LUZIO ROMANO

c.1528 - c.1575

Biography

Active between c.1528 and 1575, the Roman painter, stuccatore and draughtsman Luzio Luzzi, called Luzio Romano, is only briefly mentioned by Giorgio Vasari as one of Perino del Vaga’s assistants. In fact, he was among the most important artists and stuccatori in the circle of Perino, with whom he worked on the stucco decoration and grotesques in the Palazzo Doria in Genoa in the late 1520s and early 1530s, and again at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome around 1545. Known in particular for his expertise in all’antica decoration, Luzio painted a significant number of the frescoes, grottesche and stuccoes in the Castel Sant’Angelo, notably on the walls and ceiling of the Sala della Biblioteca and the so-called Cagliostra rooms. As Philip Pouncey and John Gere have noted, Luzio was ‘a specialist in grotesque and ornament, trained under Perino and apparently operating in the Castel Sant’Angelo with some measure of independence.’ Luzio Romano also worked in a chapel in the Roman church of Santa Maria in Via in 1548, now destroyed, and also possibly at the Villa Giulia between 1553 and 1554. Alongside Daniele da Volterra, Luzio decorated the ceiling of the church of San Giovanni in Laterano from 1563 onwards, and is also known to have worked on the interiors of the Massimo di Pirro, Firenze, Cenci Maccarani and Strada palaces in Rome, as well as the Palazzo Odescalchi in Bassano di Sutri and the Palazzo Crispi in Bolsena. He also received payments for paintings and stucco work in the Vatican in 1565 and at the Palazzo dei Conservatori in 1575, and is thought to have made designs for lavish objects and silverware.