Seriously, how much can one miss a man who has been dead since 1574 ? As it happens my chosen subject for today is an artist called Nicodemo Ferrucci  and he was born in the very year that Giorgio Vasari died –  in 1574–and lived until 1650.

All I can glean from  Wikipedia  is that Nicodemo Ferrucci was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, who studied the Masters , especially Michelangelo, for whom he painted this tribute below , during his training period in Florence, and that in his maturity he was active mainly in Rome.

Pretty dull stuff isn’t it? I do wish Vasari could have lived on for another 50 years to garner some titbits on Ferruci!

As it is we have no anecdotes about a shepherd boy drawing a perfect circle, artists boasting about smashing Michelangelo’s nose so it crumbled like a biscuit or old wives gossip about their husband coming to bed muttering unromantically “Oh! what a wonderful thing is perspective”    – Oh! what a turn-off was that?

Vasari was clearly an energetic and talented man, but what makes his mini-biographies sing out is his talent for unearthing the type of gossip that makes an artist live on in our memories as a person – not only as an artist.

We do know Ferrucci was born in Fiesole, where he painted his interpretation of the Last Supper on the Cenacolo wall in the Convent of San Michele , and this was the initial source of my interest in the artist as I had been to to visit  it with friends last week. 

I was intrigued that, nearly three hundred  years after Taddeo Gaddi painted his interpretation of the last Supper on the Cenacolo of the Convent of Santa Croce between 1335 and 1340,  Nicodemo Ferruci took up his hog hair brush in 1642 and frescoed the same people wearing what must have then been the height of fashion in Florence in the soon to be suppressed, Convent of San Michele.  

Even the food looks much the same – still bread and wine – not even the cherries , lemons, walnuts and lettuce that added gusto to Ghirlandiao’s table! !  The same principle applies,  Judas with his bag of money , has to sit on the opposite side of the table from the rest of the party  – accompanied by a treacherous cat just to hammer the point home.

He is still slightly darker than his colleagues – definitely still tending towards swarthy being dangerous and steering away from Giotto’s early Renaissance message of beware anything Yellow.

 At a later stage Ferruci tried to emulate Vasari by painting the inside of the Dome of the Cathedral of Fiesole but it looks rather gentle – certainly less gruesome than Vasari ‘s terrible vision of Devils with hot pokers in his The Last Judgement

Ferruci’s Dome

Vasari’s Dome – including his dramatic Last Judgement

 Vasari was aided in his painting of the Florence Dome by a master of Trompe l’oeil called Federico Zuccari  – this huge dome being considered a Capolavoro (Masterwork) of both artists.    Ferrucci became the pupil of the painter Domenico Passignano, and assisted him in frescoes in Rome. He became a prolific painter of portraits, including contemporary artists from Tuscany.

Whilst living in Florence he also did two frescoes within the Church of Oggnisanti – the Death of Saint Francis and the herds which recovered from the Plague.

So – if anyone knows any juicy gossip about the life and works of Nicodemo Ferruci please let me know – I fear this Blog needs spicing up!

Vasari’s collaborator Federico Zuccari seems to have had a much more interesting life,  as in the same year that Vasari died and Ferruci was born 1574  he travelled to England and had an audience with Robert Dudley ,the Earl of Leicester which led to an opportunity to sketch this famous image of Queen Elizabeth I

Zuccari also fancied himself as a writer of artistic biography and published his chief book, L’idea de’ Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti  in 1607 – lacking Vasari’s touch of scandal and humour  it was far less popular so unlike Vasari this work is no longer in print.

So I have to admire Vasari – maybe not a painting genius, but he produced a prodigious amount of work; maybe not the worlds greatest architect ,but a great one and I have to admire the negotiating skills he needed to get his corridor build around a tower on the Ponte Vecchio and embedded into the roof of the Church of Santa Felicita; and maybe not the worlds most creative writer, but his skills have kept him in continuous print since 1550 …….not many writers can aspire to that!