Addenda to the oeuvre of Luzio Luzzi as draughtsman

It is through drawings that the personality of Luzio Luzzi from Todi (active from 1528 to 1575) has now been brought back to life. Though barely mentioned by Vasari and Baglione among the many assistants of Perino del Vaga, Luzio was in fact one of the most talented decorators and stucco–workers active in Perino’s circle, a specialist in the all’antica genre of the grotesque, first in Genoa (Palazzo Doria) and then in Rome where his presence is documented in the most significant decorative enterprises commissioned by the popes from the fourth decade of the sixteenth century.
The rediscovery of a large group of unpublished drawings by Luzio in the Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo, in an album that belonged to the well–known collector Father Sebastiano Resta (1635–1714), throws fresh light on his career and enables a number of addenda to be made to his oeuvre. Beginning with a design for the ceiling of the Sala di Cadmo in the Palazzo Doria in Genoa (c. 1528), the sequence of drawings includes projects for the very well–documented decoration in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Roma (1543–1545), a series of drawings of friezes for various palaces in Rome and its environs, Palazzo Massimo di Pirro, Palazzo Cenci Maccarani, Palazzo Firenze, Palazzo Spada, preparatory drawings for the stuccoes of the ceremonial staircase in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and projects for buildings further afield such as the Palazzo Crispi in Bolsena and the Palazzo Odescalchi in Bassano di Sutri.
Luzio’s activity was not limited to the all’antica decoration of palace interiors. It also comprised the design of lavish objects in the field of the applied arts and magnificent silverware; though now all lost, they can be reconstructed through the documentation of many of his surviving drawings, all of them still attributed to his master Perino, but here for the most part restored to him.