowledge, being able to use it as an iconographic source. In terms of style, the painting presents the characteristics of the artist's works completed in the mid-seventies: figures with rhythmic gestures, a scene perceived from the bottom and the diagonal construction of the space, designed to increase the sense of depth. ## Related artworks - [Allegory of the Creation]() - [Jupiter]() - [Portrait of a Lady]() - [The Assembly of the Gods]() - [The Coral Fishers \(detail\)]() - [The Coral Fishers]() - [The Four Elements]() - [The Gods of Olympus with Hercules and the Muses]() - [The Miracle of the Snow]() - [The Silver Age]() - [The Toilet of Bathsheba]() - [View of the Galleria]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()