Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

Stefano Mulinari<break strength="x-strong"/> Florence 1741-1790<break strength="x-strong"/> Taddeo Zuccari copies the Laocoon, circa <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1774</say-as><break strength="x-strong"/> Etching and wash 245 by 230 millimeters<break strength="x-strong"/> Painter and engraver, pupil of Andrea Scacciati, Stefano Mulinari is among the greatest reproduction engravers of the second half of the 18th century. In collaboration with Scacciati, between 1766 and 1774 he engraved the one hundred prints of the Original Drawings of Excellent Painters existing in the Royal Gallery of Florence engraved and imitated in their size and colors, preceded by a frontispiece with a dedication to Pietro Leopoldo Grand Duke of Tuscany; in 1775 he published the Istoria pratica dell’incominciamento e progressi della pittura and five years later the important Saggio delle cinque scuole di pittura Italiana, with reproductions of drawings and paintings by great Italian artists such as Raffaello, Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Ribera. In translating drawings into print, the technique adopted by Mulinari is distinguished by the use, together with etching, of wash, which allows for pictorial effects similar to those of watercolour. His last work is the Collection of twenty original drawings by excellent painters, published in Florence in 1782. Taddeo Zuccari copies the group of the Laocoon is plate XXVI of the Original drawings by excellent painters and derives from a drawing in pen and brown ink with watercolour, with a marked horizontal development, by Federico Zuccari (1540-1609) datable around 1595. The drawing is part of a series of preparatory studies, about twenty, for a cycle of frescoes with episodes of the childhood and youth of his brother Taddeo (1529-1566), intended to decorate the Casa Zuccari in Rome. In his engraving Stefano Mulinari reproduces the right part of the drawing, in which Taddeo is depicted, recently arrived in Rome, while copying the group of the Laocoon in the courtyard of the Belvedere. In the background you can recognize the northern wing of the apostolic palace, built by Pope Nicholas V and on the right the dome of St. Peter's under construction.